Now that is ' thinking outside the box '

i don't understand why a 15 team league doesn't work. 15 teams = 30 rounds of rugby with each team getting two byes a season. effectively the same as a 16 team league, but twice a season you will play no one. the only team that does not get two byes is the team playing in the WCC. they would give up 1 bye to take part in the WCC match, which could be played as the headline at MM giving 8 matches in total for that round. As the team playing in the WCC plays 1 extra game anyway they don't lose anything. every team gets two weeks rest per season. seems ok to me unless i am missing something.

The number of teams in super league needs to go down not up.

IMO we only have 9 clubs fit for the premier RL competition... on of them is in the championship.

Wigan
Leeds
Warrington
St Helens
Hull
Hudds
Catalans
Hull
Bradford
Widnes

Cas and Hull KR will be on the list once they have sorted their facilities out. Salford will be on the list if they sort their crowds out along with Crusaders and Quins. Wakey need to sort both.

If we are being really harsh then only the top 7 on that list are good enough for the top league.

Lets face it, we need a smaller competition with every single team spending to the full cap if we are going to see super league flourish under this franchise system because as it stands there is no real competition between most of the teams throughout a full season. There is also no competition to get into super league, we all knew Widnes were coming in this time. Imagine if 5 clubs from the championship were battling it out, they would have to be thorough.

what rubbish!

increasing the pinncle of the game is the only way to generate new interest! Lets work towards getting 50 teams playing at the top level of the game...

reducing the comp with eventually result in RL dissapearing up its own - ever decreasing - backside!

A couple of points :

1) You have ten teams on your list
2) Bradfords ground is not up to scratch and as a team on field performances are on the decline but they are in and Hull KR and Cas who have decent teams and as good a stadium aren't in
3) How on earth can you include Widnes when you don't know what crowds they are going to get in SL and don't know what squad they are going to have and therefore how competitive they are going to be?

Unfortunately for you, Administrationn is no longer a factor in stopping a team getting a licence (so that the RFL can justify keeping Crusaders in).

Public perception has Cas well ahead of Wakey but that's because Richard Wright is a master of positive spin and not actually because you are way ahead.

Neither of us will have a new ground for next year, and how far away either is is anybody's guess at the minute. It will be March next year before we know who is really ahead in the stadium race.

I hate to pour cold water over this ( ), but the clubs agreed some time back that there would be 14 clubs in SL for this round of franchises.

This would be a pathetic move. I agree with the Pie earlier who posted about reducing the number of SL teams rather than expanding it. Expanding would be the cowards way out of the situation they created for themselves.

The likes of Salford, Quins, Crusaders, Cas, Wakefield and probably Widnes simply do not warrant a SL place.

There currently arent enough SL standard players to go round 14 teams.... adding another team and diluting this player pool even further will only lead to more one sided matches.

If we want the quality of the product to improve, SL should contain less teams not more..

12 would probably be the ideal number

I can't believe someone set Starbug off about this issue again!!

Ok, here's what I've been saying for a while;

We need more SL teams, we need a larger elite level talent pool, we need wider interest, we need a few expansion clubs to chug along, we need a good number of strong heatland clubs, we need a bit of a reduction on the number of matches, so...

Bring Fax up as well as Widnes, keep all SL clubs.
Two conferences, loosely based on Yorkshire and Lanc, of eight teams.
Each team plays everyone in their league home and away (14 matches), everyone in the in the other conference once (four at home, four away - eight matches) and then one MM match.
So, that's 23 SL matches.
Play off series involves top four of each conference.
Less league matches means room for a three match representative series.
This does mean, however, that the WCC has to be played on a seperate date to MM