Open and honest, a concept not even on the radar of those at HQ.
The best we could do is to set minimum criteria and then let our SPORT decide the winners and losers on the field of play.
Once the "suits" get involved, it just looks grubby and verging on corrupt.

The fact that the RFL still hold the lease at Odsal, means that the starting point is already clouded.

And there does need to be some scope for either promotion /relegation or, adding to the numbers in the top flight, something that was ill thought out last time.
Although the current structure has plenty of flaws, at least P/R is decided on a game of RL and not in some smoke filled room (metaphor only).

Agree 100%.

I agree there needs to be a mechanism for on field performance to see a team promoted to SL, but think we need to protect clubs who are currently integral to the sport, given how fragile we are. I don't think it is in our best interests to allow Leeds/Warrington/Catalans (all of which have appeared in the qualifiers) to be relegated on the back of one bad season. We are too fragile to be blaze about the success of our few strong clubs.

My proposal would be to go to 14 and offer protection to clubs who are integral to the success/development of the sport (for me that's currently Catalans, Hull FC, Leeds, St Helens, Toronto, Toulouse, Warrington and Wigan) on the basis they maintain good crowds, run an academy, play in a good stadium etc. Then have a million pound game (or two legs) between the lowest placed non-protected club and the winner of the Championship. I know non-protected teams would moan, but I think that is a good system to protect our best assets whilst rewarding success on the field. We also get a Championship final that way, which may bring in a quid or two.

I don't like the idea of "protected" teams as that suddenly leaves yourself open to accusations of bias. The only protection if there has to be any should be for 1 year for the club just promoted.

The rest shouldn't get an excuse to coast. Development sides shouldn't just be in SL on the back of work done in other areas either. For example I wouldn't admit Toronto until they have a proper junior set up or they are just going to use the existing player pool. Same applies to any SL club without an academy.

Hence the conditions I proposed in terms of having an academy, good crowds etc. There is no bias, as all teams could be allowed to take advantage of protection if they can meet the set criteria. Every three years, review the criteria in order to hopefully push up standards. Agree regarding Toronto having an academy, they need to at least be incentivised to do that, if not forced. If a club is 'coasting' on the pitch but is getting good crowds, developing players, has a good ground etc. I'm OK with them staying in SL to be honest.

Your obsession with the Leigh Centurions is pathetic....is your ex boyfriend a Leigh fan by any chance ?

On the subject of a Toronto academy, where would you want this to be based ?
If it were in Toronto, everyone would moan that the costs of playing over there would be too much (and they probably would).
However, if it were based in England (which would probably be sensible) the very same people would moan that they weren't a Canadian club.
THey do need to find a way of developing their own talent, which would be key for any long term strategy.
However, this really does need thinking through.
The cries of expansion clubs "must start in league 1" have been made to look stupid, as any full time outfit regardless of their geographic location and with money in their pocket, will make a mockery of that league and it could be argued that their inclusion actually robbed Whitehaven or Barrow of a place in the Championship.

Toronto u20 team could play in the USARL. It's not a great standard I know, but it may help to raise the standards with a team being coached full time.

If away supporters don't like attending a ground because it's not all shiney and sells them some pukka pies and a nice pint of corporate then they can vote with their feet. But if said club's home fans and chairman are still doing enough to keep said club competitive at Super League level and bringing through their own youth then I think they damn well merit their place. Some of the nobbers on here will be the death of Rugby League - happily seeing traditional clubs thrown out at the expense of the clubs with rich little sugar daddies and corporate sponsors. Won't be long until Super League is like the premier league if they have their way. 5 or 6 minted clubs scraping it out at the top and the rest left behind. No doubt they'll advocate the salary cap being abolished as well so their rich little owners can scrape up all the talent. Some excitement that would make for. Expect to start paying football prices not long afterwards for your supposedly working class sport.

In addition to the above really don't understand the excitement around Toronto. They shouldn't play in an English league. Neither should Catalan. They offer nothing to the local community and will bring next to no away fans and I'm not sure why making the game more popular in Toronto/Canada will benefit the English game as a whole. Our international squad is now etting towards a level of competing with Australia and I don't see how Toronto will help us develop English talent. For me it is experimentation for experimentation's sake. If Toronto would like to create a league then they should pump money into building the sport on Canada but shoehorning them into the Super League at the potential loss of hard working clubs with passionate fans who will add to the coffers like Featherstone and Bradford e.t.c? It's a no from me.

Toulouse have been playing in a stadium with a capacity of around 4,000, with crowds generally less than half of that. I'm not sure whether they run an academy or not? For Toronto, how can you say that they "maintain" good crowds after just one season? I'm pretty sure that they haven't been running an academy this year, and they don't even have a stadium to play in at the moment. How do you work out that they should both gain "protection" based on your criteria above???

What do you mean "won't be long"? It's always been Leeds, Saints and Wigan....well at least for the last dozen years, with Wire and Hull the only other 2 clubs with anything like consistency.

I am all for expansion. I think the fact that we have 11 of the top 12 clubs all based along one part of the country prevents us from attracting fans, sponsors and media attention.....I also believe the resurgence in the England side we've seen over the last few years is almost entirely down to the period of Franchising when clubs didn't have to worry about relegation but could instead worry about development of both players and as businesses......I believe it "failed" because the RFL didn't know how to run it and if it does return, it needs to be run as an independent business and overseen by an independent management structure.

