All great ideas. But before we start any 10 year plan, we need a governing body capable of choosing the right 10 year plan and delivering upon it. MarwanK says a lot of nonsense at times, but the one thing he's got right is his contempt for the RFL. It's incompetence has driven the sport backwards over recent seasons at a truly alarming rate. The international game is dead, WCC is being cut back as we're not competitive enough to make it worthwhile for the NRL sides and the standards in SL are just plummeting year on year. The promotion and relegation idea isn't going to work, it's encouraging short termism again and is likely to bankrupt any Championship sides who try to get up. It goes right through to the grass roots as well, so little investment in anything going on. My lad plays Under 12s and you are meant to have RFL referees now. He's had one all season with every other game ending in chaos as one of the team coaches is refereeing the game.

You tickle me your lot you want stability then want change you say the games stagnating but for the first time in a generation you have different teams at the top how about the every game matters is actually bringing the change you want but you don't like what's happening to your own favourite at the moment but you want to go back to Leeds Wigan and saints go on why this is the fantasy island thread let's throw Bradford back in as well so it's back to the great days of super league were these 4 battled it out year after zzzz year zzzz after year

We have not even got a sensible system for teams to progress up to Super League level. I am not against the play off system that we have now but it just looks like we are rearranging the deckchairs. Since the middle eights system started a lot of people have come out of the woodwork to support a franchise system just when, as fans, we had pretty much killed it off.
The franchise system brought stability but little sense of development and now promotion and relegation is still pretty much out of reach. The only way to make sure that teams could be promoted would be to rig the system in favour of a championship team and then guarantee them some kind of protection. I assume that the American system of buying and selling franchises would not catch on here but at least we would be able to relax the salary cap. I am pretty sure that a couple of French teams would love the idea of leaving the insanity of the French elite competition. What about finding a Kerry Packer to have a rematch against Sky. We might get a bit more for the rights.

Ive always thought the same, I wanted it to stay at 14 teams. They could still have had promotion and relegation.

The SL should have 14 teams, given we apparently want to expand the game. This would allow for automatic P &R - there could (eg) be one auto promotion spot and playoffs for the second similar to what we have now, but as in Year 1, the increase would be achieved by just promoting 2 Championship clubs, no SL club could complain the next year about jeopardy, as unless they finished last i.e. 14th they end up in the same playoffs as now - and if they finished last, it would mean they finished behind the 2 newly promoted clubs anyway so there could be no valid complaint.

I think that would do wonders for the Championship too, the clubs have spent heavily in improving to mount genuine challenges for the playoffs - even if the actual MPG is hopelessly slewed against them in the current format, but if one team was bound to go up each year, this would reignite the enthusiasm which has faded amongst the Championship clubs when they see how slanted the theoretical chance is against them.

Some may say this will give you "yoyo" clubs - maybe -but it ain't so easy in the Championship - ask my own club, Bradford - and any relegated team would have to do it on merit.

The time for some system of guaranteed P&R is now ripe.

I think the Superleague chairmen need to get off there backsides and run the competition themselves with a major overhaul of marketing, sponsors, media presence etc. and let the RFL run things at grass root to championship levels. The Doctor is right in principal that the game has gone backwards and that the RFL are not fit for purpose, the problem is that in the medium term we are tied in with SKY who in my opinion have got the sport rights on the cheap.

One of the drawbacks at the moment though is that we can't put the game in the shop window to up profile it, the standard is pretty poor this season and needs full strength teams playing with a fair amount of intensity at the back end of the season. I.m not sure if its a good idea going to 14 teams as we don't have enough quality players to run 12 teams, we also don't have any world class overseas players here any more.

We don't have stability to bring the game to ground zero, so I think we will probably carry on tinkering and a risk strategy might go on the back burner until we are offered a Superleague Mk 2 from an outside source.

Just to add to the debate, there are the clubs that were "relegated" from the second tier into Championship 1, who are dying on their backsides and they should clearly be plating in the Championship.
The third tier is a pretty poor standard, with the exception of the top 5/6 clubs and they should be playing in a "better" league.
Unfortunately, the "new" clubs are not up to speed yet and perhaps their needs to be a rethink on just ho to help them progress and become more competitive.

We need to look back at Super League Year Zero (aka 1995) where RL international crowds were decent and RU had yet to come to terms with professionalism. The influx of TV money to RL should have set the platform for us to become the dominant code, yet opportunities were squandered, and really the game doesn't seem any better off than it was all those years ago.

It was never (and probably will never) be the dominant code due to the RU home nations plus, it's International program.
Also, Union is part of the Establishment and even IF we could get to the stage where we had more to offer, we would still be coming second in this country.

Having said that, as a full time pro sport, we should be ahead of Union in many other areas but, due to the gulf in revenue coming into the respective sport's, League will always be trying to play catch up and getting "mocked" by the media as it keeps on with it's innovative ideas.

Ok, an 18 team league.
The current 12 teams plus:
Toulouse
Toronto
Newcastle
Leigh
Bradford
London

This increase would mean each club would get around £1.8m a year from the TV money rather than £2.5m. Which sounds like a big drop but IIRC it's about what they were getting before the "new" tv deal.
Play every team once.
Play half the teams twice.
Gives 26 games per year.
Top 8 playoff like in NRL giving a max of 4 additional games.

No P&R.
Clubs will be assessed properly every 5 years. With proper targets given for growth/improvement in certain areas.

Lower division clubs can apply to enter and would expand the competition, not take someone else's place. Same goes for if a club goes under, it's not automatically replaced by someone else.

SL clubs must run a reserves side.

SL clubs to be entered into the Challenge Cup 2 rounds earlier than at present.

Standard club season tickets (as we know them) to be abolished. You now buy a Rugby League season ticket that includes the home SL matches of the club of your choice. It also commits you to buy a ticket for cup and playoff home games (like in football).
The price will be raised to also include entry to events such as Magic Weekend, Cup semi finals, mid-season internationals, Championship summer bash etc.

At the start of every season a 40/50 man England initial squad will be selected by the England staff. The players selected in this squad will then be restricted to playing a max of 25 games for their club in that season (excluding Cup & Grand Final).

Increase the number of marquee signings to 3 per club but include a 50% tax that goes to central funds specifically for marketing and development in specific areas. So say if Leeds wanted to sign a top player and pay him £200k per year as a marquee player, they'd have to pay £100k to this central fund too. The tax would be reduced to 20% for clubs in the bottom half of the table.

Just a few thoughts...

I reckon the game needs cleaning up first to increase intensity in matches. There is too much time wasting and conning the ref during the game these days, the PTB is a total mess and probably needs a few rule changes in these areas. It's not a consistent high pulsating game anymore and not very attractive to promote as an exciting dynamic sport.

That's purely down to how strict the ref's are.
It can be stopped instantly if that is what the game wants to happen and it's got naf all to do with how many clubs are in the top flight.

The reasons given for reducing the number of clubs in SL was to increase the intensity in the weekly rounds but, the demise in form of Leeds and Huddersfield (plus maybe, Saints) has let everyone else off the hook and we have seen very few games so far, where both competing teams have been at the top of their game for the full 80. Maybe it will happen in the super 8's but, if this is the case, then, this is no different to the old play offs.

This may be an early indicator that the new system is not working as expected.

Clearly, every minute doesn't matter. However, we have seen THE most unpredictable season in SL history and perhaps in RL history.

Going back to how many clubs should be in the top flight. Again, the game must have a strategy for expansion and growth of the game and not just make it up as we go and the governing body needs to sell the idea to the current fans of the game and then to new fans but, don't hold your breath.
It wont happen.