The crux of the problem, IMO.

Granting a licence to a Championship club on the basis that it's the "best" (on and off the field) club in the Championship without considering whether it is more suitable for SL than any of the current SL clubs is a nonsense.

All licence applications should be submitted at the same time and judged on the same criteria. If an existing Championship club is one of the top 14 (or however many clubs are required in SL) applicants, they're in. If not, they miss out.

But then we’re back to the old chestnut of comparing apples & oranges.

There would have to be some ‘weighting’ of the process, otherwise the incumbent clubs will win hands down.

In the current climate of pandering to the big money backers, promote the team with the wealthiest backer/ biggest bank balance.
Our game is becoming less and less like a sport its just down to cash.
Whatever happened to the top team winning the league and the bottom team getting relegated, plus the top team from Div 1 getting promoted.
I know that the situation is far from straight forward but the game is disappearing up its own
It seems strange to have a salary cap sysetem that still means clubs are going into admin, or that a wealthy backer can distort by adding a disproportionate
lump of cash.

I don't think they have. Anyone post a link?

I'm sure they haven't.

It depends if circumstamces change. They certainly did for Celtic. They certainly would if Hughes walked away from London.

That is a big part of the problem. The other part is the fact we have dated it 2015. If a club isn’t capable of being an SL club, we shouldn’t be waiting until 2015 to kick them out. If a championship club is capable of being an SL club, why are we waiting until 2015 to asses that. If they are ready now, it is a waste of time waiting 3 years for what seems to be no reason.

That one is a distinct possibility and who could blame the guy.
Most of us would like to see a strong London club and for sure the grass roots are spreading down there but, at the moment, The Broncos games on sky are embarrasnig when there are so many empty seats.
When you talk to the Broncos fans, many are displaced northerners, so how do they go about attracting new fans ?

As has been agreed on here many times, they need to move home to somewhere in the East of London and get as far away as possible from the rara crowd.

Bingo. If we were talking about the team which won the comp then I think the original assertion has merit in being discussed, however Widnes' promotion hasn't been the same as what normally happens. That means you can be in danger of using (what is effectively) an exception rather than a representative sample.

Perhaps the best way of establishing 20 "super league teams" would be to abandon relagation and keep promoting the top Championship team until we have a top league of 20 teams.
At this point there could be a split into 2 divisions with a one up one down promotion.
Yes, this would mean a decreasing pot of money for the top tier but, eventually there would be enough teams for a SL1 and SL2.

Haven't they said that will possibly be the case though? Sure they made the point that if certain clubs (Cas/Wakey..I'm looking at you!) hadn't started fulfilling promises with regards to new stadiums that they could be chucked out before the end of the licensing period?

Ok, so we have decreased the pot of money available to the top clubs and given it to the lower clubs, we have an SL 1 and SL2 with SL2 operating at a high level than the championship is, and SL1 operating at a lower level than SL currently is. We have two pro leagues, SL1 with a lower SC than it currently has and SL2 has a higher one.

Then what?

Are we expecting Sky to want to pay more for a lower quality SL1 and higher quality SL2 than they pay for SL now so we can build back up? Because that clearly is never going to happen, we have seen how much value there is in second tier RL.

Its closer to where it should be, but not quite there.

There shouldn’t be a licence period, there should be a licence which is constantly being reviewed, and an open application process where clubs can apply when they are ready.

With respect to sky, all they want is something to fill a tv slot 3/4 times a week. Remember they are a TV company and not a sporting body (despite their undue influence in the sporting calendar)
A gradual increase in numbers could work out and if each promoted club was then runnig a good quality, effective, junior set up then, in the long term, the numbers of better quality players would increase.
Also there would then be 2 full time divisions allowing for promotion and relegation which would actually make for interesting games all season.
Personally, I think divisions of 10 are too small, with 12 teams being my prefered number but, due to greed and a perceived improvement in quality, there seems to be a clamour towards 10 team divisions.

Fair enough question....I suppose that depends on what the expectations are for the sport as a whole.

The gap between SL and the Championship is only going to widen even further with the current format (it's showing already - lower Championship crowds and sponsorship revenue = less investment = cheaper product; people are fast losing faith and interest whether we like it or not) whilst a good chunk of the current SL are punching above their weight financially.

The cream will always rise to the top whether Sky are involved or not; to expect Wakey, Cas, HKR, Widnes, Hax, Fev, Leigh, Salford (for example) to step up to the income levels Leeds and Wigan can generate will never happen and (aside from boom/bust sugar daddy investment) never has.

So do we look at making the top 20 clubs more even, competitive, and sustainable - each finding their own level in a top middle or bottom bracket but with the reasonable prospect of progressing from one to the the other (but runs the risk of losing some of the better players to big bucks in Union), or do we have 3 or 4 strong clubs thats entertaining for Sky viewing with the rest making up the numbers and wondering when the Revenue will knock on the door?