But there isn't such a huge gulf between the full-time players at the foot of the Premiership and the top of the Championship - apart from the odd blip, sending a team up from the Championship into SL over the last 15 years would just have been sending a lamb to the slaughter. I am very much in favour of promotion and relegation but if it had been there over the last 15 years it would just have been a farce. Like I said, we are only now starting to get a bit of parity in funding but the RL need to do much more to make regular p&r work.

Very true Brad, 15 years goes back to 2000, lets see Widnes went up and , stayed up. Salford went up and er, stayed up. Huddersfield went up and er, stayed up. Leigh went up and luvved up. HKR went up and er, stayed up, Cas went up and er, stayed up

So we had one flop from a Leigh team that was miles away from today and was on the way down even when winning promotion imo, the Widnes year would have been our time

Not wishing just pick up on that one point as I agree with your post on the whole, but is the necessarily the case?

1997 - Hull Sharks (those were the days), not relegated since
1998 - Wakefield promoted, not relegated since
1999 - no promotion (Hunslet won Grand Final)
2000 - no promotion (can't remember who won the Grand Final....!)
2001 - Widnes promoted, took four seasons to get relegated
2002 - Huddersfield promoted, not relegated since
2003 - Salford promoted, took four seasons to get relegated
2004 - less said the better
2005 - Castleford promoted, relegated the following season
2006 - Hull KR promoted, not relegated since
2007 - Castleford promoted, not been relegated since
2008 - licensing kicks in

So when you look at the days of pure P&R, only ourselves are the ones who could be said to have got battered every week. Castleford have more than recovered from their yo-yo, and even then they were only relegated on the last day in 2006.

The new system will at least give an indication of whether clubs will be able to mix it with the bottom of the table, and the fourth team will at least have a decent amount of notice that they've got a sniff of winning promotion rather than potentially sneaking through the play offs and being entirely unprepared in the event of a Grand Final win.

It does obviously require that rarity of the RFL choosing a policy and giving the time, commitment and finances it needs to flourish, but this is the best chance in a long while to build a number of clubs who are ready to step up in to SL should they get the chance.

Bloody hell Mo, you could have added a bit more detail....!

absolutely spot on Matt,

the cycnic in me says the RFL willl review th enew set up in a few years as i believe it has the ability to create a Yo Yo because actually 3 teams this year could go up which would of course mean 3 coming down.... Where as if it was one up one down only one team would be going up

Don't do detail

Licensing was a crazy innovation which caused a decrease in attendances for most clubs' now it has gone crowds for most clubs will rise.

How anyone can think no chance of promotion to the top league is a good idea for our game needs to realise our game is primarily situated around the M62.

The guy who introduced it probably thinks monopolies are a good idea. They aren't they lead to complacency and mediocrity as they do in commerce which is why they were made unlawfull in democractic countries.

Every club needs to have ambition. Licenscing is plain daft.

We all know the reason Betts is all for franchising, if we had a system based on performance & success & not on secret handshakes he'd have been sacked years ago. Makes me laugh when people talk about the amazing franchising success story that is Widnes Vikings. They won the Northern rail cup, having "ticked the box" spent 2 years winning nothing as a mid table Championship team, spent 2 years as the whipping boys of super league getting hammed most weeks but it all finally paid off last year when they finished in the bottom half of the table & got knocked out of the play offs in round 1, what an amazing success story, someone should turn it into the feel good film of the year.

Top Post, in fact post of the decade that mate

For this new structure to continue and succeed will require more central funding further down the Championship, otherwise all you will achieve is a moving of the ' Gap '

Agreed. We've pushed 2 clubs to the good side of the gap (Leigh & Fev). Everyone below them will struggle to compete. I don't see Leigh or Fev relinquishing that position unless more money is given to other championship clubs.

Lets face it aside from last season Fev and Fax were by far the most suitable teams to give SL a shot and would both have done ok in there but at the moment both are miles away from where they need to be imo and its more Dewsbury that seem to be moving the right way at the moment although I dont think they are quite ready on the pitch yet.

Agreed the championship needs more funding, I hope that if the RFL get more it goes to The Championship & not snapped up by Super League. Does anyone know the prize money for winning The Championship Shield? Ideally that should bring a club's funding up to the same level as making the top 4, that way you've then got 5 clubs on similar funding competing for 4 places. Plus it'd give more of an incentive for clubs to try to win it, whilst being a playoff competition would make it easier for a different team to win it each year.