It should never be the job of a governing body to dictate how clubs organize their finances. This is especially true in our case, for the simple reason that I rate the business skills of most clubs higher than that of Nigel Woods.

More to the point, each club is subject to its own local conditions and financial ability. We may mock 'sugar daddies', but frankly I have no problem with rich people who want to bring money into the sport. A sugar daddy doesn't equate to a well run club, but nor is it mutually incompatible wth one.

The RFL needs to give up trying to be game's financial policeman. No chairman wants to go bust, and besides, the RFL doesn't seem to be much cop at protecting clubs anyway.

Tough squad limits are all the RFL need to impose to prevent a loaded club dominating everything. If you can only pay superstar wages to 13 players, you're never going to be totally dominant...but you can still let the sugar daddy, sponsor, dedicated fans, whoever, have the thrill of aiming to sign some of the world's best players by parting with their money.

Very tight squad limits, 6 points or whatever for administration, P&R with reasonable distribution of TV money, then just s@d off and train referees or something useful like that, and leave the clubs to do a better job of building the sport than the current incumbents at the RFL could ever do.

Do, even a little bit, of research into the structure of the game and you will realise that franchising, minimum standards, Salary Cap, etc etc are all led by the clubs. It’s the clubs who ask for them and the clubs who want them.

Its SL Chairmen Who vote for them with their 2 votes to all other clubs one, Its SL clubs and Chairmen that run their clubs into the ground. Not everything is the RFL fault, but they really are looked upon as the scapegoats for everything wrong with Rugby league in this country. However The book stops with them on how SL is shaped and what happens, Remove Nigel Wood and his cronies and put someone in their with some Backbone and i think things would be a whole lot different.

All clubs? Or just the dross that holds the game back?

Its also SL chairmen who bring in a huge amount of money to the game. It is the SL chairmen, who fund 47% of the community game out of their tv deal. It’s the SL chaimen who gift about £1.3million a year to the lower leagues,

It was SL chairmen voted Mr Wood to run SL

In that i rest my case, 12 Chairmen get to decide who runs the RFL for all the clubs in all the leagues, Great democracy isn't it. One Voice One Vote, I think not.

Gift £1.3 Million from central funding, So the chairmen of 12 clubs decide how much money the rest of the Rugby league clubs get is it whilst keeping a rather large slice of at least £14m a year. Seems like a fair deal.

It was Mike Smith's report that won the £87m Sky contract for RL in 1995 & the clubs should do whatever it takes to get him back now as RFL Chairman.

You are a very naughty person. I've just spit my coffee all over my keyboard. Considering I work from home it means I have to clean it up myself. Very unfair of you

PS you need to add pedant to the list

To be fair, I can understand his POV but simply don't agree with it.

No, the SL chairmen voted for Mr Wood to run SL, not the RFL.

It was the SL clubs, the lower league clubs and the community game that voted for Mr Wood to run the RFL.

Smokey,

You seem happy with the current setup and very happy with Nigel Wood.

Fair enough, that's your opinion and you're entitled to it. That said, I genuinely find it hard to see how anyone holds that opinion, so help me out. Explain what you think the sport will look in, say, 4 years time, if we keep going as we are (in particular, attendances, sponsorship and overall playing talent). Seriously, I don't mean that facetiously, I'm genuinely interested in why you and others are happy with things as they are.

Not really, I just see the obvious idiocy of chopping and changing every couple of years in a constant state of panic. There are plenty I an unhappy with, The SC doesn’t work, the marketing of the game is appalling and sadly youth development isn’t what it should be. I just understand that making Nigel Wood a bogeyman and blaming him for everything isn’t going to actually solve those problems.
If we do what we are doing right now, in 4 years time we will be pretty much in the same place. If we change somethings, and carry on with doing what we are doing in a few other areas then we will be moving forward.

What you have to remember is that even if we get everything right, even if we do everything perfectly, it still takes time to take effect.

The reason for the chopping and changing though is that the decisions originally made have been shown up to be poor and changes have been needed. Knee Jerk decisions are being made (club call) to supposedly make our game unique but just end up seen as gimmicks that cheapen our game. Fundemental changes in our game are needed and the RFL needs to start listening to just the same people over and over again. Gimmicks are not needed. Real and honest evaluation of our game is needed before if it has any chance of growing. Wood is in charge and therefore has to take responsibility and deserves 90% of the critism he attracts but chairmen etc have got to have a look at themselves too and start making decisions based on strengthing the game and not just the bank balance.

To make major changes now, would be the knee-jerk decision, if it was a change back to P+R it would be a knee-jerk bad decision.

In the scheme of things, things like Clubcall are so minor as to be irrelevant. There isn’t anyone sat at home refusing to watch or be involved in our game because of clubcall.

Other than 'make it better', what are your specific thoughts on SC, marketing and youth dev. ?

I know im pretty much repeating myself but as a minimum I would lower the cap by about 500k, and have 5 marquee spaces for players who can be paid whatever. There are many little things we can do to improve the marketing of the game, some pretty cheap things, Heritage rounds for instance, we have traditional games at easter, Leeds V Bradford, Saints V Wigan, Hull Derby, lets make these games ‘something’ alternate the home team every year and give the winner some little trophy as well as 3 points. Make that round about something whether it be ‘women in league’ like they have in the NRL, maybe just even celebrating an individual player who played for both clubs that kind of thin. It is pretty unforgivable that this round doesn’t sell out. We have these traditional fixtures at easter, we should do the same at the end of every season last game of every season should be against the same side, doesn’t need to be a derby, we make it into a big game.. Start every season with a double header of a couple of big games in a large regional stadium. Lets fill St James’ park with a bit of a jolly to start the season, do it on a stand alone weekend to get the neutrals in aswell. We need to build tent peg ‘event’ games throughout the season to keep visibility up.

Youth development needs a complete overhaul, from the very very bottom where we have good willing volunteers who unfortunately aren’t able to coach kids to the level they need to, all the way up to bringing them into SL sides.