I agree with this, it's by no means perfect but no system would be. The people being heavily critical of this proposed system seem to not understand it and just want our system to be exactly the same as league football. When we have got a part-time semi professional second tier and a full time professional top tier it would be a massive step backwards to go back to one up one down P+R IMO.

Licensing was supposed to put us in a position where any SL teams who weren't performing adequately enough could be replaced by teams from below who'd had time to build towards getting facilities up to standard to make the jump up. In reality even though plenty of SL clubs could very easily have been relegated, no team from the Championship could really stake a claim for taking their place with any argument other than "we could do just as badly as they did."

This proposed system provides a good compromise between not rewarding mediocrity at the top by giving a more sensible PO system where finishing outside the eventual top 4 no longer means you still have a claim to be champions, whilst also giving most of the other teams something to play for throughout the whole season, and now giving teams from the 2nd tier the opportunity to prove (on the field at least) that they are worthy of competing in SL. There are definite issues with it, I don't like that the MW is still an extra fixture when it doesn't need to be, and there are big question marks over how funding will be allocated, salary cap, TV deals etc., but these can't really be commented on until the details become clear.

All in all, I think it's better than the system we've currently got, and is definitely better than one up one down. It may need a few tweaks here and there in the first season or two, but really if the RFL have decided this is the best way to go they need to stick with it, and clubs, fans, players, sponsors etc all need to get behind it. There's been far too much chopping and changing of the league structure since SL started.

Cas have yet to recover from losing their last ‘million pound game’. Whilst that game itself may have been well attended, surrounding that game both clubs had atrocious attendances, the game itself was an awful error ridden affair played out between two sets of aussie reserve graders. Wakefield fielded 15 out of 17 overseas players that game. Lets hope that having one every year isn’t as damaging.

Simple solution, ALL clubs use the Championship quota, problem solved

That wasnt hard, was it?

Yeah, that will work. All those contracted players can have their contracts cancelled, and they will happily just walk away. No chance of them challenging it or anything and we definitely wont see loads of players suddenly getting british passports like before.

You have obviously thought this through

You can’t legally stop someone with the legal right to work in this country from working in this country. We would see clubs jump through the same loopholes championship clubs already use, you know the rules that mean the championships have a quota of 1 but Sheffield have Yere, Tagaloa, Laulu-Togaga'e and Taulapapa, now I don’t know about you but im pretty sure those guys didn’t learn RL throwing a ball around the fields of Yorkshire.

Great problem solving

Problem: not enough british players coming through

solution: employ Kolpak nationals and overseas players who can get british or Kolpak passports, pretend its aiding international development and hope no-one sees through it.

throughout the league, your lets make them play by illegal rules that already arent followed solution isnt going to happen, so find another solution. Your, lets pretend it doesnt exist solution might though.

Please keep going though, i am enjoying your pretence that either ignoring a problem or just saying 'tough' is some cutting insight and plain-spoken truth quite funny.

So essentially you are saying the current quota rules arent working, either in SL, or the Championship?

Indeed. Quota rules rarely work, because we have pretty specific laws about them. That’s why we had the club-trained fudge. We don’t have a stick to beat clubs with here, we can offer carrots. Those carrots however big they are, will fade in to insignificance compared to a place in SL. This system, and any system with P+R in, will simply focus clubs on short-term goals so we will see plenty of overseas players at championship and lower SL clubs.

So which Championship clubs ( other than Sheffield ) are abusing the quota?

It isnt impossible for the RFL ( with the support of the clubs ) to police a quota system

You never know by the start of the 2015 season all 24 clubs in the top 2 leagues could be playing of the same rule book regarding overseas quotas. To me that would make more sense than having 2 separate quotas.

Reading the policy review I believe this is the case. Well, not all clubs, there's going to be 10 teams with an academy who play by one set of rules and the rest another, but that's another story, there's not going to be a separation by league.

I got asked this on another thread and can't find any sort of answer, so I'll open it up, does anyone know which set or points rules the middle 8 will play by? Super league scoring (2 points for a win, 1 for a draw) or championship scoring (3 points for a win, bonus points)?