Like the idea of going back to Gateshead with the Magic weekend. As has been mentioned they were doing great things and have managed to stay afloat after losing, what was at the time, the largest sponsorship deal in the league with Northern Electric. Possible chance of a franchise spot if they improve ona dn off the field 40-50% in the NL.

Sally makes some good points about Scotland not having the ability to sustain the business model for a SL franchise.

Another French side is a must and Toulouse are going great guns at the mo so may be in with a shout.

Widnes may be well prepared for the next bid seeing as Chester are now out of the football league so Steve may concentrate on RL.

All for expansion, but I'm more interested in whether the RFL will have the balls to drop the dead wood from SL.

i agree with the cumbria idea and going to ireland is a good idea to but about the yorkshire clubs i think with celtic and catalns comining in it has kicked 2 lancs clubs in leigh and widnes out otherwise it would of been a 50-50 split but i like the ideas

The problem is that each club gets £ / x from Sky where x is the number of clubs in the league.

Yeah, but more clubs, surely means more viewers?

In an ideal world i would get rid of Harlequins and replace them with a team from Cumbria, Rugby League in the capital has never and will never take off.

I don't think we should take the Weekend to Ireland and i don't think we should include more teams from abroad whilst there is already one in the League.

I think it may be the law of diminishing returns though. If we doubled the league size would we get double the Sky RL subscriptions and advertising revenue and, as a consequence, a doubling of the rights payment to the RFL? I'm not sure we would.

I think Sky have applied the 80:20 rule. 80% of the potential target viewership with 20% of the clubs.

Fulham, London Broncos and Harlequins. Different name, same result - expansionist policy failure.

Indeed, i also wouldn't have the Challenge Cup Final in London either, why should we take our great game and line the pockets of people who don't appreciate our sport.

Eastlands get's my vote.

Its about recovery time, your on about increasing the league to 18 teams which would mean teams would play another 8 games (home and away) which would mean your extending the season by 8 weeks which is 2 months.

That would mean the season would start in February and end in December, we have internationals and the challenge cup to fit in between as well. The players would get virtually no recovery time, rugby league isn`t like football where you can cram in a million and one games in a season as ours is the toughest field sport in the world and players bodies need recovery time.

Suppose never thought of it like that. Maybe just 16 teams then

Pre-super league we had the 5 metre rule which meant the impacts and collisions were not as harsh as they are today, the modern game has the 10 metre rule which means forwards have a greater run up so the collisions are far greater, its a faster game and players bodies need longer recovery time due to the nature of the modern game.

The NRL has 16 teams but don`t forget each team has a bye so thats a weeks rest period during the season and also they don`t have a domestic cup competion like the challenge cup.

i`m all for expansion as long as they earn the right to be in the top division..toulouse and catalans have been fast tracked to a higher division..start at the bottom and earn your rights to play the big boys..as for celtic they are clearly out of there depth in this division with the exeption of a couple of gritty displays..edinburgh proved how poor they are..what next a russian team in super leagueat the expense of say hull or wakey...

Sums up my opinion neatly. Catalan=success, London=???, Scotland=no chance.

I don't care where the clubs are as long as they bring something to the competition and can be a success off the field. Trips far away are nice, but it's still possible to be excited about a regular away day too.

That doesn't really bring much to the discussion, but I find myself being less bothered by this issue all the time.