The cliff isnt artificial. It exists, and it always will exist.

Remove the SKy money, Hell give it to the championship clubs instead, wont make a difference, Featherstone cannot financially compete with Leeds. The whole town has a population less than Leeds average. The Stadium's entire capacity is less than half of Leeds average. They dont have the sponsors or corporate opportunities Leeds have, they simply would never get close. Wire, St's Wigan similar.

In SL leigh were getting about 4k. Leeds and Wigan are looking at 14/15/16k, Regardless of Sky money, there is massive difference and it is a difference which is exacerbated in a professional sport.

Under no structure are Leigh going to be able to compete with Leeds and Wigan off the field, which means the only way they will compete on it is by holding Leeds and Wigan back.

This same cliff exists between the top and bottom of SL.


Yes it would.


They don't need to, just compete with the bottom 6 then build on this.


You mean like the rest of SL are holding them back now?

It's sugar daddies, not good management that's keeping half of SL afloat. If all clubs were run like Leeds then SL would be in a much better place, but the simple truth is they aren't.

And we need to eliminate it.
No. It wouldnt. Leeds turnover ten times the TV money. Giv e Fev £1.2m. They still arent getting anywhere near £12m
Yes, they do. If Fev arent aiming to compete with Leeds. They shouldnt be in the same league as Leeds.

I would suggest that's a sensible idea, except, reduce SL to 10 teams and divide the Sky money from the other 4 around the Championship.

Do I?

Either way, its better than the structure that saw Halifax fail, Widnes fail, Workington fail, Wakefield fail, Oldham fail, Whitehaven fail, paris fail, hull fail, Sheffield fail……

Why do we need to do that?

The bottom clubs in SL aren’t SL standard now. Raising 6 or 7 championship clubs to their standard wont give us any more clubs of SL standard.

We need more clubs of SL standard, if we wanted more to just be ‘top end championship’ we could relegated 2-4 SL clubs and have a 10 team franchised SL, because none of them would be in a position to add to SL again.

Why does the entirety of any plan for the championships always boil down to ‘give them super leagues money and expect nothing back’

What are the championship clubs contributing to this?

If SL is just giving money away why are the championships more deserving of it than the players? or the amateur game? or the youth game?

Perhaps to improve the sport as a whole ? , perhaps to pressurise the underperforming SL clubs to work harder ? , perhaps to increase the number of people watching and interested in RL

You can ' WANT ' more SL standard clubs based around large population area's all you want , but they arent on the horizon yet , and I suspect they wont be for many decades , if ever , so in the meantime , a small amount of money spent ON the lower tier clubs and the competitions they play in could have large benifits for the future development of the sport

Maybe we might then see a ' Vibrant ' , worth winning in its own right Championships

Correct, money spent ON the clubs and competition, not given TO them

Bringing the championships closer to the level of the lower SL clubs necessitates that the championship clubs grow at a faster rate than the lower SL club.

To make a conscious decision to bring the championships closer to the level of the lower SL clubs necessitates that we make a conscious decision to grow the championship clubs at a faster rate than the lower SL clubs.

This will further exacerbate the gap between the lower SL clubs and the bigger SL clubs, or necessitate the ‘holding back’ of the bigger SL clubs.

This would also exacerbate the gap between the lower championship clubs and C1 clubs and the bigger championship clubs or necessitate us making a conscious decision to try and bring up the level of the lower championship clubs and C1 clubs to the bigger championship clubs, who we are already trying to bring up to the level of the lower SL clubs would mean holding back each level of the game until the one below had caught up. This would be quite obviously more damaging the further you went up.

If we were to cut 4 clubs, it would be massively better for us as a game to invest the £5m extra in to more and better youth coaching, and improving amateur facilities.

I also can’t agree that money spent on bringing a minority of championship clubs up to a level we know isn’t sustainable for SL would benefit the game massively, and certainly not more than that same money being spent on amateur and youth RL.

I agree. SL has asked the Championship to take a hit by removing P&R to try and improve SL for, in my view at least, the good of the game. I don't think it unreasonable that SL takes a small hit to try and improve the Championship for the good of the game. Plus £100k to a club like Oldham or Hemel is worth far more (to them) than at a SL club.