SL chairmen have been offered this as a sweetener so that SL will go to 12 teams next season and the money from the two teams going down will be split 12 ways. They will get their £150,000 back next year. You are seeing the start of two full time leagues with P&R in the next three years. That is my opinion anyway.

Slightly OT, but I believe the the only way teams from outside SL will truly be competative and push for SL in P&R would be getting a structure in place for full time players in the Championship. It'll be very hard to do but "encouraging" (or helping) the lower divisions to make a move into full time professionals would help the game in general.

As for the Bulls situation, as long as it really is a temporary measure, then so be it.

The worry is if this is a move to own all SL clubs. If that was the case, they could dictate that certain franchises have to move in order to spread the game - Castleford moved to the midlands and renamed, Salford moved to scotland and renamed, Rovers moved to Northern Ireland and renamed etc etc.

Personally, I can't see certain owners of Warrington, Wigan and Leeds giving up the ownership of their clubs however, so I doubt it would materialise.

Wood "Listen, take on Bulls ongoing liabilities and in return we will get rid of one of you and cut your funding by £150,000."

SL Turkeys "Sounds like Christmas - let's do it!"

Not sure I follow your "logic".

I can certainly see the current situation as a pre-cursor to a return to some form of P&R though.

How is that a sweetener to kicking 2 teams out???

Because the same money would be offered to a 12 team league as would have to a 14 team league so increasing the money for the 12 lucky ones. Read my post properly. This is just a thought of what could happen by the way.

No WE all understood what you meant but YOU are struggling to understand that your logic is flawed.

How the hell do the RFL expect to attract sponsors now after showing clear favouritism to Bradford? If I was a business I wouldn't touch it with a bargepole. RFL bringing the game I love into disrepute.

They have shown financial support to retain the integrity of this years competition, other than that, they are essentially being fair, they have refused to guarantee a SL place for the Bulls past the end of this season

True they havent offered this level of support to others in the past, but they might well have to do it again in the near future , the game is approaching a time when changes are going to be needed for it to continue as a proffessional sport

Sorry mate but I'm not naive enough to think they woudl help any other club in the bottom few if they needed help.

Then SL will shortly become a 10 team competition, it isnt ' naivity ' on my part, I am probably the RFL s biggest critic on these boards, but bad times are coming and they are going to have to make some very unpleasant decisions shortly

They have two options, reduce the salary cap and see a drop in talent in the comp or cut teams to those that can bring in 3 mill a year.

Ageed, but what worries me about the future of the game is that I don't think that they're capable of it.

Well they do seem to be unable to see things coming along until it bites them on the harris, and then knee jerk reactions seem to be the norm, sometimes I think they believe their own publicity ' spin '

Given the (lack of) money and depth of playing talent in the sport a 10 team Super League is about the optimum number if we want to have a competitive, viable competition IMO.

Teams could play each other 3 times maintaining a 27 game season with a top 5 play-off system, and hopefully the four teams dropping down a level could help bring up the standard and interest in the competition below SL, and help establish a clearer path between the leagues.

We're going well o/t here but the problem with cutting any teams from the comp, is that the RFL can not be trusted to make a fiar judgement on which team(s) should be dropped.
It sure as hell wont be anything to do with playing performance and as we have seen, they cant base the decision on financial viability, so we may as well draw lots