I can see where you're coming from, but I totally disagree. The reason this idea works in Aus is for one simple reason, it's their national sport. Ours isn't. We already have a limited pool of players to choose from due to football and RU in this country, and I don't think there is enough quality around to support a 14 team league.

I would reduce the league back to 12 teams. However, I'd still like to keep Perpignan RL, Wrexham RL, and London Broncos. There's no questioning the quality of talent in RL in France and London has improved, but Rome wasn't built in a day, etc. The reason I don't say 10 is due to the amount of imports (Willie Mason not quota, 5 "Antipodeans", etc) and all we would do is make it even tougher for the youth to break through but that's a different discussion altogether...

Wakey for me have to go, not financially stable, poor support, tipped to finish bottom this year, plus they are in a already densely populated RL region so offering nothing in terms of expansion for the game. If I was the man with the guillotine, my 2nd choice would be between Salford and Cas. Poor average attendances, although Cas fans do travel reasonably well, both have new stadiums in the pipeline, on the pitch Cas were better last year but neither made the play-offs. Either way, I think if either were demoted, it would be tough for them to maintain the club with the expense of a new stadium.

It's a tough one, but I do not believe in anyway bringing in Widnes, Leigh, Fax or Fev will increase the quality in the game overall compared to the 3 expansion projects. In fact, we will only be admitting to the whole country we're not big enough to be a national and multi-national sport, and might as well return to small crowds with hardly any money in the game.

In response to the 2 tiered SL of 10 teams, what's the difference between this and the Championship now but with promotion and relegation? The problem is there's not enough money, crowds or talent for 14 teams so how would 20 teams improve the quality of the game? Until the league is truly competitive between all the teams involved so its no longer highly unlikely anyone outside Wigan, Saints, Wire, Leeds, Huddersfield and FC will be challenging for any honours (this year IMO) we cannot move to the mentioned above. If I've missed a point here, I'm open to opinions but I struggle to see how this would enhance RL on the whole...

It is within the bounds of possibility that any team can become rehabilitated and become successful (Hull, Hull KR and Huddersfield have all spent time outside SL and have managed to become viable and competitive) so maybe the factors surrounding such cases should be examined. It is also possible to start a new franchise (Catalans) and make that viable.

I honestly believe that Salford might be the next team to take that step up when they move into their new stadium and the opportunity is there for Widnes, Leigh and Halifax.

I think that the sport will really start to take off once we find our way out of this recession.

Crowd Numbers will pick up due to more disposable income.

Sponsors will be more giving, which will make grass roots rugby better.

Marketing overseas will be stepped up. In America, RL is becoming more popular by the day, as it is in Wales and France.

Schools across the country now teach Rugby League, whereas until recently its been just the North (barring 1 or 2 exceptions).

The simple factor is money. More crowds = more revenue = more marketing = more growth across the board.


To quote the wicked witch " All in good time my prettys, all in good time".

I personally am in favour of expansion - not at all costs - but I think that when and I think one day it will happen, a truly national RL competition happens then we will have a player pool to compete with the Aussies. Lets not get bogged down with crowd sizes. How many species do you think a lot of SL clubs would get if they had seasons like Leigh have had. If Leigh were consistantly at the top our stadium would see a massive increase in crowd levels. The I'm allright jack attitude of a lot of SL fans will come and bite you one day when it is your club who falls on hard times. Non relegation cannot work for many more years because there is not enough money in RL to bring through new areas without having the Championships. And at the moment there is not enough money in the Championships to sustain it as it is. More and more clubs are going to go to the wall. Once the Championships have gone where do up and coming players get blooded? There are only so many places at SL academies. The enormous gulf between SL and the Championship is in my opninion one of the biggest problems with our game ever expanding. Once this is adressed then we will see growth in the sport. Watching the same teams playing each other year after year without any chance of a team working it's way to the top is in itself making the game a local sport. It's alright keep pointing to Australia and America and saying it works there. This is neither of those countries, it is the UK. We have deep routed ideas and stuctures in our sporting leagues. Some may call me a flat capper but I would love to see Twickenham Stoop full of RL fans or Crusaders in the CC final. For a start I would like to see more of the Sky money to filter down to the Championships and the RFL and SL to do a full check on the health of the lower leagues to see if there is a way to narrow the gap between us.

Quins attendances are dismal and one of the problems is that London is soccer to the core, with a couple of the worlds biggest clubs playing there. So Can Rugby League build a team that is recognisable locally, thus providing the tools to become more popular and expand? Im not sure....

