Everything you say including summer bash is down to the structural disorganising created over the last 20+ years. SL is stale, no money in the game. Clubs surviving off the handouts of media which should be a bonus.

Even the SL is not a full league. All down to the lower tiers I guess.

Disregarding attendances for a minute, if the only clubs playing RL in the UK were the current 12 SL clubs plus the amateur game (below Championship 1), then do you really think that the game would survive at a professional level? If all the Championship and Championship 1 clubs dissolved and were no more in 2019, then yes, it would be the death knell for the professional game.

Btw, there isn't a single Championship club within 30 miles of Blackpool. Leigh are closest at around 40 miles, with London around 250 miles away, Toulouse around 1000 miles away and Toronto having the Atlantic to cross to get there.

NRL biggest Rl competition in the world only 16 full time pro clubs, to say say Rl in uk would die without lower league clubs is like saying NFL wpuld die without canadian football league or champions league would die without league 1 and 2

NRL 16 full-time pro clubs. UK 12 full-time pro (SL) clubs, plus 4 in the Championship. Australian RL has a whole semi-pro structure under the NRL, and strip that away, and IMO they might well struggle to sustain the game. What they have though, is far more cash and resources to help them, which is something that most (if not all) SL teams certainly don't have.

I'm not sure how the Canadian football league is relevant. They have 9 teams competing, but have also seen 9 teams fold in their history, with a further 3 teams being formed but never managing to play a single game. Not a great example to use?

Ditto, you using arguably the most prestigious competition in world football (Champions League) which only the top 4 or 5 teams in the Premier League compete in, with League 1 and 2 These have the remainder of the Premier League and the Championship between them.

Without the Championship and League 1, SL would need to develop a full-blown development structure for each and every team (junior academies and reserve teams), which would effectively replace the aforesaid competitions (but with even less support).

That would be the Ian Lenaghan who wants a 10 team SL, with a 10 team SL2. And all other clubs to be amateur? Who wants SL clubs to have all the money. He may have ambition but it is nothing to do with RL, and everything to do with Wigan.

Weather you agree with Carter or not, RL will never progress without a strong base. And we don't have this. Doesn't matter what decorations you put up, if you rely on a house made of boxes it will always collapse.

NRL clubs are either up to their eyes in debt or totally reliant on their gambling incomes to survive...........and as other have said, when social media rules advertising budgets, the sponsors and broadcast deals will drift and then the NRL will see that the AFL's attitude of stacking it high and selling it cheap and therefore getting huge crowds is a working business plan.

Currently 5 SL clubs make enough money to be self sufficient, the rest all rely on a benefactor. The 12 Championship clubs are either propped up by benefactors or cutting their cloth and not growing at all.......it's similar in other sports across the UK including soccer, but we don't have the numbers playing or the reach via media ad attendances to survive and therefore in a battle that is survival f the fittest, we're likely to be the first football code to wither and die.

I'd say only Wigan and Leeds are self sufficient

Regarding gambling, I've had a "flutter" myself now and again, but the exposure on TV and social media etc to this is pretty obscene. Gambling advertising should be put in the same place as tobacco. It's there if you want it, and legal too, but doesn't need to be pushed down our throats at every opportunity.

If folk didn't fritter away so much cash gambling, they might just have some spare cash to watch some live sport.

reasonable point but do you think if the event was held in, say, manchester or leeds it would attract significantly higher crowds?

No it wouldn't and probably far less in truth, as the trip to Blackpool is seen as a good day out. The attendance this year was very disappointing. I couldn't make it myself (crocked with a bad back), but Leigh looked to have good support on day 1. Fax sold out their allocation of tickets, and Fev usually have a good following so I was a bit surprised at the 7k attendance on Saturday. I've been to all the previous Blackpool fixtures and Fax have always exceeded their usual home crowd at the game. Not sure why not this year?

I don't agree with everything that Lenaghan is proposing for a second, but he is at least one voice that is trying to drag this game forward.

As I said in my previous post, there is a place in this world and in this sport for people like Carter, but at a time when everyone around us is casting their net wider and wider, Carter is insisting that we keep fishing in the same little pond that we have been for the past 125 years because he's got a hunch that there's a big one in their somewhere. I think that's wrong.

I agree that the sport needs a strong base, but I don't think that means that you have to buy into the "without the small clubs the big clubs will die" rethoric. Clubs can and should adapt to whatever environment the future holds.

The bulk of that claims seems to centre around player development, but let's look at that objectively. Most of the talent pool originates from a small number of academies at the top clubs. Look down every club squad list, and much of that talent will have probably passed through one of the top five/six clubs at some point. Talent certainly flows down the league, but how much of it actually flows upwards? How much of our top talent has come through the Championship / L1 system (aside from on-loan or on dual reg)?

Without looking into it in more detail, the only obvious example is Luke Gale who left Leeds, spent time in the lower divisions with Doncaster and Bradford without particuarly pulling up any trees, and has thrived under a coach and at a club that had nurtured his strengths. And for all the talk of Cumbria being a hotbed of talent, the last Cumbrians to play for England were Ade Gardner and Rob Purdham.

If that's the case for "without Championship and L1 clubs the sport will die", I don't think it's a particuarly strong one.

You're basing a lot of opinion about Carter, and his attitude to the game, on one sentence from an interview; in which of course he's talking about the sport securing and strengthening its natural base - which nobody can disagree with; when there are clubs struggling to get more than a few thousand people through the gates week on week, its clear that we don't have even have a strong relationship with our traditional supporters, let alone in expansion areas.

I don't think his comments are at odds with a desire to grow the game - he's just pointing out that to build something, you have to have solid foundations; which makes perfect sense.

And I don't buy Lenaghan as the messiah - his ambition is for Wigan, not for the sport - hence his view that all clubs outside his 10 team SL should be amateur and by extension, get less Sky money - so he can have more.