I think its more fundamental than this.
Step 1, is for the game to decide where it wants to be in 5 years time and then 10 years time and then set about achieving its aims.

At the moment everyone wants a miracle cure that will give us 10 or 12 equally competitive teams in the top flight, plus a second tier capable of producing teams that can advance to the top flight.
For this to happen, the game has to fund the second tier at a similar level to the top flight.

The stumbling block is our inability as a sport to be able to attract funding/ sponsorship at a sufficient level.

Is it time to bite the bullet and move to a full on franchise system and take away the prospect of promotion (and relegation) altogether and it would allow the future addition of any club, that could prove itself worthy of a franchise.

The starting point could be either the current 14 SL clubs, or reset the benchmark of exactly what a SL club should be.

So why is it being presented now then? Surely we should be focusing our priorities on doing the things which will actually address the problems we have rather than spending time and effort of undertaking a major structural change which wouldnt address our problems.

That is true. But I didnt say that the problems were invented because this isnt a solution for them. I said they were invented because they are.
That isnt an alternative solution. Keeping this as they are isnt an alternative solution to this proposal because this proposal isnt a solution to the problems caused by the status quo.

Because the big clubs will play each other more, getting higher attendances, higher visibility, more corporates, better sponsorship etc etc etc. They will also play the other teams less, giving them lower attedances, lower visibility, etc etc etc, that evens itself with the clubs who are relegated getting less doesnt it. It will bring down a few teams and up few teams to some mid-point between the championship and SL. The big clubs will continue to grow. The small clubs will shrink.

Because it wont. Because it doesnt address them. Because as I explained before (and you were arguing nobody had suggested it would address these problems). It isnt a solution to these problems. Each of these problems has their own individual solution.
they would as we have seen, they didnt. Every team which was promoted got better attendances in SL than in their promotion season. No, as we have seen, they didnt.


There is 20 teams in that league.

Agreed. It's mental. I mean, utterly mental. We can't even get Widnes, Castleford, Salford and London to be competitive in the top 14 on any consistent basis, and even a team like Saints, missing just a few players, can find itself uncompetitive. Yet some idiot has proposed a system in which the 10 nearest semi-pro clubs should play the likes of Wigan, Leeds, Wire ?

Nuts. Completely nuts. I can't even begin to imagine what the person who proposed this was smoking, but it should be illegal.

I think you're very naughty, and are trying to wind up championship clubs' fans. But I did enjoy reading that.

Exactly. The problem we have is money. We have enough to sustain a professional competition for 14 clubs, but only if they're supplemented by cash from sugar daddies. No drama there - that's the position of nearly every pro sports club. But we don't have enough cash to either (a) give money to the less well-supported clubs of the championship to go professional, (b) raise the salary cap for those clubs with cash, because to do so would make the current league-within-a-league divisions even more entrenched, or (c) to compete with the NRL or RU for top players.

There are two answers to this. The first is to focus hard on youth development systems so that we produce enough decent talent to replace the ones who get poached by richer competitions. To be fair to the cliubs and the RFL, that is certainly in a lot better state than it was. The second is to get more cash from TV, more cash from sponsorship and more cash from international tournaments.

The problem is that the RFL have, in the last decade, proved themselves to be utterly useless at raising cash. The Stobart free gift of the whole competition for 12 lorries was an utterly insane decision which has come back to bite us this year, because no sponsor is going to pay large bucks for something which the owners value so little that they gave it away. In addition, the negotiations with SKY over TV deals have been so poor by comparison to other sports commanding a similar audience. The canny international execs at SKY must watch Nigel wandering through their door with his begging bowl, and start laughing behind their hands.

As others have said, this is an attempt to address a problem we don't have. Our problem is not a lack of games between the top 12 clubs and the next 12, or a lack of fixtures. Our problem is a lack of money, and I'd rather the RFL actually used their time and energy employing someone who might actually be able to get some companies to part with some cash, and deliver a decent TV deal, than waste it on this nonsense.

www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/rugbyl ... eason.html "That plan would see 11 rounds of the 12-team format, allowing every club to play each other, before the top eight from the top division would splinter away into their own competition. The bottom four teams in the revamped Super League would finish the season playing in an eight-team competition involving the top four teams in the Championship. The bottom eight teams of the Championship would contest the third tier."

www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/rugbyl ... eason.html "That plan would see 11 rounds of the 12-team format, allowing every club to play each other, before the top eight from the top division would splinter away into their own competition. The bottom four teams in the revamped Super League would finish the season playing in an eight-team competition involving the top four teams in the Championship. The bottom eight teams of the Championship would contest the third tier."

How does this help anything?

Minor details like...what will be the salary cap(s?) during this fiasco? come to mind. How will clubs possibly plan revenue/expenditure against this uncertainty? Will the lower SL and higher championship teams go on a spending spree to try and ensure they get SL places (with resulting administration later for those that fail and maybe even some that succeed)? And what about the lottery that is the fixture list - imagine getting your away games in the first 11 games against top teams! Which teams will be landed with 6 away games?

So here is how it could look in 2015Super League 1

Super League 2
Sheffield
Featherstone
Leigh
Batley
Whitehaven
Workington
Swinton
North Wales


So halfway through the season perhaps Salford, London, Wakefield and Toulouse split off and play Hull KR, Widnes, Castleford, and either Halifax or Sheffield or Featherstone for the right to be in the top four promoted back up to Super League 1 the following year.

Isn't it likely that the bottom four SL 1 clubs, with their superior funding, will be too strong for the top 4 SL 2 clubs, and nothing will be achieved?

I used to be for franchising, I used to be for locked Super League, I used to be pro salary cap, but it has been poorly managed, the fans are getting totally ignored and shat on, from the introduction of the Bonus Point to this ridiculous idea of split divisions, in my opinion Nigel Wood & the RFL are slowly but surely bringing the game to it's knees.

Instead of building on a straight easy system that works, top 5 play offs and regular up and down in a 12 team division for the top flight and throughout the divisions keeping a small but important amount of imports we have a division being split into more playoffs and more and more sub divisions.

Hard enough for the most ardent supporters to follow.

It's time for the people at the top of the think about reverting to regular league systems that are easy to follow, sometimes simple is the best policy.

2015, two tens, bottom 4in SL 2014 plus Toulouse fax Fev sheff Leigh and 1 other
SL 1 gets as now, SL 2 gets about £650k more if extra funding is found. Cap in 1 - £2.2m with £1.8m min, £1.2 m in 2
27 games, 5 team play off, 1up 1 down
Not an extra penny needed to fund that