I kind of hope that next year is a complete failure as then we would have momentum to sack the RFL and start a new league.
The RFL of course would claim it a success no matter what happens......

Things need to change and a growing realisation of this is spreading throughout Super League.
Bring it on IL, I will back you with my vote any day.

I know where you're coming from but I have to disagree. As an RL fan I hope next year will be a success. I also think it will (if not a complete success) be better than we have now. The top 4 will be a priority and those towards the bottom of the top 8 will look nervously over their shoulders. I think it will increase the intensity and importance of the weekly rounds.

Where it will potentially fail is what happens after the split IMO. The bottom 8 is a pointless competition. The middle 8 only has value (though I am not sure that is the right word) by engineering a false position whereby the fourth placed side who could have never lost a game to those below them faces a sudden death "£1m" game to decide their SL future. There is the clear hope from the RFL that regardless of how much better as a team or how well run as a club the 4th placed side is, they will fall victim to a spate of injuries or bad refereeing to ensure there is movement between the divisions. Anything to ensure a relegation occurs to justify the move to 8/8/8.

Both the middle and bottom 8 represent a failure as far as the season goes for the teams that end up in them and the Swiss found when they tried this in soccer sponsors, fans and TV audiences were not interested in watching or sponsoring teams who were in a lower tier.

Trying to engineer the failure of a team in this way via deliberately setting up a one off game is pathetic and a clear indictment that they have failed to get the lower league teams up to standard to compete in any other way. That one game is also the only game of any real interest and compared to what is going on in the top 8 the lower two 8's are a sideshow.

Not putting this job out for applications, not putting the TV rights out to tender and coming up with this 8/8/8 system are all symptomatic of an organisation well past its sell by date in term of those running it IMO.

Nigel Woods has come up with some hair brained ideas in the past including a point for whoever was leading at half time and some sort of reward for scoring more than 12 points in the last 1/4 of the game even if you were losing IIRC (not sure if that was a league point or not). When he came up with these ideas he was in no position to put them into practice. The 8/8/8 and these other failings is what you get when people like him are allowed the keys to the kingdom without the threat of having any pressure of being replaced.

Has anything been said how the second tier is being funded/sponsored yet?
Unless it gets a significant wedge & air-time the whole thing will fall apart in no time.

Given the incumbents' track record in sponsorship & general management I'm not surprised IL's a bit miffed. We need sportsmen with business nous in charge not a bunch of bean-counters who couldn't run a bath (let's not forget, that regardless of how much praise Red Hall heap on themselves for the WC, none of them actually did anything - the person who did has been poached by UK Athletics).

Because of the Sky deal and the fact the salary cap isn't going up for the SL clubs it means some non-SL clubs will get a bigger salary cap (about £900k or so I think the one figure mentioned) which means some other non-SL clubs will still be trying to compete while paying a pittance to semi-pro players.

So that is funding model for better or worse.

As to sponsorship that is one of the issues that killed off this structure in Switzerland for soccer. Sponsors did not want to be associated with the two lower tiers which were seen as providing meaningless games in a second string competition. The big crowds and media interest were with the top 8 only.

The "£1m" game is clearly an attempt to inject some life into a league which could be considered in the same way given the teams in it are no longer competing with the elite teams for the rest of that season. Now for a fan of a team involved in a relegation fight I am sure we can all relate to how interesting that is given what went on in 2006 but I really don't think if the issue was between the likes of London and Batley anyone in the media or outside the geek level of fan we have on here would give a monkey's. Apart from the "£1m" game which is just one game after all the second tier just represents a drawn out qualification competition for another season.



The WC success should have been what secured us competition for TV rights. An opportunity squandered by those in charge.

As to sponsorship for the new structure it's going to take a marketing genius to convince potential sponsors (and the casual sports fan who bump up TV ratings for that matter) to have an interest in the lower two 8's after the split. The RFL will probably say it's really all one competition and will seek a sponsor for the whole thing but sponsors want value for money and I am not sure they will think they ought to or will want to pay anything towards funding the two lower 8 competitions. There just isn't going to be any kudos in the majority of those games that will attract lots of publicity a sponsor expects in return for their cash.

