So Catalans winning the cup will somehow excite Europe into following Rugby league.

There's far better wind ups on this forum than that

As for monotony Man U, Man City, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea seem monotonous to me with their ultra decade by decade dominance?

Could your "Average British Person" actually find Catalans on a map

No.

The RFL needs a pair of balls and stop being the passive patsy to a handful of clubs. The top flight of any competition is rightly perceived as a very important thing to get right, but in British RL we fixate on the top flight to the detriment of the wider game. We have to have a unified vision for the RL pyramid led not by the owners of the top flight clubs but by the RFL. I suspect that two thirds of clubs in the professional and semi-professional RL will feel shafted by a handful of SL owners. They understandably wish to protect their own clubs, but have demonstrated that this aim is incompatible with setting a strategic direction for the whole game. Some might say say that this is the tail wagging the dog, but the SL dog is withered and has rabies, but it's tail is long, pleasant and wants a stroke.

I also think that shrinking SL due to lack of available players and funding is such a self-fulfilling prophecy. The less clubs you put in your top flight, the less money you'll get to broadcast it and the less reach it has. I don't think dropping to 12 clubs was a cracking idea, and dropping to 10 would just be absurd.

Very well said, sir.

I think we've had this conversation before and its only until you've seen the other side of the coin that it obvious now what you wrote stands true,
it is shameful that clubs like ours don't meet to modern standards and the top clubs seem to want us to stay there at the bottom, could you imagine the tables turning and these rich clubs would fade very quickly, as your club has done.
As fans we can see it but the owners of the top clubs will always want to look after their own interests
like you say the pyramid base is declining and that is where the concentration needs to be put for it to feed upwards

I've always thought Wakey are almost in a no-mans land in terms of who your allies are, and the "Nobody loves us" status often given your fans a sense of mistrust about everyone's intentions toward you. Possibly quite justifiably. As a club you have been nothing short of staggering in retaining your SL status, and remaining solvent thanks to Mr Carter and the other chap who's name I forget. But you know deep down there will be many owners in the elite that don't want you in the top flight and in many respects your natural friends may well be among us down in the Championship. I suspect your owner is having to walk a perpetual tightrope of fighting the clubs corner and justifying it's right to sit at the top table, versus not ruffling the feathers of the sods that might want to invent a restructure that doesn't have you in it. Mr C may well have to vote in favour of things he knows are not game-wide beneficial purely because to not do so would put Wakey materially at risk.

Surely, with a promotion and relegation system, it's more about gaining promotion and not getting relegated.
The clique at the top of the league protect the big 4/5 clubs, with Leeds generally a little on the outside.
McManus and Lenegan seem to have way more influence than Hetherington these days.

RWIW, I think Hetherington is more bothered about the sport of RL than his counterparts at Saints and Wigan, who seem
way more concerned with their own clubs than the sport.

Or game has very little strategy for the medium or long term and without some kind of target to strive for, the sport will
continue to drift.

You ask me " What is your point"?
There were a few.
Relegation is futile in a sport that other than for a handful of clubs can't stand on its own 2 feet. Unlike Soccer, where players wages are insane, a SL club needs maybe £4 million a year in income to survive, but if you cut off the SKY cash now, I reckon 5 might survive. I am not saying Union clubs are any different, just that in terms of 'other forms of income' we do suck!
The location thing? Wasps play in Coventry. I know where that is on a map, but Leigh? Saracens are somewhere in North London, so London would suffice....Wakefield though is a mystery to many? I'm not being a wind-up merchant here, but ask a UK based sports fan with no affiliation to either Union or League about Andy Farrell and you'll get "my point". Again. What do we want and how do we think is the best way to get it?
As for the RFL trying anything? Do not make me laugh. They've thrown money at lost causes like Wales and even London in terms of the barnet sweetener cash, but always too late. They spent more oney on Bradford than they have on any amount of expansion. I am well aware of the number of clubs that have come and gone or are going and not many had any meaningful assistance from the RFL.
Your last point is spot on though. I came to the game late in life and I love it, but I am in a minority. British Sports fans (and probably fans in general) will watch any sport when it's on and RL is a cracking "filler" for SKY, but it'll not be any more than that until either we go all in and spend central cash to expand or we contract and make it a truly SUPER league with 10 viable clubs

Drift? what do you mean by that?

I thought it was pretty much agreed that the sport was in survival mode and has been for years. The name of the game is survival unless you or anyone else can point to where "growth" lies and where the game has gone wrong. perhaps someone can tell me what this "some kind of target" is if it's not survival?

As for Leeds "on the outside" what do you mean? They have a very very rich owner who is richer than either Lenegan or McManus don't they? He chooses not to take the reigns of the sport whilst Pearson Lenagan and McManus choose to take a leading role. They aren't dictators though, every club has the same one vote.

