True but I would expect to see at least some Londoners making it through the system. The "big problem" that you already talked about is that London amateur clubs aren't particularly stable. The nature of London I'd say.

I believe the idea of doing some development work down south may have crossed Warrington's mind. I've heard from a few sources that they thought about keeping Phil Jones down south. Obviously Wigan are working in South Wales so there is a precedent for such a move. It's not impossible the pathway to professionalism could survive in a rather unexpected manner.

Edited to say I see the 2014 gradings for Superleague academies are out. London have slipped from a 3 in 2013 to the bottom rating of 4. Possibly not too surprising given the destabilising effect of losing Phil Jones.

And Rob in his interview on RLDS said that the number of kids playing in Cumbria was on a downward trend and he reckoned it was because there is no SL team at the top of the pyriamid, exactly my fear for the south.

He's not wrong and neither are either of us!

In the South, the issue is a lack of development officers. I imagine if you checked the figures you'd find the London numbers are down as well e.g. very many players came through Greenwich Admirals but the Admirals are defunct. Now that's not down to the Broncos.

No longer. The Scorpions cut the dual-registration link.

The dual reg agreement has indeed ended but I believe Wigan still have strong links with the South Wales academy set up. This was separate to their deal with the Scorpions.

Been away for a week so just read this thread, some good posts but I'm more positive than most.

Hull FC for example appear to be garbage at the moment, I don't think it's out the realm of possibility for a team that has has a good season to not beat them.

We'll see though!

The reason "London" Welsh are playing their games 50 miles away is that they aren't allowed to do any development at Old Deer Park. So the poor 1000 seater stand is all there will ever be.

What we need to do to come back up.

We will go into a league which will be something like:

Bradford
London
Leigh
Featherstone
Halifax
Doncaster
Dewsbury
Sheffield
Batley
Workington
Whitehaven
York

At the end of the season I'd expect to see Leigh Centurions and Bradford in the top two with the other two from London, Featherstone, Halifax and Sheffield

This will make up the top 4 in the new 8 system

Now if you look at the bottom 4 in the new 8 system I'd expect to see Wakefield and Catalans plus two from Hull KR, Hull FC, Salford and Castleford in there.

So assuming we make it the league would probably be then:

Leigh Centurions
Bradford
London
One of Halifax, Sheffield or Featherstone
Wakefield
Catalans
Hull FC
Hull KR

Now the top 4 would probably be the Super League clubs and assuming the games go to level of quality and we can beat the other Championship clubs the table would be:

Catalans - return to Super League
Hull FC - return to Super League
Hull KR - return to Super League
------------
Wakefield - play off for a place in Super League
London - play off for a place in Super League
------------
Bradford
Leigh
Halifax

This would give us a one-off game v Wakefield to come back up.

If we can beat Wakefield in the 8 league we'd probably still get them in the one-off game.

The only way I would see a Championship club coming up is to win probably twice from four games against SL clubs, unless of course there are other underdog winners and it isn't just the SL clubs beating the Championship clubs pretty much every time

I'm not suggesting we will do that in season one with yet another new squad, but I believe it is improbable for any Championship club to beat two SL clubs in four games, but maybe win the one off game

Cheers
Mark

Do we know if the old Superleague contracts are ripped up on relegation rule will apply? If so the SL team, especially imports, have a huge incentive.

Must admit I loath the idea of promotion coming down to a one off game post season in any sport. Doubly so in such a physical sport where a few injuries the week before could destroy a club.

It's not impossible London could bounce back, though I don't see it next season. This system does however seem to have an inbuilt bias towards the SL teams and to lessen the chance.

This is the system the teams voted for so we are where we are...... Hopefully it'll either work or be abandoned quickly.