www.loverugbyleague.com/news_158 ... -2015.html

www.loverugbyleague.com/news_158 ... -2015.html

Sorry read it a number of times anything that take so much reading is to complicated, hope I am wrong but feel this could be worse than what we have now.

The jist is:
Top 8 in SL enter round 6 of Challenge Cup
No change in SL salary Cap
£1mil cap in championship
No parachute payment for London & Bradford
Kingstone Championship will have 12 clubs & Kingstone League 1 will have 14
Dual Reg possibly could be abolished

OK, so help me out with this one if I've got it wrong, to win the Superleague next season...

Regular season - Home 11 games, Away 11 games + Magic wknd.
Super 8 - 7 games: positions 1 to 4 play home games against the 5-8, the away games against the rest of the top 4.
Playoff semi final home and away - 1st v 4th, 2nd v 3rd.
Grand final.

Correct??

i see the playoffs have been sorted... 2 games and then the final.

So a team progressing as far as the SL semis could potentially play the same team 7 TIMES in the same season if the CC draw went that way. Nuts!

Like the semi final format though, much better.

The play off's are good under the new structure but the rest is a pile of bull excreta.

As clear as mud isn't it?

The top 4 of the top 8 will play 4 home matches and 3 away so would be as follows:

Top 8:
Warrington, Wigan, Saints,Leeds,Widnes,Cas,Hudds,Catalans

Warrington Games:

Warrington vs Catalans
Wigan vs Warrington
Warrington vs Saints
Hudds vs Warrington
Warrington vs Leeds
Widnes vs Warrington
Warrington vs Cas

You carry your points forward from the regular season so it would obviously help you in the long run if you had a good campaign so hopefully no more meaningless games!

This really isn't that complicated. Not much here that we didn't know anyway, I'm right behind these changes. Not convinced about the changes to the Challenge Cup though, win four games and you've won the thing? Seems to devalue it a bit for me.

Yup, that makes no sense at all.

Well, just to focus on SL - we have been moaning for a long time that the playoffs have become a joke because it devalued the point of the regular rounds. Surely this fixes this ? As Deckchair points out, you have to be top 4 to qualify and its a very simple 1st v 4th, 2nd v 3rd to pick the finalists. I am quite happy to accept a bit of complexity to achieve a more equitable result. Anyway, its not exactly quantum mechanics, just a lot to remember.

One thing which may seem a small point but which grates a bit of me is that theyhaven't taken the chance to sort out the "23rd game" anomaly, where you could find yourself playing Wigan 3 times or Wakefield 3 times, depending on how the smoke comes out of the chimney. If the weekly rounds are going to be more important - and look how close some sides are this year anyway - then it seems even more random in terms of fairness. If you need a Magic Weekend why not have it as the first round of games after the split, so that each team in that split stage can play 3 home and 3 away games, and one game at a neutral venue. It would need to be done a bit differently and wouldn't be able to be in May, but it would even things out a bit and the games should all be more competitive.

This is a very good idea, the only reason it isn't happening like this is presumably it would be around August time and close to the Challenge Cup final.

We also need it to be decided whether these 'Super 8' fixtures will be included in season tickets or not. If they are, we might see a hike in prices that speccys might not like.

Finally, can we not go down the route of 'bonus points' for losing teams as might be the case. Don't reward a team for losing.