London need to be in for the good of the sport, same as Cats and ultimately Toulouse and Swansea/Cardiff.
Central funding at present is something like £1.4m per club, 4 dropping is £5.6m, 6 moving up get £100k each from RFL meaning £620k is available from current pot for SL2 to be full time, which means a £1m player spend must be a condition of joining. SL2 must be the breeding ground for young local talent, so 1 overseas for me. You would have to exclude Toulouse and Wales for the first franchise period, extend theirs to 4 max.
The goal at the next franchise stage must be 12/10 or 11/11 and we must be looking to reach 12/12 within 10 years.
Keep play offs and promotion simple. G1-4v5, G2-3v6 -W1. G3-1v2 winner to final, G4- winners G1/2 seeded - W2, Lose G3 v Winners G4 - W3, W4 GF. Winner SL2 GF gets promoted, bottom SL1 relegated every year.
4 year franchise stage 1 followed by 3 years confirming the intention to expand club numbers.

The only way a reduction can work is if it also includes P&R...and therefore it also has to include decent financial support (from the Sky money) for a second tier, otherwise the financial instability ( e.g. 1 club in 5 going down each year ) would be too much for clubs to bear.

I agree with the desire for a reduced elite competition to increase intensity. ( Trying to use the cap to equalize competition just drags standards down - the cap is useful for other reasons, but not that one ). However, there are knock-on (no pun intended) effects which would have to be dealt with, and I fear they can't be dealt with. Therefore the status quo, frustrating as it is, is probably something we have to live with for now.

I don't have faith in the RFL to deliver any change correctly, so I'd rather they left things alone, on the "don't make it worse" principle, until we have better people running the RFL.

Or we could just leave it as it is and concentrate on developing enough players to fill out the teams.

What would people with far too much time on their hands type about then though?

For the reasons said earlier, I don't think a change is appropriate right now. However, its a fair topic of discussion, and I don't think that anyone talking about the very top of the game is necessarily ignoring grass-roots in that discussion. You say '...concentrate on developing enough players...' but the fundamental thing is the pool of people that want to play in the first place. The greater the exposure, intensity and (perhaps unfortunate but true) fame and fortune at the top of the game, then the more hopefuls you're going to get to work with in the first place. That for me is one of the big problems with the way the cap is structured - less than ever does League look like a place you can make a great living (in the UK anyway) even if you turn out to be a world-beater.

lol, most players are earning 50,000-200,000. It is hardly min wage being a prof RL player in SL! Make it to the top and you can go and earn up to 400,000 in RU or NRL. I'd take that over a 20,000quid brickies job!

Wow, what ambition we have for our sport " try League and one day you might get to play Union!".

He's not wrong though, is he? He's put his finger squarely on what is the main thing holding back the sport ie a lack of funds. SL is a league of haves and have nots. The clubs at the top of the table all have a rich backer willing to put money into the club to shore up unexpected debts or be able to pay for transfer fees and all for very little in terms of returned investment. And when you have a club without a rich backer who tried to run with the big boys you get the situation at Bradford.

RL is a MINORITY sport. Our best players have often been poached by RU since it went pro and now with the stronger Aussie dollar, NRL clubs are able to offer attractive deals to players along with a far better lifestyle and greater exposure. After all, the NRL in Aus is comparable to Premiership football in this country in terms of crowds and interest.

People need to grasp the fact that RL will NEVER be a top sport in England. We might be able to get to 3rd, maybe even 2nd. But football reigns supreme and it's likely it always will.

Agreed, most people go into RL for enjoyment and the lucky ones might get to make a career out of it.
There aren't too many that would go into the sport just for the money,

Regarding cutting the numbers, IMO this is the road to ruin. There will still be teams regularly at the bottom of the new 10 team division, some folk need to accept that there will always be winners and losers in sport.
If we really want an even competition, we should copy the American "draft" system and we can than have a different winner each season, unfortunately, the people wanting to cut down the numbers in league would lose out with this style of player distribution, so its a non-runner.

I think the only way to make a smaller system work alongside expansion would to go for an NFL style zonal system, have leagues of maybe 6 teams from Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cumbria/Newcastle, South, and France. With the winner of each one competing in a playoff system come year end?

How many people go into sport at 12 or 13 with the intention of doing it to make money? Generally you love the game and are good at it, everything else just happens. Become a RL player and you can earn an above avg living, become a very good RL player and you can earn a very good living. Paying top players an extra 50K quid would make no difference what so ever to the depth of the talent pool in the game. Taking 2million quid a year out of SL and using it to develop jnr elite RL programmes would.

RL doesn't need to be the number 1 sport in the country, it just needs to keep growing and be sustainable.

Agreed, although cutting the number of pro teams will make the target smaller for those who are "good enough" and as mentioned previously, I think this will propagate a further decline in the top tier.
We need to attract additional investment to improve the game, not keep cutting back, unless we are admitting that this cannot be done ??