Tinkering with the clubs at the top of the game won't make any difference and if it's not careful Richardson's plan could alienate large swathes of supporters for no gain at all.

The game needs to address a lack of participation from the grass roots upwards. Without that there is no game. The numbers of players and supporters is dwindling massively and there seems to be no plan to do anything about it.

That would help address the issue of dwindling corporate interest as no company is going to want to sponsor a sport played by a tiny minority of people.

It's all very well posters on here listing who they'd get rid of or keep but the fundamental issue affects us all - there are too few people playing and watching RL.

I would suggest that both, in fact all aspects of the game are important.
Without numbers at the bottom (kids and the community game), there will be no semi pro or pro sport.

It does appear though, that, with less money coming in at the top, there does need to be some "streamlining" of SL and The Championship.

Equally, probably more work needs doing to re-engage kids with RL.
There certainly seems to be a reluctance from all schools to participate in contact sports and whilst some kids will still go along to their local club, lack of RL in schools would be a massive blow for the sport, absolutely massive.

When will the sport realise that the quick fix changes wont work. You can't parachute a club into an area playing a sport no one has interest in and expect it to thrive instantly. The same as you can't say club A has attendance of 5k and club B has attendance of 5k lets merge and we'll instantly get an attendance of 10k, you wont, you'll get a fan base with no buy in to the club at hand. Have we learned nothing from Gateshead, Sheffield, Paris and Toronto.

If a sport as big as NFL and the NBA can't get a decent league set up in this country then RL has no chance.
This sport needs to realise that its a minority sport, RU has womn the war and we need to size and shape ourselves around that principle, alienating half the current support base will do nothing but bring on the demise quicker. ,
Lets focus on what we're good at, strong local rivalries, forge better links with the NRL and market the product we have, stop dreaming of matching international RU and build from grass roots, organically grow in areas we want to expand in but dont burn the upper echelons to do it.
RL is the king of the bad idea and throwing out babies with bathwater

Spot on. We seem far too obsessed with trying to compete with the NRL and RU we just make bad decision after bad decision because they knee jerk too often. Covid aside there has being far too many structure changes and not alot of
f time for growth.

Get a structure, back it and concerntrate on building from the bottom up. We will never beat football or rugby union in terms of popularity but we can certainley do alot better then we certainley are doing.

Those calling for 'more local rivalries' etc just think about their team and their team only. They don't want franchising as their team might not be invited.

The sport is fantastic. In competent hands, free of the self interest of the clubs, the sport could grow significantly.

Having no ambition and suggesting RL should accept and love being played in the M62 corridor on a semi-pro basis isn't good enough. In the modern world it'll disappear completely. Start at the bottom, get into the schools, get the grassroots junior clubs thriving again. Sell the game to investors or Hearn or the NRL and improve the money in the top end of the game. Do both and there is no reason we can't have average crowds over 10,000 and record numbers watching and playing the game. It just takes a bit of investment, enthusiasm and competent management. Neither the RFL nor Super League has any of that, hence the need to sell both the competition and it's control to someone who will seek to grow it.

rlhttps://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/jan/07/super-league-clubs-transformed-adam-pearson-hullrl
Anyone remember this?

...how's that working out for Mr Pearson et al?

So a franchise that opens its books and is not a closed club ? This would belp the rfl focus more on the championship clubs and getting them ready to enter the franchise. Super League has to look to increase numbers if we are to go to 10 teams then there must be a goal to get back to 12 and increase after that.

What we need most is the fans and chairmen to look past their club and what's best for the game not just in reducing the number of clubs but when it comes to increasing them too. The challenge is how is the championship or SL2funded ? Surely it would need its own TV deal and would it run at s lower cap ? And if we are going to go down to 10 teams are we significantly increasing the salary cap or do we just cut the teams down again if it doesn't get any better ?

It's not a case of not wanting franchising, its a case of asking is franchising the correct route for RL in the UK. You have to look at what is currently working within the game, how do we get the biggest crowds / audience and using that whilst not flogging it to a point it loses its appeal.