The Crusaders leave me a little dumbfounded really. Been nothing short of a disaster so far.

I do recognise the reasons why the RFL put a lot of energy into their expansion vision. However, Ive seen very little to suggest it will be a success. There are some good players coming out of London and Wales I appreciate, but they will always be part of a minority in my opinion. And this isnt a case of glass half full, just the way it is.

Rugby League is and always will be down the pecking order here. Unfortunately. But where it is truly loved and embraced, is enough for me.

How long do you want to give these teams to prove they can make the cut?

Crusaders might make it in wales but quins have not got a chance they are all football mad down there and no matter what you do that wont change, the likes of leigh and widnes have got history the fan base would pick up very quickly around them parts if they get given a chance to build a decent squad

Basically what you're saying is that Maurice Lindsay was correct all those years ago. He certainly was a visionary the likes of which we don't appear to have at RL HQ these days.

Two things:

There is not a cat in hell's chance that the Cumbrian clubs would merge under one banner, despite there being a strong shout for a SL club to be present.

Secondly; Mo may have been a visionary (PSG not withstanding), but Richard Lewis is a realist, who has yielded a profit for this sport, something I am unaware of happening for as long as I have been watching the game.

I really don't understand why those trying to enter SL aspire to be likes those recently entering the competition, as opposed to denegrating them.

There was an interview with a chap from barrow (MD/CE??) who stated that certain clubs didn't deserve to be there and how they were better. Be judged on your own merits, not what AN Other is/isn't doing.

No it isn't. They technically don't have one, but if they did, the de facto national sport would be Cricket, not Rugby League. In Australia there is the RU and the AFL, plus the A-League is starting to generate some steam too.



If you are going to want to reduce the league back to 12 teams, you may aswell bring back promotion and relegation with it. Plus if you are wanting to keep Crusaders, Harlequins and Catalans, two of those who keep coming up regarding the expansion debate or the franchise discussion, what two teams would be most suited to drop down into the Championship?



Well, seems like you've answered the question posed prior with the Wakey shout, which I do have to agree with. Salford are in the process of getting a 25,000 seater stadium (which I doubt they will fill anyway) but going into the Championship will be bad news for them, especially aswell with the way they have recruited this season. I can see them pulling off a fair few shocks this year. Cas, hmm, that's a tough one. Don't mind them, but they are around the same catchment zone as Wakefield.



Some of the Widnes and Leigh fans have huge chips on their shoulders about Crusaders, Catalans etc because they feel that they are being denied a place by some fly by night team that can do whatever they want, whenever they want and will get bailed out by the RFL when the going gets touch. I do understand what they are saying, but at the end of the day, someone is going to be disappointed and there is nothing that can be done. Don't hear any bleating from the Fax fans, or the Barrow Raiders fans etc.

As for being the national sport, there is no chance of that, which is a big shame, especially when you see the ridiculous amounts of money that is bandied around football. Rugby League would make the perfect national sport in England/UK but it will never happen.



Bit of a contradiction there in the last post Alfie. You said that until the league is truly competitive between all the teams involved then Wigan, Saints, Wire, Leeds, Hudds and Hull FC will be challenging for honours. To be fair, in the last few years I feel that Super League has been a lot more competitive than previous years. Then, it was always Leeds, Saints and Bradford dominating, but then you had the emergence of Hull FC, and then our good selves and now Wigan.

Until the game in this country stops trying to be what it isn't we will continue to see this the RFL pushing our game in a direction it doesn't want to go. Crus and Quins may carry on being propped up with money from the RFL for years to come, but what does that say about RL. Hell bent desire for expansion which financially doesn't add up while keeping well supported heartland clubs (Leigh, Fax and Widnes) out of the competition on solely geographical grounds. We'll probably see Widnes in SL next year and probably Toulouse in the following round of changes. Uncle Maurice had the right idea with 'framing the future' the problem was it couldn't have been handled any worse if they had tried. The process alienated some fans from the game and made the future of the sport even more shakey than before. The whole franchise system is poorly handled imo, it does nothing to help the development of clubs within SL never mind out of it and until each application is looked at on its own merits instead of being biased towards 'new' areas in which to promote the sport we will continue to see some being kept alive with assistance others would not receive. No other sport I can think of governs itself this way. Fantastic product on the pitch masking terrible administration.

