They know what central funding they're going to get at the end of each season don't they? Isn't it pretty much dependent on finishing position in the Championship?


And your last sentence is the real problem with many RL clubs. The central funding is too high a proportion of their income. They need to generate income from other sources.

Now I get that's not always very easy, especially when many clubs sold all their assets decades ago.

For instance I would guess at a club like Widnes (and others, I'm not just singling out Widnes) the central funding will be around 50%, if not more, of their income.

With the increase in central funding for SL last time, it neatly covers the maximum salary cap, which is usually the main expense.

With regards to the championship, I think the RFL stumbled into it as a Plan D sort of thing. Reducing the SL to 12 clubs, they suddenly found 4 FT clubs in the championship and decided to (back of a Greggs wrapper planning) make increasing the number of FT teams and creating an SL1 & SL2, each of 12 clubs. Obviously need a plan E now.....

It feels to me like we are well on our way to splitting the championship further, into those that can run full time (by whatever means) and could be a genuine addition to super league, and those who cannot and would offer very little to the top flight. That my be deemed elitist, but isn't promotion and relegation very much elitist.

With that in mind I don't think the championship as it is will remain a viable, competitive completion, we would as others have said, be better served with a franchising structure, where SL isn't closed off, but teams have to meet a set criteria to be in (this includes current super league clubs) this could then eventually lead to expansanion of SL both in terms of Team numbers and geography, and allow teams time to build, rather than the mad scramble P and R seems to have created.

Been there done that , didn't work

You either have an on field system of promotion and relegation or you scrap the lot and start again , 2 Yorkshire clubs , 2 Lancashire clubs , various others around the country

All current clubs play in Championship feeding into those clubs

OK so Bradford 2015 don't go in to SL. They go part-time. Cut their wages bill by 600/700k. Then what? They lose 2k fans per week? Over 13 games that's what 390k in ticket sales? Plus another 100/150k in match day sales. So that's 540k in income they have lost. Then there are sponsors, hugely profitable corporate sales are harder to make, less merchandise is sold. Then less prize money a drop of what 500k?

So Bradford's 'cutting their cloth' and removing 700k from their wages bill loses them 1m in income plus lower merchandise sales, corporate sales and sponsorship.

You mean like last season, when they made the middle 8's.
There is certainly a difference in how certain clubs approached the Middle 8's.
Leigh threw all they had at getting promoted and it worked but, for the other Championship clubs, it was more a case of trying to win as many games as they could but, not risking everything in trying to get promoted.
In the previous season, Bradford "had" to succeed and fell at the last hurdle and Leigh also threw plenty at the Qualifiers and failed spectacularly.
Having said that, Leigh clearly learned from the experience.
In the coming season, one would expect KR to throw the kitchen sink at making a quick return and with the commitment shown by the club, the players and the fans, they will be serious contenders to bounce straight back and this time around, Toulouse may be up there, along with Fev, London and Fax.
The top half of the Championship will be really tough but, should provide plenty of decent games.

I am to a certain extent, suggesting you 'scrap the lot' all current SL teams would be forced to resubmit their application of membership, and would be held to the same standard as those currently outside the top flight wanting in..

If this means going down to less teams in the short term, it might be what is needed, and at least everyone would know we mean business. Would take some balls though.

In terms of lesser teams working as feeder clubs I've long been an advocate, it should run like the NRL run there's. To a certain extent I think we attempted this, Leeds even had some success out of it with the likes of Keinhorst, but as usual some clubs suggest there heels in, others half a*sed it and it largely has been forgotten.

Just out of interest, what do you think the make up of this league may look like and if you think that maybe Toulouse and a couple of North American clubs may make the grade, what then.

I've been banging on for some time now that our sport should have a medium and long term plan as to where the sport should be aiming and the bottom line in (a bit like Brexit

), there is no plan.
At least no plan means that we can not fail but, not failing is a long way, in the wrong direction, to succeeding.

IF there was a magic wand there would be a couple of clubs in each county in England, together with a Scottish, Irish and Welsh League plus a strong independent competition n France and North America (plu, every other nation in the world.

However, that is clearly not going to happen.

Therefore we are left with trying to spread the game from it's roots (in the North of England) but, there is no real desire for this to happen.
If there was, London would be "made" successful, with dispensation on the cap and financial support and we would possible have helped the liks of Sheffield and maybe Nottingham plus of course, The Crusaders, all of whom are now barely surviving in the lower leagues or, in the case of Nottingham, not at all .

This seems to demonstrate, that we dont want this to happen and that expansion and success will just happen by itself, which, clearly, it wont.

Good post that.

It seems like the plan for expansion is to let clubs grow organically, starting in League 1, with the cream eventually rising to the top.

The problem RL faces, is that there's not really any money in the pot to really get behind an "expansion" club, coupled with a massive lack of expertise in the RFL on how to increase revenue steams. Plus, you can't really back an expansion side with cap exemptions or financial support without a Franchising system (E.g. Melbourne in the NRL), or the RL Dinosaur crew kicking off.

If say, Toulouse and Toronto make the grade, I would have no issue with them being in super league, there could be two approaches from here, one being that we try and emulate Super Rugby who have clubs from all over, including Japan.

The second, which I suppose rings true more for the French clubs, is eventually we should be able to say, off you go set up your own league. This would be preferable but is less realistic IMO.

By and large I agree with your post our biggest issue is the lack of a plan, we want to expand, but the current system is so against expansion or even long term building for so called lesser clubs, at the same time, many of our heartland clubs need strengthening, but again, the current system seems to be against this.

We've got clubs that can't make ends meet, can't attract players, can't or aren't willing to even run an academy set up. We really are stuck.

Glass eye You've missed the most obvious one and that is London. It is critical to the future of RL