another point to make is that a 20 team league could work if we brought in an elite international squad who were paid centrally or part centrally by the RFL and did not count on the salary cap. These players could only play in a certain number of games in the season i.e 25 games. It would be up to the clubs which games they played but they couldn't play more than the set amount. This would combat the elite players who play in the trinations and european nations from suffering burn out. Hopefully this would benefit the clubs and the international game. Thoughts????

sounds great in concept but you would need to worry about how many of those per team to keep it fair. Imagine if for 25 games 1 team had almost a full 13 of these elite players then had the whole cap to get the back up for the rest of the league. Add to this how many quality players would come in as back up for the other 13 games? I like the 20 team league though would need some mid week games plus saturday and sunday though to accomodate the cup.
s

First let me admit to a little bit of bias. having been born and bred in Cumbria I would like to see a cumbrian team in superleague. I have also had a look back at the 95/96 season just before superleague and note that there were 16 clubs in the old first division. i do not think that it it is to much to accomodate a superleague of 16 clubs ie a further 2 clubs. By doing this it would be possible to accomodate 2 more clubs. as I understand the criteria for chapionship teams to get a licence was to win the Northern rail cup or get to the grand final in the 3 years prior to recieving a licence. Therefore as it stands this would be Halifax and Barrow( grand finalists last year) and Widness Northern rail winners. If Toulouse do not need to achieve this criteria I think it makes a mockery of the licencing, they new the rules!! Personaly I would like to see Barrow and widness in the next superleague and achieve this by going to 16 clubs. I also think that there ought to be some criteria layed down for keping a licence so that we do not have a repeat of Celtic and Salford ground. This would still leave the door open for Championship sides to progress as well as FORCING superleagu clubs to keep to their licence aplication.

at the moment if stadiums ect dont start to be built then barrow, halifax, widnes in for salford, wakey, quins

Why? Whats wrong with quins stadium. What makes Barrows ground any better than salfords?

I know this post is old but whatever. The problem with Quins probably isn't their stadium it's the fact that their fanbase is pretty low. However I think that we should have a London team in the league providing they are competitive as it would be a bit wrong to have French and Welsh teams but not a London team. What I don't understand though is why people are looking at another French side rather than for example Barrow or Whitehaven? Or Widnes. I think Salford may be a lost cause also. I have a friend who is a student at Salford University and she cannot find a pub in Salford which shows Rugby League EVEN IF SALFORD ARE PLAYING! I am not sure how well she has looked but I know she has rung in excess of 10 pubs near to the uni and all have said they don't show any.

its surprising but lots of eareas around here dont put the rugby on . southport for one
i know we need to expand it but for me france is not the way to go

But weren't most of the clubs in that league semi-pro at the time?

I doubt SL will get any more money off Sky to fund an expanded league and so unless the money is there to make the teams competitive I don't see how it could be done. I quite like the idea myself of a bigger league but now the game is professional money comes into it.



It does but so does the guarantee of one NL side getting into SL in 2011. They could well be poorer on meeting the criteria than all current SL teams so why should a SL team drop out of they meet the SL criteria better?



I think Widnes will go up and that will allow the RFL to meet their guarantee of promoting a SL club without too much opposition if any. Who knows if Toulouse will be fast tracked with them but I suppose if two sides go up one of which is Toulouse then given the other will be a side from the heartlands the RFL will think they have done their duty.

Dave

I think we're already struggling for quality British players without expanding the league, a quality league of 16 with the new rules about imports is not going to happen.

I would love to see a team from Cumbria in Super League but the rivalries up there would make it pretty difficult to do. Any of the existing Cumbrian teams alone are going to be limited crowd-wise by the relatively low population in the area. I reckon if they'd had a merger years ago when they were talking about it, it would have gone down like a lead balloon at first but they would be in a position now to have a competitive/popular team in Super League, even though Barrow is miles away from Workington/Whitehaven, which would pose the obvious question of where they would play.

Workington and Whitehaven would work well geographically but Barrow could never really be included due to them being over an hours drive away from Whitehaven. I think a "Cumbria" side somewhere in the middle of the three would be brilliant for expansion but I don't imagine you would find any fans (except maybe at Workington as they're in Championsip 1) that would be willing to allow it. Imagine if someone told Widnes and Warrington they were to merge to form "Cheshire" or if Leeds and Bradford were asked to merge too. It would feel pretty bad for those fans tbh. I love the idea though the Lake District would make a nice long weekend for the Rugby. Somewhere near Windermere Ambleside perhaps ha. I think the only way a merger will happen is if one of the teams is going under and need it to survive.

It would also depend on the benefits for the other club(s). The Cumbria SL team is something I just can't see ever getting off the ground.

When SL was first envisaged it included "made up" teams like Calder (I think that was supposed be in West Yorkshire) to make sure areas had a competitive team but it did go down like lead balloon.

Regardless of that there is a snag of having just one team in a region and that is if they fail for any reason then the region loses it's team. In RU Sale look likely for the drop and so that could be the end of top flight RU in the North West. That's s big area to leave without representation at the top of the sport so any regional RL sides such as a Cumbrian one, Quins in London and the Crusaders need a lot of support and I wonder how much willingness there is to give it seeing as how easily South Wales was left behind with the Crusaders.

Dave

A rugby league presence was guaranteed in South Wales in the aftermath of the Crusaders' relocation. Wales now has two professional clubs with the emphasis of at least one on developing and bringing through Welsh talent.

Yes I know but I meant if the Crusaders went from Wrexham as easily as they went from South Wales that would be a problem. I don't think they would leave another pro side behind them and in any case I don't think doing so when that pro side is a lower league one is much compensation.

There are lots of RU sides such as Macclesfield and Chester who do well in the lower RU leagues but the interest is in Sale with many supporters from those areas following the top flight club because they are in the top flight. I am not convinced if Sale get relegated they will transfer their allegiance to the lower league sides as actual pay on the gate supporters and I don't see this being any different in RL for what you might call a "regional" side.

Dave