Considering what happened to Widnes, I can’t believe that some Championship clubs would be so stupid as to risk everything on winning the NRC or appearing in the GF. The assessment is about the whole of the club, not just on field performances. Success comes from building a strong club overtime and not from just a quick fix of making a few big signings in the hope of making it to the finals. That can only lead to financial disaster and SL rejection.

“Look at us, we’ve won a cup, but our finances are well into the red, we are prime clubs for SL application, honest.”

It may be human nature to better yourself at all cost but that is hardly a good thing. Overstretching ourselves has got this country into the mess that it is in. The mind set of people who have been set in their ways for so long needs to be changed. It may take some time.

This is the first year of the new system. It far too early to analyse the pros and cons and much of what people will say will happen is based on theory rather then fact. Let’s see in six years time what the standard is of the applicants for a SL license. Only then will we have the facts in which to reason whether the new system will be/is a success or failure, even then it may be too early.

Promotion and relegation is possible in football due to the popularity of the game and the large amount of parachute payments available to the related clubs, particularly when demoted form the Premier League.

When the relegated clubs received parachute payments after relegation from SL the National League/NFP supporters whined and complained about how unfair the system all is, seems to me no matter what the governing body does there will always be narrow minded people who will find a way in which the system affects their club adversely then continue to bleat about it Ad infinitum.

The league is not strong enough to sustain promotion and relegation. OF the English based clubs, Widnes and possibly Halifax could realistically complete in the top flight. After that, then any club promoted would go straight back down with large debts attained from firstly achieving SL status and then subsequently fighting tooth and nail trying to stay their.

1 st point , the RFL are the ones who decided that an overall criteria should be used , they then made the ' a NL club is guaranteed to move up ' statement even if none are of a good enough standard and then they decide to have an on field ' qualification ' , they are the ones who cannot seem to make their minds up how it should work and it is their fault that clubs are risking all to qualify

2 nd point Absolutely correct , so the answer is ?

I agree the salary cap is important and should be enforced for this reason.

However, in the last couple of years with a salary cap in place Widnes (2007), Doncaster (2009), Rochdale (2009) have all gone into administration. The game in the UK is never going to have the financial clout that it does in Oz due to it being at least 5th or 6th in popularity over here. Quite a few fans from down under come on here regularly to tell us how well the sport is doing down there and how prom/reg doesn't work and thats fair enough. Good on them. But it's hardly a fair comparison is it?

As a Widnes fan I want to see promotion and relegation but without clubs pushing themselves to the brink of bankruptcy as we did to achieve it. Yes we have to expand the game to new areas but it's hard to do that when the heartlands themselves are struggling to compete with other sports. In Oz it's easier to expand your profile when you are number one in the market. We hear how clubs should merge for the greater good but that's easy to say when it's not your club that's in the firing line.

If we didn't have it in the Championships how could the RFL bring through the next expansion clubs for SDL ?

Football would be awful without P&R !!! If the Premiership was franchised Leeds / Sheffield Wednesday / Newcastle would be back in the premiership, Hull and Wigan would probably be out!

And football fans accross the country would be going mental! The English Football league is one of the top 3 leagues in the world! NRL and Super League come nowhere near in comparison, so to say Promotion and relegation is unseccussful is utter cr@p!

Do you realize how many soccer teams in leagues all over the world go bust ever year because of P&R?

Look at Leeds UTD.

Look at the way top English clubs p*ss money away so badly that they need rich backers who don't mind losing millions upon millions of dollars just to keep going.

Do you realize how much debt top English clubs are in? How little it would take for them to fall over?



You show me one single soccer league anywhere in the world that competitive. Not one of two teams that are running awya with it and just buying titles. Show me one competition where half the teams could win in say a 5 year span.


There isnt one. Not a single one.

The P&R debate has been emotionally charged and polarised into two diametrically opposing positions, but there's little discussion of any other possible views. Either the franchise system, or annual P&R.

English RL has the potential to have a more effective system for promoting/relegating players AND clubs than Australian RL, because English sport has a tradition/culture/history of P&R.

Annual relegation inhibits top flight clubs from long term planning. That has been scrapped. However a staggered system of P&R tied into an RLWC cycle could give top flight clubs a set period of stability, yet give lower division clubs a set pathway into the elite. I'd propose a system that every 4 years, promotion of 3 teams based on meeting a range of on and off-field criteria, relegation of up to 3 teams if competition size remains constant.

And the criteria for both the promotion and the relegation is ?

So should we have 11 thugs on the pitch crowding the ref? That's what they do in association?
You know you're onto a loser when you point at wendyball as an example, it's a poor sport with too much money. It would make more sence to compare league with XV or ice hockey or basketball or some other non-majority sport.