rlhttps://www1.skysports.com/rugby-league/news/12196/7926277/rl

About bloody time.

12 team league with relegation and promotion it's the future (as well as the past).

12 or 10 team league is badly needed the quality of games has slipped since the introduction of 14 teams. The transition between the semi pro championship and full time professional super league need's to be addressed with financial safe guards for promoted/relegated teams.

I heard Maurice Lindsay is behind it.

Nigel Wood is in charge of the review so that tells you it is doomed to failure before it starts. What is needed is a review of those running the RFL!

As to P&R its about time people realised that the sport going full time means it is unworkable - full stop.

I don't understand your comment - what do you mean?

That was strongly noted in the Watkins reportHowever, Watkins accepted in his 32-page report that there are "issues around trust" and "confusion about where decisions are made and by whom".

He continued

Here's the original reporthttps://www.therfl.co.uk/~rflmedia/docs/RFL_TheWatkinsReview.pdfrl

It is unworkable because when a team is relegated they have to effectively cease being a professional team. All playing contracts are ripped up and the players become free agents. The team is effectively destroyed.

It isn't just about sporting success and failure it is about money and finance. When the sport was semi-pro relegation was just a sporting failure and the financial aspect wasn't a big factor. Players who worked down the pit carried on working down the pit. They may have earned a bit less in win bonuses in a lower division but then they were not full time professionals whose sole income was from sport.

I forget what the salary cap is in NL1 but I think it is £400K. The SL salary cap which is split between your top 25 players gives an average wage of £64K per player. In NL1 it is £16K.

Now the RFL could say you can carry on with your £1.6m salary cap if you get relegated but what is the point of that? All that would mean is you would win every game the season after and get promoted straight back into SL. More than likely swapping places with the the team who took your place. A complete pointless exercise.

Chairman are saying there is not enough money for a 14 team super league. To make P&R work the gap between the standards in the divisions needs to be much smaller than it is which implies spreading the cash even further.

You want P&R - then start a campaign for a return to semi-professional status for al clubs.

You want P&R - then start a campaign for a return to semi-professional status for al clubs.

What a stupid comment. RL managed for about 100 years with P & R, Its only the last few years it has gone tits up with the licensing crap. You want to send our game back to the dark ages with semi pro's then i am afraid you are in a minority. I was interested in that post until you started talking rubbish.

Every side had the chance to be good when we were all semi-pro. Not our fault that we were streets ahead of everyone else. Are you old Maurice, He got bored of us being too good too.

Fair point but why not introduce parachute payments like in football?

Rubbish. P+R would make Rugby League go backwards. RL stood still as a sport for years whilst watching Union soar past in terms of finances and exposure. The financial gap between the championship and super league is too vast for a team to be ripped apart and rebuilt everytime they go up or down, just doesn't work.

You can't reduce the salary cap in super league as that will dilute the sport even further, so where do you get the extra money from to bump up the championship SC?

For once I agree with Dave O to an extent. The gap between SL and NL1 is too great and the main problem is the finances between the two. Unless the salary caps are similar then it is a pointless exercise for P&R, as Dave said the relegated team has all it's playing contracts ripped up and the promoted team normally picks up the players that are left.

I've always thought that the licensing model should have 3 full cycles to prove itself or not. This review smacks of panic after the Crusaders fiasco (which was mainly the RFL's own making ) & the current Bradford mess.

If the current model is simply reversed back to the old P&R model even with tweaks, we'll go back to teams parachuting NRL players in to ensure SL places & there'll be little incentive to push as much money into the juniors (and their noses might be out of joint when they see their places taken away by panic buying too).

I'm worried that bad decisions are about to be made in haste that will set the game back irrevocably or at least for some long time.

RL has no spare resource to waste, so why bring back relegation where clubs waste time and money on aussies rather than breeding young players as they do in any salary cap sports.