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.

McBully has gone on record acknowledging the faults of Bradford in the past and I am happy to do so too. But that surely does that mean we are not allowed to mention what's going on right now? Rovers have earned their place in SL, but I think the gripe is with Hudgell not Hull KR. His distasteful spat with Chalmers, was partly about a clash of personalities (Chalmers is a gobe admittedly), but also because Chalmers publicly and persistently sought to stand up for the championship and C1 clubs in the face of the levels of self-interest we've never seen before.

I won't give an exhaustive account of the demise of Bradford but you are of course correct that those who were at the club itself are not blameless. The money raised by the whole game for Bradford many years ago under Peter Hood was a wonderful thing and I'm sure we all remain very grateful for it. He did indeed monumentally eff that up and we went bust anyway. That's a case of our own failings.

On the flip side, as I'm afraid I'll say ad nauseum, we had backers actively wanting to take control at Bradford worth millions, and each time they were rejected. That helped install a cycle of failure.

The very last part of your post really is interesting.
If these backers were willing and as wealthy as you suggest, why on earth were they "rejected" ?

Exactly! These were people who the administrator were willing to accept but the RFL weren't. One consortia featuring people involved with Wasps RFC were really advanced, had met all the players to get them on board rather than looking for other clubs, had registered bulls companies at companies house etc. They absolutely knew they had the best bid and had no inkling the RFL would instead opt to bring in someone they'd used as a "fix-it" man in the past, and that man was Andrew Chalmers. No money but a traditional RFL loyalist. That didn't work out great as he went completely renegade.

Its all fishy if you ask me and gives the impression that the RFL have had a specific vision for Bradford for quite a while, I just haven't a clue what it is.

Aside from the off-field dealings the RFL did with prospective owners (like they have been mentioned above regarding the Wasps consortium and putting Chalmers in place of actual money men) what on field help did the RFL give us?

After liquidation a team is normally relegated immediately and start the season in the league below. We were forced to stay in the Championship even though at the time the majority were 'happy' to go into League 1. But we were forced to stay, given an unprecedented 12 point deduction (no team had ever had this before) and was not allowed to sign players in time for the 2017 season so we were forced to go with kids and had the 2016 squad stripped apart during this time. Even though we should have been in League 1 with 0 point deduction as relegation would have been punishment enough. Thankfully the likes of Leeds helped us out by loaning us 4 players (Jordan-Roberts, Hallas, Lilley and Oledzki) just so we could field a team. Where was this 'help' from the RFL.

In addition to this there have been numerous times where we have been in administration (full fault goes to the owners) but then punished by not receiving a fair share of the TV money. I'm sure Omar Khan was told by the RFL that in order to takeover he had to sacrifice a portion of the central funding (why would you punish a club with financial problems by denying them money that is rightfully theirs? makes no sense). I would have been happy if this central money got reinvested into grassroots rugby as would most Bulls fans, but instead the greedy owners of SL voted to share that money between themselves, putting Bradford at an even bigger disadvantage. Again I ask what 'help' did we get?

The only viable thing the RFL have essentially 'helped' in is taking over the Odsal lease. However in recent years it's been shown that although the cash injection at the time was good, the overall long term repercussions of this have been bad for both the Bulls and the RFL.

I just wish other fans would take their rose tinted glasses off for two minutes and actually look at all this. If you change the words Bradford Bulls to a Wakefield/Hull KR/Salford etc I don't think fans would be too quick to state the RFL 'helped' them.

It's just like this supposed 12th team. Regardless of who it is (London, Leigh or Fev deserve it) they will have the financial disadvantage that Bradford had except this time the governing body is SL rather than RFL. They would operate on less central money (why? every club should get an equal share), no doubt the money they miss out on would be redistributed to the other 11 teams causing more financial disadvantage. Plus a lesser time to build an SL squad, putting them at a disadvantage on the field. It's why I don't really want Bradford to get the 12th spot. It is a poison chalice. The 12th club is destined to fail or be whipping boys.

Sorry for the rant. It's just really frustrating seeing other teams fans having a go at Bradford when the governing body at the time had a huge hand in who took over and in essence the financial problems that occurred after. Not exactly a 'help'.

Just a shame because in my opinion we have the best sport in the world. And a proper governing body with the sports interest at heart would be ideal for the game, not having SL clubs run the show as it inevitable ends in self preservation rather than the benefit of the sport. For what it's worth I'd have a 14 team Super League including Leigh, Toulouse and York/Bradford. With plans to expand to 16 (like the NRL) within 5 years (York/Bradford, Newcastle etc). I don't think having all 3 of Wakefield, Castleford and Featherstone would be viable, would be great if it was but not sure it would work.

Anyway, back on topic. If the Sky deal is reduced, Elstone has failed massively and in my opinion it's a disgrace that the lower league gets less money whilst SL's stays the same (depending on the worth of the Sky deal). £400k down the drain. We need a unified governing body which will initially consolidate the sport to ensure we survive, then can try to take us forward.

I envisage Bulls getting in SL in the first announcement next month and a couple of months later another announcement that there will be no relegation in 2021, despite Robert Elstone's recent quote stating otherwise. The sport needs some form of stabilization after Covid and we could even see promotion to SL in 2022 and 2023 (with no relegation) taking the league to 14. Magic fixture plus 13 home and 13 away games totaling 27 rounds which would certainly be the fans preferred choice.

There won't be a "poisoned chalice" and my guess would be that Leigh (2022) followed by London or York (2023) will make the step up.

But then why not come out and say that? It would make sense to make that public. It would allow the lower SL clubs to rest easier and maybe even spend less next season knowing there would be no relegation so could sure up finances.

It would allow the 12th club to recruit shrewdly over this off season and not spend wildly to stay up before being told there's no relegation.

It would allow the other Championship clubs to build over the next two years to see who gets spots 13 and 14 so they know what they are aiming for.

And for those clubs that aren't anywhere near such as Whitehaven, Sheffield, Dewsbury, Batley etc could consolidate their finances over the next 3 seasons knowing they ain't going up and can then build towards 2024 where promotion/relegation may take place again. If promotion/relegation didn't take place in 2024 and SL became an NRL like closed shop then at least the Championship/League 1 clubs could use the next 4 years to consolidate and build a really good Championship league in it's own right.