A lot of fans got disorientated when Hudds/Shef merged and Hull & gateshead. They need a 15 year plan, and to bloody stick to it.

The RFL as you say are pushing RL in a direction it doesn't want to go, and that the game in this country needs to stop trying to be what it isn't but isn't that what the RFL are doing; making RL being what it isn't hence pushing it in the direction it doesn't want to go.

What would you suggest in order to stop this so called terrible administration from happening? Go the way of something similar in football and have the Super League clubs run day to day operations of Super League and then have the RFL run everything else from the Championship down to the bottom tier?

IF that happens, there will be new administration, new board etc that would focus on Super League matters. It will never happen; the football equivalent has courted plenty of contraversy with the FA and the Premier League at loggerheads on numerous occassions.

At this point in time, the RFL is the sole administrator of the game of Rugby League and the game will go in the direction that they want it to and at the moment, nothing can stop them.

I don't get these calls to reduce the size of the league because we have a few clubs who are struggling. Of course we have! That's the whole point of competition. Each year you get a few clubs who've done well and and a few who have done badly and some in between. Whether you have a league of 14 clubs, or of 4 clubs or 400 clubs, someone has to come last. Getting poor results on the field usually results in poor results off the field and vice versa. We had 12 clubs not long ago and for a few years the clubs at the bottom were quite a way behind the rest. Remember Halifax and Leigh? Huddersfield used to struggle too. Some people said we'd struggle to find the players to field 14 teams and we'd get even more massive scorelines against the clubs at the bottom. Well I don't think that has been the case.

Look at the following league tables:

2005
Team PLD W L D F A PTS
St Helens 28 23 4 1 1028 537 47
Leeds 28 22 6 0 1152 505 44
Bradford 28 18 9 1 1038 684 37
Warrington 28 18 10 0 792 702 36
Hull 28 15 11 2 756 670 32
London 28 13 13 2 800 718 28
Wigan 28 14 14 0 698 718 28
Huddersfield 28 12 16 0 742 791 24
Salford 28 11 17 0 549 732 22
Wakefield 28 10 18 0 716 999 20
Widnes 28 6 21 1 598 1048 13
Leigh 28 2 25 1 445 1210 5

2010
Team PLD W L D F A PTS
Wigan Warriors 27 22 5 0 922 411 44
St Helens RLFC 27 20 7 0 946 547 40
Warrington Wolves 27 20 7 0 885 488 40
Leeds Rhinos 27 17 9 1 725 561 35
Huddersfield Giants 27 16 10 1 758 439 33
Hull FC 27 16 11 0 569 584 32
Hull Kingston Rovers 27 14 12 1 653 632 29
Crusaders 27 12 15 0 547 732 24
Castleford Tigers 27 11 16 0 648 766 22
Bradford Bulls 27 9 17 1 528 728 19
Wakefield Trinity Wildcats 27 9 18 0 539 741 18
Salford City Reds 27 8 19 0 448 857 16
Harlequins RL 27 7 20 0 494 838 14
Catalans Dragons 27 6 21 0 409 747 12

In 2005, the top 3 all scored more than 1000 points and the bottom 3 conceded 999 or more. Widnes and Leigh were clearly merely making up the numbers so the argument for a ten team league then was quite strong. However, move forward 5 years and with 14 teams the competition is much more even. Some will argue the quality has been spread more thinly. But I think that is an insult to all the great youth development work going on at many of the clubs.

Super League has it's problems, of that there is no doubt, but it also has great potential to really take off in the next few years. Don't forget there is a damaging global recession going on at the moment, it's only to be expected some of our clubs are suffering. It could be much worse than it is.

The lack coverage is not helping the cause.You get a bbc programme which is never to schedule,the red tops have little coverage in a monday edition.For the previous weekends games.Even in some parts of the nothwest you cant buy the League Express or the other paper.Skys coverage is rushed and needs freshing up.If the RFL want to reach a bigger audience, than the promotion of the game has to be improved.

Strange comment. We only have to go back a few years to a time when most clubs (including our own as a prime example) would spend every penny they had - and a good few they didn't - on players in the desperate hope of instant success. Facilities and youth development barely got a token glance. Look at us playing in a stadium falling to bits (even though most of us loved going there in our primrose and blue tinted glasses) with no local players in the first team. Now we have new and refurbished stadia all over the league, state of the art training facilities at some clubs and more investment in youth development than ever.

Super League and now franchising have done a tremendous amount of good for RL.