Edit - Double post

Best post yet.
We've got the "product" and we've got the clubs already in place (OK, some not in the rudest of health atm). We need a plan that's focussed on making what we've already got work and flourish not some half baked idea that consign half our clubs to the bin.

I should have just left it there bud. It proved your point perfectly.

The game needs to strengthen at home before doing anything else. We have 12 sides who currently average 8,500 attendances...we need to figure out how to get that to 15k, which in some cases will mean sold out games and events becoming hard to get to.
Badging a team "Liverpool" and hoping that works is just another "magic fairy dust' idea that the game is often so reliant on. Magic weekend is the only thing we've stuck with and it makes money for the SL/RFL.....everything else is chopped and changed and never given time to bed down.
Before we start dropping pins in far off exotic places like "that there London", sort out Wakefield, Leigh, Salford and Huddersfield...get HKR and Castleford over the 10k average....get Wigan, Leeds and Saints filling their stadiums and then and only then, look at expansion.
Toronto was doomed from the start because it was built on Sand.....Newcastle are doing it right, as London started to eventually do to, but let's get the fans back to games in the pit villages first......find out why the 13,000-17,000 Leeds fans won't jump on a bus to Watch their side play Wakefield. Find out why the good folk of Wakefield aren't interested in watching THEIR side.....sort that out and the Sponsors and TV companies will take note!

The product has to become a lot better for any fighting chance of getting the gates up like that.

I'm not sure how that happens with the current salary cap. The standard year on year keeps declining.

Far from the best post it was nothing but a "wish list"..........

The goals were fair enough but absolutely nothing in terms of how we get there, except we need a "cunning plan"..........

Such a call for a "plan" immediately intimates the wealthy and experienced businessmen who own the clubs, people who have done well in business, commerce and Industry....
.........and their staff at the clubs especially marketing, are all useless.

They are not.

Current salary cap is about £3 million behind Rugby Union and soccer has no cap. If we want decline scrap the cap and go back to one club with all the best players, winning everything. Maybe it's an idea to have an even cap without top clubs able to skew the competition with Marquee allowances - are any of them "marquee" anyway?

Is it the overall "standard" that is the point, or is it the one sided nature of games, when big club meets small....Do we look to make all games competitive or do fans used to seeing their clubs walloping others every week walk away? Do wakey get a few more fans if they win more games but Saints lose thousands if they aren't dominating.

It's a very difficult thing to find the balance and you never know, we may actually have the right balance now.

I've a feeling the clubs see mileage in going all the way with the repeat fixtures of all play each other three times with a 10 club league. The bottom line may not be that fans attending games don't prefer this, but SKY and their audiences do...Because that is where we are at giving SKY what they deem to be the best product and that's another Wigan.v.Saints, or Hull KR.v. Hull rather than Salford against London......

The individual chairmen of each club are not useless or, they wouldn't be sitting in the big chairs at their respective clubs.
However, it's pretty clear that self interest for themselves and their respective clubs, is not taking the game forward and hasn't done for the last few years.
WE haven't recovered from the 3 x 8 debacle, the last major change, that spectacularly failed.

How and who needs to be on board to take the sport forward isn't clear but, what is absolutely clear, is that what we have isn't working (understatement).

The game appears to be failing at every level, for SL right down to the community game, with the only positive of the last few years being the growth of the women's game, albeit from a very low base.

All games competitive would be ideal but not if that is means the quality of the games are poor.

A close tight game doesn't mean much if its just two poor teams. One sided games are not great to watch either but the aim should be to bring other teams up rather than drag teams down.

I look at the overall standard and for me SL games just don't excite me anymore. I have seen plenty one sided blow outs in the NRL this season (more than ever actually) but those teams at the top are still putting on quality and I've actually enjoyed seeing such high skill level even if the scores have been one sided.

The Cap too me is too small for the competitions to get better in quality. The only way to improve is with better players and the cap just doesn't allow it.

On the development side of things who was the last young player you saw and was like "wow this kid is incredible".

Full back now is the glamour position of the game yet how many full backs do you see coming through that blow you away? Who was the last? Sam Tompkins?

Sorry - didn’t realise it was dezzies job to come up with a detailed action plan.
As you rightly say they’re goals to aim for. My point was that they’re not just “fair enough”, they’re absolutely spot on and precisely what the game should be aiming for. How we get there is beyond my pay grade but I do know that rebranding, parachuting teams in from god knows where and mergers aren’t the answer.

Since the inception of the salary cap, only 4 teams have won SL, one of which has since gone bust, which ironically, the cap was supposed to prevent. In that time. Players earn even less than they did in 1996 which is an absolute joke. Anyone who think the cap is working support Wakefield or Salford