What makes me laugh is how certain fans of SL teams on here keep contradicting themselves. They claim the licensing system was good because teams could come up and build steady without having to worry about relegation.

Yet say its wrong that championship team in the new structure if promoted shouldn't just look to build gradually and build a team int he first season capable of remaining int he top four of the 8 after the split.

There's no difference to me other than the team getting promoted has actually already got a team capable of competing with the bottom half of SL because they have just proved it. rather than a team with a rich backer and nice rented ground getting promoted from sixth place.

its not that said team shouldnt build gradually, its more that they cant. Its also that it means that the money the promoted team receives has to go straight in to the first team, every thing else, for ever more takes a clear 2nd place.

Featherstone have many hurdles to overcome before being anywhere near sustainable and competitive in SL. Their academy, their stadium, their fan base, the commercial and merchandising operation would all need massive improvements. It is infinitely more difficult for them to do that when the focus of the club is entirely on not finishing in the bottom 4.

of course they can. teams can theoretically go from 100k to 550k to 1.8m funding, seems more gradual than 100k to 1.2m as before. It's all up to the people running clubs, not the structure

and they go from competing with clubs spending next to nothing, to competing with clubs spending £1.8m (while they are still on £550k funding) to clubs spending even more.

The jump between the bottom of the 2nd tier and the top of the top tier is as big, if not bigger, under this funding/salary cap structure, with the added instability of a bad run of 8 games could see your funding drop by £1.3m (which is about what SL clubs get right now in TV funding) and the accompanying massive scaling back that would make necessary.

This structure will bring clubs like Fev closer to the bottom SL clubs, but it will take the bottom SL clubs much much further away from the top SL clubs which would leave us with that massive disparity where Fev or Leigh's sole focus is putting together a side to win 5 of the last 8.

It makes any blooding of youngsters, any investment in infrastructure entirely secondary, as no risk with the £1.8m could be taken meaning we just see huge numbers of average overseas and spent players filling out bottom squads, and if a club were relegated, the little they did focus on infrastructure and youth development would be redeployed to getting back up and covering the £1.3m less funding.

Winning 5 of the last 8 doesnt sound much different to winning the last 3/4 games as Leeds have done recently, with any play off system you could say much of the regular season is pointless

Oh and by the way, where did Chris Hill drop down from? , before going back to SL?

We might have if the RFL had thrown shedloads of development cash into those places as they did in Bridgend

And I've just filled in the missing ' history '

No you couldnt, the season+play-offs work entirely differently to a structure where the first 22 rounds are completely and utterly disregarded and a new 8 game season started.

You have completely missed the point again. They don't need to not finish in the bottom four, Finishing in the bottom four for 2 seasons wouldn't be a problem as long as they were good enough to come in the top four of the eight split. Fev get next to no money currently and have a youth set up, they run as many teams as superleague teams do. So if they can put out academy sides with no funding why would they scrap it with extra funding.

I trust the board at featherstone, I know the chairman and hes not daft. If we can cope on nothing in the championship I have no doubt us and other champ teams could cope financially in SL, certainly better than some of the current lot have

So you play 23 games to get the chance to win something, as opposed to playing 23 games to get the chance to avoid losing something


Sounds similar to me

dont start that tripe again. your the only person who thinks that

and again you keep forgetting, possibly deliberately, that right now Fev have to try and be the best of a bunch of semi-pro sides who also get 0 funding and they were comfortably beaten by an SL basketcase. Under the new structure they will be competing with sides that get just over 3 times their funding, and if they get through that, they will be competing against teams who get three times the funding and probably three times the attendances, much much more in corporate and sponsorship.

the first 22 rounds are disregarded, thats not an opinion it is a fact. Every team will start again on 0 points.

And it is different from a play-off which you need to qualify for, and the position that you qualify in effects your route to the final. Again that isnt opinion it is fact.