FWIW, there should be some long term strategy for the whole game, something that seems to have been lacking since Richard Lewis departed.
As a sport we keep on looking for a "moonshot", including a drive to get Bradford back in SL all too soon.
There is no plan, not for SL, not for The Championship and most importantly for the grass roots game.
"We" would rather chare the dream in N .America than spend more time and effort enticing kids into the game.

IF SL have cut the lower leagues adrifit, in terms of passing some of the Sky monies down the line, then, there should at least be the chance of them (Championship and League 1) trying to do some kind of independent deal.

Or life boats.

Waste of time? They have the best fixtures.

No I mean BT had chance to take Scottish football exclusively from sky and after all the talk and hype they came in with lowball offer.

The bonus for BT sport is they can use FTA as bargaining tool. Shame we have so many tools who can’t see that in RL. Now let’s see what happens with zero funding to Champ/L1..

I dunno mate. The last deal was the biggest yet supposedly to see off BT. Robert Elstone probably had no chance of beating that one, what power or influence has the man got?

I'd suggest he was engaged to minimise the fall in commercial income. Wether he's done that with this deal I dunno?

Well the plan that was put forward by Lenegan a year or more back, and all clubs voted on it, was for going to two divisions, therefore the "Championship" was not going to the wall, it was going to be "Superleague 2" The plan was 10 clubs in Superleague 1, and 10 clubs in Superleague 2. At that time 20 votes would have carried it but mark Sawyer and Stephen Ball IIRC didn't "play ball" and the idea fell through.

So if the SL clubs are going to revisit their plan this time holding all the purse strings and power, then I guess the top Championship clubs will align with Superleague and we may see something like.....

Superleague one.........Superleague 2

Wigan........................ York
Wire.......................... Widnes
Saints........................ Featherstone
Leeds........................ Halifax
Hull.............................Dewsbury
HKR............................London
Cas.............................Newcastle
Wakefield...................Batley
Huddersfield...............Barrow
Bradford......................dunno
Leigh...........................dunno
Salford.........................dunno

Neither my choice of format nor my selections and nor my ommissions.This is for illustrative purposes of what the Lenegan model may look like taking into account he said 2022 would be a [i"return to an English league"[/i given he proposed [i"two divisions"[/i and given he effectively proposed [ia cull of small championship clubs[/i.

If anyone has any serious problems with this sort of plan and wish to vent their anger, I suppose you can write to him at Superleague (Europe) Ltd,

wow, the manure is strong so early in the day...

As a Rovers fan, we was out the top flight for 13 years. We finally earn our promotion and the following season managed to stay up. We suffered a relegation when we never even finished bottom of the league. We got another promotion and managed to stay up again. We are hardly 'chosen' we have worked hard for our place in the league over many years.

I think that you've goy him there .

It's amazing how (some) fans of a club that received unprecedented help are still so bitter.

Nice piece of getting the record straight there. Leigh also didn't come bottom when they got relegated and these two events showed how utterly damaging the Blake Solly/Nigel Wood system was that went on far too long and had to be dismantled before this pending SKY deal.

I could sit down and try to work out how much money that stupid system (a system that was first tried by the Swiss soccer league and failed, a system that Scottish soccer looked at and totally rejected) cost the game. It certainly involved giving over £16,000,000 to the Championships to run the ridiculous MPG thing.

SKY are not interested in the Championship so their SKY money will be no more. Some people think they can go somewhere else for a deal but there is no chance of that either especially if the second tier of Supereague is created that would accommodate the bigger Championship clubs. The advent of the massive SKY deal and it's effect on the game was fascinating, but this new deal may prove to be even more "interesting" whether anyone believes it's what the game needs or conversely it's the last thing the game needs.

How many clubs will go and will the RFL even go in it's current form?

Quote: WestEndThinker " wow '" Why the amazement? Surely you didn't miss this?. https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/5610037/ ... tier-plan/

Quote: WestEndThinker " wow '" Why the amazement? Surely you didn't miss this?. https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/5610037/ ... tier-plan/

It blows my mind that anyone would look at a mid-table Championship side with no home and think "wow what unprecedented help they received". You've no idea how bonkers that sounds, and in any case its a very selective view of what has been done to the club.

We are 'bitter' because we've been the plaything of the RFL for more than a decade, who's virtually every cack-handed move has further damaged the club. Where every consortium or person of wealth that comes forward is rejected in favour of someone with half a chip shop. Any "help" we may have received from the RFL has been cancelled out a thousand-fold by the directly harmful decisions also made by the RFL.

You did read the post from McBully regarding the "chosen 12 cutting the rest adrift" and response from g_balls ?

When your beloved Bulls were riding high in SL and winning plenty, they didn't give a damn about ANYONE and would happily have seen the "franchise" system made permanent.
g_balls was absolutely right that Rovers worked extremely hard to regain a place in SL (twice) and that they (Rovers) were not chosen and as for my comment about McBully being bitter - are you really suggesting that he isn't ?

You suggest that Bradford have been the "plaything" of the RFL for over a decade but, did they or have they forced their "help" upon Bradford or, have those previous owners of Bradford been all to willing to take the help.

Some of us and I'm sure you too, can remember the tramendous fund raised by the fans and sporting world to try and save the Bulls - it was indeed an incredible effort but, this "pot" was literally thrown away by those "running" the club.

Lets hope that your (Bradfords) future is better and that they play for and earn their chance of promotion.
Reading the article from Mr Sawyer, he's certainly putting the case for Bradford's return to SL and hoping that they "are judged on the last 13 months" and not on the past.