All-in-all, a salutary lesson for all those who wanted an end to the licence model: [ibe careful what you wish for[/i

I don't really get where you're coming from with this £1m game stuff. The middle 8 is effectively a mini league where teams need to make the top 4 to survive so surely most games will matter. If it all ends up coming down to the result of one game putting a Championship club up then it's because the team did well enough to get into that position. Of course it's open to a bad ref call, injuries, bounce of a ball etc but that's only the same as the play offs and many other relegation systems.

If this system is engineering the failure of a team you must hate the football system. 3 teams are guaranteed to be relegated from the Premier League next year, none are guaranteed to be relegated from Super League.

I'm looking forward to next year and think it will be a vast improvement with regular season games being far more important and teams 5-8 being pushed to properly catch up with 1-4 instead of just hoping they can come good in a game or two the play offs. Likewise teams 9-12 will be pushed to make the top 8 to get big games at the back end of the season and avoid the prospect of releflgation. Championship teams also incentivised by the possibility of making the Super League

It is apparent you are not a fan. But then you seem to have a downer on most things.

At them moment we have a closed shop of 14 teams where the weekly rounds are largely insignificant as the top teams canter their way through the season doing 'just enough' to put themselves in a position to challenge in the play offs. The bottom teams have nothing to play for, for most of the season.

I was initially very sceptical of the new format. Having had time to think about it the idea has grown on me. Essentially there are weekly rounds of 23 games until the split when effectively the play offs start. The top 8 is no longer good enough, you have to aim for the top 4. The middle 8 are in a battle as to which league they play in the next season, I'll grant you the bottom 8 being relatively meaningless, effectively a best of the rest competition.

As fans the majority have complained about the lack of intensity throughout the season. The new format is intended to address this. I think it has the potential to be an exciting and interesting competition for most teams. What we need to address is the gulf in spending power between the top and second teer giving those looking for promotion a realistic chance of achieving it. I would look at one simple tweak and have a single salary cap for all clubs in both divisions with huge penalties for administration to discourage overspending.

I liked the concept from the first day it was mooted (and all the pundits were dismissing it as raving lunacy). But, and it's a HUGE "but",[i where is the money going to come from?[/i Who is going to broadcast the middle 8 for example? Assuming Premier Sports are on board for 2015, are they & Sly going to share it out between them?
I really hope it does work, but I simply don't trust the current set of jokers in charge to get it right.

It's not rocket science. We should have made some tough but necessary decisions about what i call no ambition clubs and then when we had a solid group of teams we should have implemented longer licensing & forced quotas of academy produced players onto clubs.

We should have closed SL up and kept the licensing system for a minimum of 10 years imo. Like the Grand Final or Magic Weekend it needed a prolonged period to really bed in and become the norm. How can you judge something in so little time? How do you know the long term impacts and benefits?

Going back to a hap hazard promotion and relegation system isn't good for anyone. In previous seasons with P&R in place all we saw was the yo-yoing of a couple of teams being promoted and then getting relegated the season straight after. Add into that the sides were jam packed with 2nd rate Aussies who once relegated signed for the promoted team the season after made it laughable.

You only have to look at the development of Widnes to see the positives of a having time to build without the threat of relegation hanging over you. In their first season they stayed loyal to the young lads who had been with them in the Championship. It let them properly evaluate which lads were good enough to make the step up in class. Do you really think anything like that would have happened if they had to fight relegation from day 1? They progressed in a slow and steady way in every 3 of the seasons of the licensing system.

We needed longer to let the stability that it offered sink into the league. Long term investment in youth without the fear of relegation is how you improve standards. Look at a club like Cas who have now got a settled and talented side.

I, along with most give the RFL a substantial amount of criticism but surely in the deal signed with sky there has to be a contracted number of games shown from the second teer during the weekly rounds combined with a selection of matches from each of the three groups after the split.