The British people are very tribal and love thier sports

British people have been turning up to watch there clubs in Football, League, Union and Cricket for 100 years and at least 90% never win anything or have any chance to, but the loyal fans still turn up to watch.

I don't understand why you think for example fans of Wakey will stop turning up in the next few years because they are sick of not winning anything, despite not winning a pot for 40 years.

Another point to this is that in football, fans don't forever keep turning up expecting them to compete because if they don't improve reasonably quickly they get relegated into the next division.

Look at the premiership as proof of this - Teams that spend a long period hanging around the lower parts of the division, trying to stay up (which the past poster referred to), will eventually improve or will run out of luck and be relegated in a relatively short period of time. The bottom 7-8 clubs fighting to avoid relegation will be different teams over the course of every 6-8 years.

We don't have that currently in SL so we have stagnant clubs at the bottom, doing nothing, who consistantly hold the both the top championship and SL clubs back.

Two leagues of 10 where anyone can beat anyone would give us the intensity we need like the NRL, and provide the opportunity for positive promotion and relegation to keep teams at the right level!

I would go as far to say this is needed to save the game....we can't carry on as we have been as its a slow death IMO.

But will more start to turn up? , their attendances have risen this year, on the back of cheap ST s,

It's all well and good wanting to change the system, but without the cash, nothing will change.

Which 4 teams will vote for dropping huge sums of money from their income, to drop a level.
Which top flight teams will vote for less money to make sure that SL2 is not just another championship, but has actual money enough to close the gap.

As SL is currently 14 teams it would require 8 teams to want this to happen, just to get started. If you can name 6 teams willing to have less cash I'll be impressed.

What evidence has led you to these conclusions?

'"

looking at what smokey said seems to make sense, but does it it still comes down to our paymaster sky if sky don't come up with more money for more games on the box, no matter what we say will not happen

P+R nor two leagues of 10 make these gaps smaller, for some clubs it would make the gap massively larger. London, Cas, Widnes, Salford etc are closer to the top teams in SL than they would be in a renamed championship. Thats the reason it wont work. That is the illogical argument, its where the two leagues of ten falls down dead, Clubs are better off in terms of quality, attendances, revenue, visibility as a bottom 4 SL side than a top four 2nd division side.'"

But what is artifically propping that up?

Take away a rich benefactor and/or Sky money and they're not sustainable businesses. Bradford Salford Cas London Celtic Wakefield HKR...their accounts over the last few years are a mess.

Currently they are businesses relying upon money they're not generating through the gate or secondary spend (football is the same), it's third party income that's keeping them going. They get it largely for being there at the right time and not necesarily for how good their business practices are. Be honest, do you think that is good for the game?

Chasing a salary cap (and thus being able to compete in SL to a level we both want to see) appears, juding by the accounts of so many clubs, to be causing unsustainable financial model that isn't good for the game. If its not chasing the salary cap then they've got some expensive cleaners working for them because the vast majority of their expenditure is on salaries.

Narrowing the gaps with clubs finding their own level based upon a more sustainable model suited to their individual circumstances will naturally sort the wheat from the chaf. How that's done is another debate.

If (say) Salford then want to borrow £xmillion with very little secondary income and go for broke then so be it, let them, but thats a risk they take rather than [ihaving[/i to take it to keep up with the rest and justify their place when the franchises comes round.

Too many people on here saying 2 divisions wouldnt work because of finances.
Maybe we should look at attracting bigger name sponsors and investers.
This will never happen with games like yesterday as only 4014 were in attandance.
We are talking international rugby aired on terrestrial tv.
Northampton v Port Vale had 5061 watching in the football leagues lowest division yesterday.
Would Nigel Wood be still in a job if he worked for companys like M&S, Barclays John Lewis etc etc.
Nothing has got better in our game since he came into the job.
The rugby league need to appoint someone who can change the whole structure of our game and put it into opperation sooner rather than latter.
Everybody has there own ideas on how this could be done but there are people out there who turn businesses around for a living.
Lets pay someone to turn our game around instead of wasting money sending players and a entourage out to South Africa altitude training to play a Welsh team which would struggle to beat a top championship club.
The worst thing we ever did was when Wigan played Bath in 1996.
After the game the Bath coach said we are 10 years behind league players in fitness and if we dont get away from being amature we will fall further behind.
Look where they are now. Triple our salery cap, filling wembley for league matches (sarries v Harlequins), Heineken cup, International sellouts, great tours, six nations and still have P&R.
We have a better game so lets get it out there.
Im league through and through but im not blind and the other code has gone from strength to strength.

Even Mr woods cant pull another 3/4 competitive International opponents out of his arris, the bottom line is if the Aussies/Kiwis dont want to play ball , then we dont have a viable International game, to change that would take tens of millions and a few decades, much as I dislike him I dont see this as his fault

None have that has anything to do with P+R or franchising. P+R doesnt demand that we only have quality business practice, nor does it make it more likely, in fact we saw it encourage and entrench very poor business practices with examples too numerous to mention. Franchising isnt a silver bullet, it was never pretended to be however much the usual suspects are starting their revision of history. Franchising is the platform from which we build. Its the space so clubs can put in place 3/5/10 year plans towards success.

Its working well, Celtic Crusaders, Crusaders,Wakefield,Bradford,London and now Salford and Cas are showing us its working, all these clubs are building and growing

In what way was franchising responsible for, or exacerbated the problems at those club? Because if it wasnt, then you are just pointing out a correlation no more relevant than the fact that during the period of time we have had franchising we also saw Felix Baumgartner jump out of a specially designed hot air balloon.

It seems odd that you commented so readily when it looked like Salford and Cas were about to go pop, when it became apparent that they werent you have gone quite quiet on the subject.

Where do I state it is responsible for those problems ? , or exacerbated the problems?

Is it providing the enviroment for those clubs to prosper?

IMO it is causing stagnation at the bottom of SL as well as in the Championship, if you think that is good for the sport then fine

I dont recall being overly active on here about Cas or Salford when their problems became public, although I predicted Salfords as soon as their stadium situation became apparent, it will cripple them

You've totally ignored the point I made and the question I asked though. How many players from the bottom 4 teams in SL do you think would be redistributed across the 10 remaining teams in SL1? It seems to me that to drastically raise the competitiveness of SL/SL1 you would need to drastically increase the pool of talent, and siphoning off the best players from the worst 4 clubs won't achieve that. Not in the slightest.