I think the only other feasible way would be to move the Championship season to finish in mid-late July so that they at least have a decent head start on recruitment, as was the case when Widnes were the last part-time side to get promoted and not get tonked the following season (albeit I'm not 100% if Hull KR were full-time in 2006).

In terms of P&R, personally I feel the best way of determining the winner would be to promote the side who finishes top of the league, purely because they've proven over the whole campaign that they're the best side for that level, rather than risk having a wildcard side win the Grand Final and get promoted.

Ideally you keep franchising, put SL down to 12 and just have the best 12 franchises.
You have a franchise for 2 years and in those two years everyone who finished bottom 3 is assessed to who has the worst franchise, any of the lower league teams who aspire to enter SL then have to offer a better franchise proposal than the team deemed the worst franchise in SL to gain promotion. Simple

So the Aussies/Kiwis/South Sea Islanders and the odd Brit here and there who play in a 16 team league that is far more intense and physical than SL are just tougher than our guys because they seem to manage well enough.The poor things even manage to throw in 3 Origin games along the way for good measure.Then once the play offs start for the winner that another 4 games to deal with.A grand total of 37 games in one season.The NRL are even considering expanding their league so i cant see how reducing the SL to 12 teams from 14 is going to be good for anyone.
Its an entertainment industry and being totally selfish all i see is less oppurtunity to be entertained.How are we to attract more people to games if there are even less chances for them to come and see it for themselves.

This seems to me to be all about money and the top SL clubs who are never in a million years going to be involved in the p and r dogfight every year and the resulting boom and bust ethos that will prevail,have just handed themselves a nice big pay rise for doing less work.Wish i could get one of those jobs.Would be very interesting to see how the voting went on this one and which clubs were for it and against it.

All of this has got absolutely nothing to do with Championship Clubs.They are just getting the scraps handed down to them after SL have finished gorging themselves.

Just maybe if the RFL had done its job right and managed to get some decent Sponsorship and negotiated some half decent TV deals we wouldnt even be having this conversation.

I'm afraid this is fairly typical of supporters of P&R: they see the P but not the R. For the Championship season to finish in July in order to give the promoted club time to recruit a squad, the season would have to start in, what? December? So the relegated club - whose entire squad will no doubt have become free agents because of clauses in their contracts regarding what happens if/when the club is relegated - have two months to build an entire squad from scratch, restructure the club to part-time operation and do preseason training. It seems not only do you want a club to be relegated, you want them to be handicapped as well.

So will the teams play each other 3 times or are we (the fans) going to be treated to a mere 11 home games in a season?

Not sure how you get to 37 games. NRL clubs play 24 regular season games plus a max of 4 playoff games plus a max of 3 State of Origin games. That's a max of 31.
SL plays 27 regular league games, a max of 5 Challenge Cup games and 4 playoff games. For a total of 36. Yes the NRL is more intense, but the NRL also have bigger squads. To then increase that number by 8 further games to 44 is madness in my view. As is the opinion that the off-season is too long.
Id keep the number of games to what it is now but restrict the amount of domestic games a player in the ETS can play to 27 (disregarding playoffs) whilst increasing the amount of internationals.

Correct , which is exactly the crux of the matter, the answer is improve the Championships and the clubs in them, that will solve a multitude of issues within the game , however it needs more than words fron Nigel ,unfortunatly that is all he is any good at

How do you expect anyone to improve the Championship clubs, the majority of which are based at decrepit stadiums in extremely small towns with virtually no potential for growth?

So you are saying they cannot be improved?

It is competition from below that creates improvement

The best way for the game to use the little resources that it has to create even more is to focus on what broadcasters and sponsors are willing to pay for, and that is SL. It needs as many teams being able to challenge at the top of the table as it possible can, and this year we have started to see that happen as any one of 4 or 5 teams can go on to win the Grand Final. Going back to P&R is going to stop that from happening, as too many clubs are going to suddenly change focus and decide that a successful season is merely avoiding relegation.

Licensing is the best way to expand the league outside of the northern heartlands. What the RFL should ultimately be doing is helping the clubs in CC1 such as South Wales, Oxford, Hemel and Gloucestershire to try and get them into a position to be able to get into SL, as these clubs are the ones who should be the future and seen as integral to the long term success of SL.

what utter

Halifax have a ground better than most leigh,rochdale,sheffield play at bramhall ,Doncaster,the list goes on

End of the day franchise is just utter bull it never improved nothing tell me again how many world cups test series have we won destroying heartland team for this nonsense?


Let get back to grass roots and groww

Cobblers!

You want P&R, you can stuff any protection. That's exacty what licensing was intended to bring

I think SL bosses have voted for this because it is a necessary step before the implementation of the split into 3 mini leagues system.

Reading the policy review bit about Option 2, I think it's pretty obvious why such a system would be appealing to SL bosses

The clubs in each division would play each other home and away plus a Magic Weekend fixture (23 games) before splitting into three groups of eight for a qualifying play-off series. The middle eight would involve the bottom four clubs from Super League competing against the top four Championship clubs. The clubs would play each other once (seven matches) before the play-offs conclude in a 1st x 4th and 2nd v 3rd format with the winners contesting the Grand Final. To ease fixture congestion, the top eight Super League clubs would receive a bye into the fifth round of the Tetley’s Challenge Cup.

The advantages of this option are that 12 clubs gain two extra home games within their season ticket and 12 gain one extra game; there are no ‘loop’ fixtures; it brings about a reduction in ‘pay-gate’ play-offs as clubs can sell a 30-game season ticket; delivers more matches of equal ability in two symmetrical leagues; and gives aspirational Championship clubs meaningful and sustained exposure to the ‘weakest’ Super League clubs. Disadvantages are the format’s unconventionality, the full fixture list is not known at the start of the season and any prize in the third ‘8’ is not as significant as the other two ‘8s’.
'"

Don't worry. Whatever will happen will change again in the next five years.