It's the same old same old where jealousy appears to lie at the heart of the attack on the prominent rich owners who may lead the sport, but I don't see them dictating anything much?

Remember that this SKY deal has been a long one. It's the last year now, and this is a deal Lenegan, Pearson and McManus did not vote for, they actually lost the vote to people like Michael Carter Gary Hetherington and Ian Fulton. If there's no strategy then go see them and ask them about it??

They can tell you all about their "£Million Pound Game" "strategy, how did that go then??

Hull Daily Mail seems to be lifting the lid on the restructure talks.

As it stands the favourite is the two leagues of ten clubs creating an SL1 and SL2, the other option not as well supported is the idea of a 14 club Superleague.

There's also consideration on the money split, if it went to 10 then the big powerful clubs might just share the lot.....But anyway talks are well underway.

Who knows how they would sort it, would league positions matter come the end of the year? If SL drops to 10 would they hand pick the 10 clubs from applications, or would they just relegate the bottom two, or even relegate the bottom three, so the top club in the Championship goes up??

14 clubs gives a Home and Away format but the third fixtures the top clubs get like Hull.v Leeds, Saints.v. Wigan. Wire.v. either of the latter would have to be dumped - so 14 clubs means the lower TV money is split 14 ways and some big third fixture crowds are lost to the big clubs.

My view is this will be all about the big clubs getting as much money as possible, and SKY may be happy with teams playing each other 3 times so it's looking like 2 x 10

Last time this came up ALL the clubs voted and the tail wagged the dog and 2x10 was thrown out on the votes of league one clubs and the smaller championship clubs like Batley and Dewsbury. I cannot for the life of me think the tail will be in any way allowed to wag the dog again.........

There are 36 clubs, but I don't think the French clubs vote so I can't see how this time if 20 clubs are going under the Superleagues wing, that the 14 clubs likely to be left out could do anything about it. If Batley and Dewsbury again took a stand they would risk being ones left out........

As I've posted elsewhere. 2 x 10 clubs with funding based on finishing positions.
£25,000,000 pool

if you base it on 1st past the post (no playoffs) then this is how its distributed
210 segments (20+19+18+17+ etc.....)

Personally, I'd reduce the pool to 20 million and have extra available for the play-off qualifiers in both divisions.

If the pool was £20 million, then the team finishing 10th in tier 1 would get £950k, whilst the team going up would get £860 + any play off prize money....the difference in funding and the improvement needed to get to the next level would always be about 100k per tier.

Owner investment and previous performance on the pitch dictates who can do what, but the cap Must remain, albeit at a higher level and there has to be pathway from L1 to this top 20.

Once league structures go away from an equal playing field it throws the whole thing into disarray and the public lose interest. Loop fixtures, magic weekend (maybe can just get away with that) play offs etc just end up confusing people and no one can work out why they were chosen like that and whose won what. We are ending up like Scottish football.

How ever many teams are chosen to be in the top league there needs to be an even set of games, everyone playing everyone twice or 3 times. The league winners need to be recognised more, this is the gauge of who is the best team. The play offs should exist as an end of season trophy, like or not we need promotion and relegation or 75% of the fixtures are meaningless after round 6.

P&R is the lifeblood of exoansion, without the 2nd tier has no point, any expansion clubs only route into the top table is by being artificially catapulted (always too early) into the top league and ultimatley doomed to fail unless its funded by a megarich owner who can buy a full team of non locals to parachute in and form a team.

Franchising in its truest form (moving whole teams i.e wigan into Birmingham) is not a model that will ever work in the UK. Its not how sport works in this country, just look at the recently mooted ESL in football, that had america written all over it, the British public dont want that artificial, made for TV product that alienates the fans. In essence the whole expansion model that we have been following does just that, forgets the paying fans. We need to initially focus on the product we have, make whats good better, strengthen the top league and allow a pathway, yes we need to encourage expansion, but fast tracking and forcing it will never work, it needs to be organic.

Funnily enough that's what Gausch and the RFL did with Catalans, who certainly have failed with less French players than ever, an abandoned France.v.GB test schedule and no sign of a French TV deal to share despite being 15 years in existence.

Not sure going up through the leagues is the way to do it? Didn't TWP "build up" over 4 seasons?

I think they did build up....A £30Million debt......

Last successful Expansion side was probably Castleford, but that was in 1926, and besides the "Expansionists" are adamant that they are some kind of failure, so I think all this expansion stuff is a cross between dreaming and going on a wind-up.

There isnt enough talent to support a 12 team league so lets make it 10.

Get rid of promotion and relegation and cut the championship loose (sorry championship clubs) and bring in licensing for the next 10 years. This time STICK to the license rules and dont give out licenses to clubs who say " we promise if you give us a license we WILL tick the necessary boxes sometime in the future, honest guv!". Because this never happens.

Failing that I dont see any other way that rugby league in this country wont be semi pro within the next 10 years