Haha we are all a bunch of dreamers when we want to be. I'm not sure we are ready for a conference system, nor are we ready for the idea of watching a merged team. We have a different culture in the UK whereas in the USA and Australia the people don't seem to care as much. I like the idea of a conference but there are too many problems. At the moment crowds are generally on the up, viewing figures are on the up and we are seeing a lot of young English lads breaking through. We don't need radical change at this time, I think Widnes' inclusion to Super League is great for the sport, hopefully Leigh and Halifax can put the hard work in over the next couple of years and get themselves ready for Super League. Dumping Toulouse or another Welsh team in SL is not the way forward.

One of the real problems is the Championship clubs though

That'd be a biggish cut to the cap, iirc. The SL grant is something like £1.1/£1.2m, [uI think[/u.

9/10 home games just isn't enough. Clubs would be waving goodbye to something like £200-500k. You'd need a League Cup type comp to make up the fixtures.

I think conferences is a good idea, but only if we could get 2 of 8 (22 fixtures). Even then you're losing 2 home games. Conference champs would feel like a proper prize, rather than the hub-cap which is just the poor relation of the SL trophy.

I've not got a plan for raising more cash, but player burn-out could be limited by capping the number of SL rounds any player can be involved in to 20. Stop 'em playing busted, and mitigates the impact of injuries.
Only danger I can see, is weaker teams resting half a team against the strongest in games they don't feel they have much of a chance in.
Players might want fewer games, and that would allow it without fans missing out and revenue being lost.

The gap between tiers 1 and 2 is massive and not bridgable through normal evolution and simple hard work, IMO.
There are strong arguments for this being necessary, but it certainly isn't desirable.
SL was and is about concentrating the wealth - going to 10 could either partially reverse that by creating a genuine SL2 whose teams would be given a SL grant (albeit a smaller one), or it could extend the process by just keeping all the cash in a ten-team SL1.

A small, genuinely elite SL sounds good if you put the stress on 'elite', rather than 'small'.

You seriously think we can double our fan bases in a couple of years ? , and draw any kind of meaningful ' corporate / sugar daddy ' support in the Championships ?

Not going to happen

Dont be too harsh man, Fax think they are ready now and they will certainly be wanting a spot in 3 years time.

This is meant to be a 'super' league. How many teams/clubs do we actually have that can be classed as super?

Reduce the number of teams to 12, get rid of Wakey and one other. Increase the SC and the player pool at the top level will be much better.

If a club eventually becomes worthy of a franchise then they can have one.

With respect, SL was formed to grab Sky nmoney,as the game was on its knees, following the massive overspend by certain super clubs.
As time has moved on more and more focus has been on trying to lift the quality in SL so that we can become strong enough as a nation to take on the Aussies, and to expand the game into new areas (to give us a "stronger" product to sell to Sky)
The "bigger" clubs are trying to reduce the number of teams, under the remit of "making the league stronger", however IMHO, they are simply tring to have a larger slice of the Sky cake.
How can SL need to cut to 10 teams, when only a few years ago, it was deemed so important to expand from 12 to 14 clubs.
The sport makes itself look amateurish by changing format so frequently, we want some stability, plus steady growth.

Not being ' Harsh ' , just being honest , and if they were honest with themselves they would probably agree with me , unfortunatly the other option is what ?, remain in the Championships watching your fans slowly lose interest

Its called the ' stuck between a rock and a hard place ' situation

Widnes with essentially 2 1/2 years to prepare and a reasonable fan base , not to mention sizeable sponsorhip and owner support are already struggling , anything less than they had in the Championship is doomed to failure

2, maybe 3. 4 at a push. But then 'super' is a subjective term. Perhaps 20.

Get rid of the worst club and somebody else becomes the runt of the litter.

Tbf, 12 wouldn't be in any way mental - but you have to stop culling somewhere, or it is just Leeds vs Wigan every week forever. An absurd extrapolation, I admit.

My preferences, based on a variety of real world factors: 14, 12, 16............big gap..........10.

With respect, I agree.

This.

Jamie Peacock and other proponents of reducing the size of SL assume that there will be the same number of 'quality players' as there are now but condensed into 10 teams rather than 14 thus improving the standard of SL. This may be true in the short term but they also assume rather naively that in the long term the same number of 'quality players' will continue to come through the ranks. What they don't appreciate is that without a SL club on the doorstep kids in Cas for example may not be drawn to rugby league at all and promising ball players might end up in soccer or some other sport. This is of course the reason given for expanding the game with top-flight teams in London, France and Wales. This is a minority sport. If we don't protect and nurture what we already have we'll be over-run by the big boys.
I suspect there's a reason why Jamie Peacock is a rugby league prop and not a professor of philosophy. He should stick to what he's good at.