The franchising model essentially says you can lift St Helens, move then to London, call them London Sts and it will still draw the crowds and interest it did in its birth town, similar to what the NFL does with teams such as the LA / Oakland / Las Vegas Raiders.. sorry but it wont work, the sport isn't big enough or have the appeal where London actually want it. The Vegas raiders model is built on tourism and transient crowds, will people travel the world to see the London Saints?
Reducing to 10 or even 2 SL's of ten would essentially be the same thing, SL 2 wont get its own TV deal, certainly not one worth talking about, SL in its current form can't get a decent deal, what chance has SL2.

The local rivalries thing isnt about self preservation for team like mine, its about building on what the fans want to see, ask the question, which games get the biggest crowds? which get the most hype on Sky TV, which generate the cash for the clubs. Its the local derbies, the final throes of a relegation battle and the grand final, even the play offs no one can be bothered to go until its the latter rounds unless theres an added element.. yet what are we suggesting, spread the game so we lose local rivalries, franchise so we lose relegation.... you couldnt make up the lunacy of that.

I am not sure why calling for overseas teams at the expense of home based teams is considered an answer. A stronger French league would be preferable.
There was a time when we could have created big city teams and gone down that route but the money is no longer there. All the talk of mergers caused a retrenchment in the RL community at the possible loss of the old names and now that ship has sailed. There was a time when there was no professional rugby of either code in Birmingham and the South East RU teams were all second rate but that is no longer the case.
A ten team TV league would have to see the relocation of some of the big teams. The idea that Wigan, Saints and Warrington could be sacrificed in the way that American football does with it's teams would be risky in the extreme. Perhaps we need a real Packer v Murdock set too to rip the landscape apart, unfortunately the money is not there to pay for it.

Top class post.

What works works, and you don't muck it all about on the baseless dream that new investors, new fans and new TV money will flow from whatever exciting dream one fan thinks up in his bedroom........

The number of "expansion" clubs thrown into the traditional mix over 125 years tops 50 and they have all failed. We have a product, we have an audience, we have investors and we have quality players. They are who they are, they are from where they are from, and there is only one model that will preserve the game until the day comes that interest in the game sinks low enough for us to lose the TV deal.

For some noisy people there's this idea if you stick a club in New York, pop one in Paris, another in Ottawa, and don't forget Madrid and put them into Superleague , then the game will bust out from it's northern shackles, TV deals will flow, rich investors will want their own new RL clubs and fans will flock to see the games.

Pit villages isn't the way, I mean look at London's stellar success, and how well Paris went in the 1996 season, when 10K crowds watched both games. Look at how Toronto went with instant massive crowds tearing up the Championships.

I'm afraid the future is the past. Why don't people just enjoy it, not wish it away?

I don't buy the "big city clubs" thing at all. Not one bit. Manchester and Liverpool became footballing giants, but these days I am sure many fans living in Liverpool are Saints fans and certainly many Manchester people get on the train to Wigan on matchdays.

These are big clubs with a very wide attraction as are Warrington, Leeds, Hull and Bradford. Cas is a town of 35,000 people and a following of 7,000 fans, Do as many as one in five people in Castleford go to games? Cas pull from a very wide audience.....

Imagine if Cas had relocated to Sheffield to get at the potential 600,000 fans living in the steel city?...................

So who is the "big club" between big city Sheffield Eagles and Pit Village Featherstone Rovers? Worth a thought people as you can be sure that some people will be trying to tell us how big city Toulouse beating Featherstone Rovers and taking an SL place will massively improve the footprint of the game or some kind of mindless slogan.

2019 attendances Pit Village Fev 2,900 modern metropolis Toulouse 2,900

Forget "big cities" London has per head of population the least interest in Rugby League only one in 5,000 are bothered even when they are in SL......

But a London club is apparently "Important"

Whilst we worry about the depth of talent in the game, the other lot expand to 14 and insist on 15 English players in their match day squads...

Because whilst rugby league is on its last breath in this country, rugby union just goes from strength to strength.

Also interesting that RU seem to be letting nature take its course on who comes up, now that Saracens have returned there's no massive team waiting or new frontier to conquer. Based on league places over the last few years it'd likely be Ealing or Cornish Pirates both are well established, relatively small teams.