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

I’m very much in favour of promotion and relegation with a caveat. We simply must have a full time second tier for it to happen.

The thing that annoys me most is the constant changing of format, the sport needs a long term business plan and a long term structure.

When you compare us to other sports most obviously RU the biggest difference is the international game. rU took off after England won the World Cup. On top of that casual viewers are more likely to tune in to internationals, some of those then start to watch the domestic game and follow teams. I’ve said this before we need to properly sort out the internationals and have regular fixtures not the odd game here and there.

What seems to happen with RL these is like sticking a plaster on that hole in the Titanic . The structure has alienated clubs & their fans by condemning them to hopeless futures. No chance of joining the big time , & how about the CC ,the seeding system has removed any romance from the competition that for many teams was knocking a big team out of the cup. No wonder we can't fill Wembley.
Perhaps a competition involving all the clubs in one division would even work with lower clubs having the chance to welcome the big boys to town every now & then & maybe produce an upset , especially if big teams had to field x amount of youngsters.
And what about a name ? How about British Rugby League or British RL as was mentioned by a previous poster ? Nobody would pinch that name unless they introduced a ball into kabbadi.
Lastly, we need proper influential businessmen running the show to provide the best media deals . Look at RU ,all the top advertisers ,multi channel coverage ,elite patrons waving flags for the sport & drawing top name sponsors. Most of these people will be rubbing shoulders regularly with media moguls, probably all been at university together.

Clubs never hit the higher accolade without MONEY.. Simple if you have none goodnight amigo. That’s the way it’s been since the start of SL. Guess what SL the product is still here.

This is THE most important issue with the sport of RL.
We chop and change, looking for the proverbial silver bullet and each time there is a change, we actually lose fans from the game.

There has to be an achievable plan for the next 5, 10 and 20 years for all of the sport from U8's right up to SL.
Set goals and achieve them and not keep changing for the sake of it.

RL looks half baked and unprofessional.

Of course there are plenty of good things about the game but, the internal struggles between SL, the lower leagues and the amateur game, helps no one.

Lenegan and McManus both voted for

An interesting thought, if we had 2 teams of 10 in a SL 1 & 2 perhaps teams could play each team in their division twice and the other division once thus removing loop fixtures and better preparing SL2 teams should they get promoted.