Will Accrington Stanley be in the mix, if so it means that I am starting to understand the system.+++

Even if it looks like it [idoes[/i work, I'll lay odds that the RFL will bottle it in 5 or 6 years & dream up some other half-baked idea.
The franchise/licensing (whatever you call it) was starting to work. Would Cas be where they are now without it? would the French have as good a squad as they have with the support they routinely garner? All imponderables, but the experiment hadn't run its course before they decided to start fiddling & burned the paperwork. London & Bradford aren't victims of the system, they have been poorly run (on and off the field) for the last 10 years or so, and their demise was always when not if. What pillock was really responsible for thinking that setting up a league team next door to RFU headquarters was ever going to work?

The real problem is that we have an inept and incompetent game leadership who couldn't advertise ice-cream in Dubai & get it to sell.

I don't want to go into a Meltdown but I do agree that the RFL doesn't have the best people running it. As people on here have said, it is run by 'careerists' who have only ever worked in Red Hall and have very little experience of business outside Leeds. This is my criticism. As Lenagen said, Blake Solly is just a kid who's good with the media but he is no way fit to run a competition which hopes to expand in coming years. The competition would be better run by someone with proven experience and success in the business world and not by someone who gets promotions by taking Nigel Wood cups of Tea to his desk.

Hit the nail on the head.

Don't you see that as a problem though? I keep up with the RL media as I am sure you do but neither of us know the ins and outs of the 2015 competition.

It should be nailed down already. Looks totally amateurish it's not finalised already.

Have they ever considered a novel and unique system where the team with the most points over the whole season (ie the best and most consistent team) is given the title champions? Throw in all the marketing currently spent on Magic, Exiles etc into a revitalised Challenge Cup.

The new system has the following serious flaws:

You play 30 regular rounds just to gain a home tie in the playoffs.
Too many games.
As you don't take points gained into the relegation group clubs already booked into the top 4 / bottom 4 will freewheel.
A team scraping into 7th / 8th after 23 rounds will have no chance of making the 4 and will become cannon fodder.
The dual reg scheme will be discredited as you could finish up in the same comp as your partners.
Teams in the relegation group playing under different salary caps.

That was a previous experiment that was scrapped when the best team (Wigan) won it every year. Even the top 4 system is not so novel. It was the standard way of establishing champions until the 1970's when the First division was established with the team finishing top was declared champions.

And what's wrong with the best team winning it (and haven't one club dominated the current system over the last 8 years)?

Nail on the head! Loads of people will just moan regardless

(Some) People don't like change.
I think the new structure could actually work (but cash has to find its way to the second tier, or it [iwill[/i be a joke).

I think the licensing system could have proved itself, given another cycle.

The problem is that there are too many vested interests in Red Hall & elsewhere around the game to be properly impartial, and they all have too much of a short term view. I don't see or hear any planning for 8 or 12 years ahead, for example, which is what there has to be if we are to truly prosper & not just chase our tails.

The top four play off was because, way back in time, there was just one big league and too many teams to allow every team to play every other team home and away. For instance a Lancashire team played every other team from it's county twice but not so Yorkshire teams. It was therefore considered that the team finishing top could not be called true champions as they may not have played the same fixtures as the teams below. Thus a top four play off was brought in. That is not now the situation and the play off is just a way of screwing the attending public for more cash. The side effect is that clubs don't go all out to finish top if they can see an advantage in resting players for the play off series. Do you honestly believe that Huddersfield would have finished top last season if there had been no play offs. It's a crazy system and one that other major sports find unbelievable. Better to have replaced it with a second cup competition. The magic weekend could have been the first round of this competition and not the daft extra league fixture as exists.

I think you misunderstand. In business, organisations change for a reason - what reason has been given for moving from the franchise system to the proposed new structure? When was that communicated in detail to us, the RFL's largest stakeholder group?

I love this game but I cannot see why they want to introduce a new model so soon after introducing the franchise which has allowed clubs to develop a wealth of new talent? Fans are leaving by the droves, Championship crowds are pathetic and over half of the current Superleague clubs suffer from the same problem i.e. they cannot attract new punters - why? I would like to see a clear rationale from the RFL which sets out their case for change and a strategic plan.

As I have said before, we are sleep walking into a disaster

My point was merely that the suggestion of the team finishing top or a top 4 play-off (irrespective of why it was introduced) is not novel as was stated by a previous post. These have both been used before.

However, my view is that whichever system is used the 'best team' (as opposed to 'the most consistent team' usually wins the competition and is crowned Champions and so I don't have an issue with that. Having some sort of play-off system maintains interest until the end of the season. I don't go along with the assertion that it is just to generate money. So the question for me then is which is the best play-off system? Of those tried so far I prefer the top 5 system (because it gave more reward to those finishing higher up the table) although the top 6 system had it's merits as well. I am keeping an open mind on the new system which I think could actually work quite well.

I was being sarcy!