Please show your support and sign our petition to prevent the RFL scrapping the Northern Rail Cup in 2014. Please spread the word we need as many signatures as possible to get our point across. www.petitions24.com/signatures/r ... ed_in_2014

Please show your support and sign our petition to prevent the RFL scrapping the Northern Rail Cup in 2014. Please spread the word we need as many signatures as possible to get our point across. www.petitions24.com/signatures/r ... ed_in_2014

I'm glad it's gone. Micky Mouse competition. It's the league that counts.

Scrapping the cup is madness, 2 home game revenues lost to every club in a league that is already struggling to make ends meet.
I'm sure most clubs have already started selling season tickets. If these tickets included the 2 group home matches what are they meant to do if the cup is scrapped.

I really cant see the logic in scrapping it for the 2014 season, I could maybe understand if they took a look at getting rid for the 2015 if the restucture takes place.

It's good the Northern Rail Cup has gone. In 2014, Championship clubs will be going all out to achieve a top half of the league finish so that they will be in Super League 2 in 2015. The league is therefore so important in 2014 that a NR cup competition would have been devalued anyway, with clubs probably choosing to play largely their under 20 teams. From 2015, assuming the 2x12 / 3x8 structure, in Super League 2 there'll be 23 (inc the Magic Weekend) league matches in the 12 and another 7 league matches in the 8 making 30 in total. Then Challenge Cup matches and play-offs. That's plenty.

Thats plenty for 2015 (if restructuring takes place) but what about 2014.

2 less home matches with say 400 that pay on the day is a loss of £12,000 income on match tickets alone.

I know the league is going to be very important in 2014 which probably means clubs are going to spend beyond their means to stay there anyway, plus now they have two less home matches to claw back some of the money that they will spend in trying to keep a team in the top half.

Plus it seems that the restucturing seems far from certain with nearly half the super league clubs walking out of a meeting to ratify these changes yesterday

Why can't we restore the County Cup competition for the Championship teams? At the end the champions of Yorkshire could play the champions of Lancashire.