I see no benefit in Wakefield being 11 miles from Huddersfield or 7 miles from Castleford which itself is only 11 miles from Leeds, with a similar breakdown of the 5 sides on the other side of the Pennines and the other 2 clubs being at the end of the road and 4 miles apart..........the game is great but the way it is run and the geographic limitations mean it either needs to expand by making some hard choices (Licencing/Mergers) or we need to accept we are pretty much as big as we are going to ever be

A return to 14 is a good idea. 12 clubs was too few for the home games clubs needed to be viable. So we ended up creating various mechanisms to increase the number of games against the same 12 clubs, hence the play-off 8s and (to a lesser extent) Magic weekend. The problem is that familiarity starts to breed contempt, as we've seen in the attendances for the super 8 fixtures. As a Saints fan, I love a Wigan derby, but in theory we could play them 6 times in a season: twice in the normal league, once at Millenium magic, once in the challenge cup, once more in Super 8s and again in the final. That's too many. As it is, it's certain that we'll play most of the teams three times, and one four times, even before the final is decided. 14 teams allows for much less repetition while maintaining the number of games required by club finances.

Moving to 14 also means that the Super 8 play-off isn't as stupid as it is at present. A play-off which only excludes four clubs from it almost renders the entire regular season irrelevant, because you only have to avoid that bottom four to be in the play-off. With 14 teams I still think an 8-team play-off insufficiently rewards good regular season form, because there'll still be more in the play-offs than out of them, but it's not quite as daft. I would much prefer a switch back to the original five team play-off structure, with weeks off and second chances for the top two, which gave much more incentive to finish highly, and meant only those teams which were in the top third of the competition would be playing for the title.

I believe there must be a mechanism for clubs to move in to and out of Super League. However, I think the method of deciding that entry based solely on playing results is pointless for the clubs (who will simply go back down) and pointless, or even harmful, for the game. The Championship, while not acting in any way as an effective nursery for genuinely challenging SL clubs, does act as an effective wall which potential challenger clubs find it impossible to overcome. There are clubs who can potentially add new crowds, players and media to Super League, and can compete when in that competition, yet who cannot do so in the championship - London, Catalans, Toulouse, Toronto, Bradford, would all be able to contribute to SL, but will be unable to get past Leigh, Hull KR, Widnes, Wakefield and Salford who don't offer as much potential in Super League, but have the advantages of established position at championship level.

A results-only system will continue to protect the position of that group of clubs whose potential is strictly limited, and will continue to exclude clubs whose potential is greater. It is ridiculous that we have the potential - for once - of stealing a march on RU and gaining the first foothold in the north American professional sport market for Rugby League, and we'd ignore that opportunity to protect the continued irrelevance of Salford failing to do anything of note in front of 2,000 people.

A licensing system is essential, and if the smaller clubs continue to resist that, then the bigger clubs, upon whom the entire super league depends: Leeds, Wigan, Saints, Warrington, Hull and Catalans, should secede and form their own competition, inviting other clubs to join them in a new professional SL. That would be a nuclear option, but we have to stop running our game in the interests of uncompetitive clubs with small crowds and a limited or non-existent playing and financial base.

People will, of course, complain about tradition, although plenty have extremely selective memories when choosing which traditions to support (yes, play-offs ARE our most traditional way of choosing champions). However, traditionally, RL was supported by communities who worked in reasonably well-paid factories and mines. Traditionally, team sports were the main entertainment for many, because TV was black and white, and the internet didn't exist. Traditionally, RU was amateur, so we could access that potential player base whenever we chose. Traditionally, the Aussies didn't exist on another financial planet to us in the UK. Traditionally, soccer wasn't the world-eating behemoth it now is, sucking up a huge percentage of the shrinking base of active athletes, media attention and sponsorship cash. Traditionally, we didn't have full-time professional teams, so we didn't need to generate big crowds and sponsorship in order to continue to exist. What is and was "traditional" is irrelevant. What matter, bluntly, is survival as a professional sport, or even an amateur sport.

We are contracting at a dramatic rate. Playing numbers have halved in ten years. We cannot land a decent sponsor for our top competitions. Our main TV broadcaster offers us a fraction of what it offers other sports with similar viewing figures, because it knows there are no other suitors keen to televise Widnes versus Salford in front of 4,000 fans. Attendances are at best stagnant and at worst beginning to decline. One of our biggest clubs, Bradford, is hanging on for grim life. Our presence in the capital has been reduced to two struggling semi-pro outfits and a handful of amateur teams made up of as many antipodeans as Brits. We almost threw away the whole of France this year for the pleasure of keeping a second team in the borough of Wigan, which would have seen us with the smallest geographic footprint in the top flight since the game went professional in 1996. The days of full-time or even majority RL journalists in our national media are long gone, as RL drops off the nation's sporting radar. The Aussies don't give a stuff, and would be content if RL became another version of Aussie Rules, played only on their continent. The RFU doesn't even bother to attack us any more, because we're too small to notice by comparison.

Yet along comes the Yanks and the Canadians, offering millions of quid and the chance to get cash from American TV networks, to access the massive North American athlete pool, and to gain a foothold in the largest sports marketplace on the planet, and what is the response of many RL fans? "Don't let them in, they might bugger up the chances of Halifax getting a year being hammered in the top flight in front of tiny crowds. That's traditional, don't you know?"

Get the yanks and the French in. Stuff your fingers in your ears at all the moaning from small-time teams in small-time towns. If it works, nobody will care. If it doesn't work, those small-time clubs will still be there to pointlessly make up the numbers for the few remaining professional years we have left before SKY finally decide they can get cheaper fillers with more interest in more places, and drop us into terminal semi-pro decline. At least we'll have died trying, instead of making our own coffin and climbing inside, telling people to nail the lid shut because it's bloody traditional.