It would be a big gamble if Salford etc had a lot of fans to lose. They don't. Even if 80% of them walked away, I'd argue that a brand new heartlands club in a big city could still reasonably expect to attract better crowds and sponsorship than what Salford get, as well as more away fans if the ground was more conveniently situated (as Manchester Regional Arena is, for example). It's easy for me to say, but if Wigan had 3k crowds every week and were in dire straights, I'd still support them if they moved to Manchester to make it work (not Liverpool though *spits*)

But if Wigan merged with Leigh and became Manchester Moles or something, different shirts, logo etc whilst a new lower league Wigan was created which game would you regularly attend? It's not a case of moving, it just wouldn't be Wigan at all.

Liverpool is a bit of a stretch, even for me. Now Birmingham (Peaky) Blinders is an interesting idea.

I still reckon 14 teams starting next year.....

Quote: Kevs Head "Agreed. I’m a Trinity supporter and a massive Carter fan, he’s made huge steps towards making the club viable and competitive. But - I don’t see a great deal of marketing going on. Perhaps I’m just not looking in the right places but I shouldn’t be the one who has to go looking. As an example; I live near Birmingham and have occasionally bought tickets for the T20 at Edgbaston. Warwickshire CC now have my email address and I regularly - 2 or 3 times a week - get fixture reminders, updates and ticket offers for upcoming matches plus a thank you for attending games. I was a season ticket holder at Trinity for several years and now regularly buy tickets on line but I’ve never, ever had similar marketing emails from the club. How hard is it to keep a data base of everyone who’s ever bought a ticket and keep in touch with them? And yes, 16 days is ample time to bombard people with the fixture list and publicity.'" Indeed. I mean, I know London Broncos have had a whole THREE days longer, but it doesn't seem like the part-time team there has had trouble finding the time to promote their game this week. https://twitter.com/LondonBroncosRL/sta ... 7545559040 I can only sympathise that 16 days was not enough for a full-time operation to do something similar outside Westgate.

Quote: Kevs Head "Agreed. I’m a Trinity supporter and a massive Carter fan, he’s made huge steps towards making the club viable and competitive. But - I don’t see a great deal of marketing going on. Perhaps I’m just not looking in the right places but I shouldn’t be the one who has to go looking. As an example; I live near Birmingham and have occasionally bought tickets for the T20 at Edgbaston. Warwickshire CC now have my email address and I regularly - 2 or 3 times a week - get fixture reminders, updates and ticket offers for upcoming matches plus a thank you for attending games. I was a season ticket holder at Trinity for several years and now regularly buy tickets on line but I’ve never, ever had similar marketing emails from the club. How hard is it to keep a data base of everyone who’s ever bought a ticket and keep in touch with them? And yes, 16 days is ample time to bombard people with the fixture list and publicity.'" Indeed. I mean, I know London Broncos have had a whole THREE days longer, but it doesn't seem like the part-time team there has had trouble finding the time to promote their game this week. https://twitter.com/LondonBroncosRL/sta ... 7545559040 I can only sympathise that 16 days was not enough for a full-time operation to do something similar outside Westgate.

Lower tiers ? , so who do you suggest Salford merge with ?

They could merge with Swinton and ad another 250 fans to their weekly total
There needs to be more professional clubs in the sport, not less but, some of the clever ones just dont get it.

If we keep on losing clubs from the professional ranks, eventually we wont have any and the likes of Wigan, Leeds and Saints will probably end up converting to Union and that would be the saddest end of all.

Those that formed The Northern Union would be turning in their graves.

They could merge with Swinton and ad another 250 fans to their weekly total
There needs to be more professional clubs in the sport, not less but, some of the clever ones just dont get it.

If we keep on losing clubs from the professional ranks, eventually we wont have any and the likes of Wigan, Leeds and Saints will probably end up converting to Union and that would be the saddest end of all.

Those that started Rugby League would be turning in their graves.

I'm not sure that we've advanced our top tier a single iota by shrinking superleague and sacrificing Bradford and London. We've not enhanced the game a jot in fact we are in a commercially less attractive wilderness.

When I first joined these forums about 17 years ago there was some nutters claiming the game was dying. I thought they were tinfoil hatted loons. But now I'm staggered to find myself thinking we are in genuine trouble. The convoluted plans and lack of any consensus on this thread illustrates to me how adrift we have become as a game.

The Broncos would be very grateful if they could get 2,000-3,500 to home games yet they haven't done in years....

Theres not one club in SL that can survive without the income from SKY. They all got sucked in years ago and now the game is paying for others sins. The structure will change to again support the failings of SL.

SL as a product as now run its course, 12 teams with one up,one down isn't the answer either, they are just prolonging the inevitable. Holding out for the next fix of income and the cost will be the game.

Could any professional football club survive without sky money? Or any RU club?

It did before, it could again but on a dramatically reduced income level and players would have to adhere to this or find themselves a proper job.

Said it once, said it a 100 times but the CC final needs to move, yet again in the Super8’s we have two teams focused on Wembley rather than go all out in the 8’s, and like Hull last year Warrington have a very tough task of playing on a Thursday after a cup final.

CC Final needs to be where the Semi’s are now, in the break before the 8’s with the Semi’s in late May or June.

In what way were they sacrificed?

London got relegated and Bulls committed financial suicide. They engineered their own downfalls.

Th emain thing against expanding SL to 14 clubs is that the chairmen of those clubs only want a 12 way split of the Sky money. Similarly with the number of fixtures.

I agree with the SL clubs in that we need to go to 1 up 1 down with top 5 play-offs. But as soon as Carter said they would be loop fixtures i had my head in my hands. One of the main problems with Super 8s is that they are too many games against the same clubs. Wigan/Saints derby could end up playing each other 6/7 times.

I feel its being rushed through. This is half the reason licensing and the 8s didn't work. Licensing didn't have definitive rules set out. Wakefield, Bradford & Crusaders should have all been thrown out when they went into admin. But because this wasn't set out, the RFL ended up making it up as they went along. FAIL. The 8s, again many people had worries about the 8s, but the RFL only looked at the positives, didn't look at the negatives, waved a load of cash at the clubs and thry voted it through fail.

Its happening again. They're trying to rush it in for 2019, have come up with the ridiculous loop fixtures which we all know don't work, and could still see a wigan/saints derby 7 times in a season creating fan fatigue (which is one of the main flaws of the 8s.) we'll be back here again in 3 years wondering what went wrong when crowds shrink because they're bored of the same fixtures. I'd rather have a other year of the 8s, but take out time as a sport to get a proper structure sorted that will stay for ghe next decade