So they can all be ignored AGAIN and they pick who they want

Besides , how do you asses a ' well performing ' Championship club ?

And then how do you compare that to a SL club ?

Not easily. How do you compare the on-field performance of a Championship club to a SL club?

You cant , so it is a fallible system , so either get rid of it , or dont attempt to use it to justify putting who you want where they want

Or you do the much more obvious thing and not compare them to an SL club.

Leigh wouldn’t be a viable SL club by being better than London, or Salford, or Cas, or Wakefield, as we know, at their current level they are struggling to be SL clubs. Leigh will be a viable SL club when Leigh get enough fans to operate at SL level, when they have junior development viable to contribute to SL, when they have the finances for an SL club.

London are the weakest target to be replaced by a championship club. The only way anyone would dislodge Cas, Wakey or Salford would be by reducing SL and then competing with these 3 clubs in a promotion dog-fight. Cas and Wakey are getting 7,000 plus per game - the RFL cannot afford to loose this support. Salford will get there by financial support and the Manchaster "tag".

You really don't get it do you smokey???

Fans have given up,there is no future for the teams in the championship thats why all but 4 teams have signed up to this feeder club nonsense

The chairmen of the feeder clubs have found a cheap way to fund there hobby with multiple players which do not count on the salary cap,how is that fair.

You mention development of players,well the only teams developing players are leigh,feath,sheff and fax the rest are saying send us 10 players each week please which cost them nothing.

Super league clubs have axed different u23 u21 under whatever number because they can't afford to run them and you expect championship clubs to run these youngsters on budgets of 250,000 to 400,000???? its not the cost of one jonny foreigner running around your league is it?

GET REAL WILL YOU

Who is going to invest big time in a championship club with serious money hoping you may get invited in sometime in the near future?

Without the hope of promotion the game is dieing

Like I said show me which teams are growing year on year in the lower leagues

Leigh have lost near on 1,000 fans in 2 years,answer the public have given up

1400,1510,and a 1800 this year is the crowds and they are the better ones

Ah but there you go they have no fans so can't come in,drop any team in our league and ask them to run on these budgets with no hope of promotion and see how there crowds would fair.

Take away the hope and the fans leave

Decades of prior experience?

Bingo. Yet Championship clubs are still expected to run SL-style set ups despite receiving in the region of £1,239,250 less from TV funding*.





*That it based on the £50,000 subsidy from the RFL passed down to Championship clubs and the £750 (no zero's missing) received per club from Premier Sports, versus the £1.3m that SL clubs receive from Sky, with apologies if the Sky figure is incorrect. I'm also not suggesting that Champ clubs should receive any extra Sky money when they don't show our games, but realistically that's a pretty big hole in funding that clubs can't seriously be expected to fill themselves.

There were only a few clubs capable of being promoted anyway. Fact is Batley and Dewsbury were never going to be SL clubs, they didn’t really want to be SL clubs, they weren’t in any way set up to be SL clubs. The fact Batley aren’t going to go on a run, win the championship GF and not be promoted because of franchising is no different to the fact even under P+R Batley could go on a run, win the championship GF and still not be promoted.

Dewsbury’s stadium has a 3.5k capacity for s sake. How were they ever going to compete with the likes of Leeds or Wigan or Hull? Franchising doesn’t, and never would, effect most clubs in the lower league.

There are 5 clubs in the lower league with a stadium capable of having an attendance of the minimum aim of SL of 10k (+ swinton who are borrowing the LSV). 2 of them have never been promoted to SL by P+R and haven’t been whinging and moaning about franchising in Doncaster and Sheffield.

Which leaves 3 clubs effected by it, 3 clubs who have all, at one stage or another, been an SL club, and made and absolute clusterwhoopsie of it. 2 of them damn near killed themselves trying to be SL clubs in Halifax and workington, and 1, Leigh earned a grand total of 2 wins.

You can jump in on Starbugs idiocy about franchising being about bringing the championships down as much as building SL up, but the fact is, even selling out their stadiums every single week, most clubs in the championships wouldn’t be SL level clubs Franchising effects a very small amount of clubs in the championships and even fewer of them negatively.

You should really just admit that when you talk about ‘the championships’ and ‘lower leagues’ and ‘removing the hope’ you are talking about Halifax and Leigh, a club which has had the buckets out as much as Oxfam and one which got 2 wins, not anyone else and not as a guardian of grassroots RL

That subsidy comes from SL not the RFL (though it is distributed by the RFL). Basically the SL TV deal is split 16 ways. 1/16th goes to the 14 SL clubs (except temporarily Bradford at the moment) and 1/16th goes to the RFL and 1/16th goes to the lower leagues.

Jeez Smokey, I know you like to get your point over but there's no need to start repeating yourself

I thought I was having a premature senior moment.

Here is how I view the options. None is perfect and, apart from my not liking licensing which I see as avoiding the tough choices, rather than in itself a worthwhile option, I've no strong preference. There are all sorts of hybrid options - P&R with minimum standards on a 3 year cycle etc. One inconvenient truth we need to face up to is that to have enough clubs to have a competition, we need to include a good number that are reliant on benefactors - all the fine talk about sustainability, sound business models etc is merely 'aspirational' and not a foundation on which to base our current system.

P&R
Pro - sporting, transparent, adds meaning/drama.
Con - big gap between pro and semi-pro, can be destabilising.

Franchising
Pro - Stability, allowing SL clubs to grow.
Con - Stagnation, preventing others from growing.

Re-election
Pro - some flexibility, honest
Con - self-perpetuating elite, potential conflicts of interest

Licensing
Pro - theoretical con dodging
Con - problems coping with hard realities, somewhat discredited.

I'd say we're currently drifting towards a more fixed/static system (for which there is a case), but I worry that it is just drift - as opposed to a subtle conspiracy to lull us into acceptance, which IMO gives the RFL both too much and too little credit.