Listening to JD and JK on the radio after the game yesterday, their view appeared to be that the weakness of franchising is now becoming apparent, in that teams who are at risk cannot recruit (or, rather, we cannotr recruit). Willie Poching appeared to be in agreement.

I know that we are bound to speak out against it, because we are most at risk. However, we could never be called safe with promotion and relegation. If we got a franchise and Newmarket, would we be against it then?

Barring financial meltdowns, I would imagine that the next set of licenses will determine the Super League forever and a day, because everyone will have new grounds, apart from Bradford.

So, upsides for franchising:
1. nailed-on licensed clubs can plan for the future.
2. the clubs will not have had a short winter of recruitment when coming up, and so no more yo-yo whipping boy clubs.
The downside:
1. at risk clubs can't plan ahead.
2. puts emphasis on things other than rugby
3. who gives a jot what happens once the play-off places are more or less sorted, and so crowds suffer

My own opinion is that I would like to see a return to promotion and relegation, but it should be unconditional. The big clubs will always avoid it, and so what if clubs like Keighley get to the Super League. If they have earned it, they deserve it. The reality is that most of the successful lower league clubs will have decent facilities anyway.

So is there a groundswell moving away from franchising, or was it just the complaints of a club at risk?

I can't help but feel that clubs outside the Super League are being let down and fans are not turning up to matches because they have nothing to play for. It appears that The RFL does not care about heartlands teams like Halifax. Rugby League is only going to decrease in popularity if things carry on as they are.

Absolutely fantastic post, i agree with everything that you say. I think the point about boaring games and suffering crowds is a huge one. If you look at Bradford quins and Catalans for example, they have had bad seasons and now have no chance of making the playoffs so there last few games have been irrelivent but if relagation was in existance then their games would have been exciting and had an edge and in my opinion added greatly to the competition.

had the franchise system worked the way it was supposed to ie. if over the three year period a consistently strong team in the championship were to appear and a consistently poor team in superleague, then it would be reasonable to switch the two.

however in reality what we have been left with is two competitions that are utterly pointless.

superleague may as well be reduced to 6 teams as no one outside that is going to win it.
as for the rest of SL they could be relegated regardless of where they finish.

and as for the championship, what is the point of even carrying on with it? again its a worthless competition.

once again a good idea poorly executed by the rfl.

rugby league is quickly becoming a circus instead of a sport

Franchising, but done properly, like the NRL & American sports where once you're in, you're in unless you go bust or relocate, then add more teams when appropriate.

always promotion/relegation for me...the main reason i stopped going two years ago was the franchising..

Fev 17 wins 2 losses 1 match to go, championship shield winners yet at the moment we ]can't] apply for SL because we've not reached a grand final or won the northern rail cup, pure madness.

Batley can because they've won the northern rail cup yet are 7 wins 12 losses with 1 game to go, pure madness.

Toulouse have won squat and haven't even qualified for the play offs yet can go up if the RFL decide to let them in as a 'special case' because they are in a development area, pure madness.

Fans ]are] staying away because there is no chance of us going up and when teams do get close to the requirements the goalposts are moved.

The top teams in SL are safe but there are about half a dozen who aren't and if any do go down to get back in you won't be competing against clubs like Fev or Halifax but Toulouse and any other development club who decide they want a piece of the action.

Promotion and relegation is vital if the sport is to grow because then new clubs can start at the bottom and work up the pyramid and have a business plan to reach SL by their on the field exploits and not at the whim of a bunch of people who clearly don't understand the basics of fair competition..
To me it's a no brainer and I would say 99% of Championship/1 fans would agree.

if we was bottom of the super league and it meant being relegated and being replaced by fev then fair dos let them take a crack at it

Totally agree with you, and I've said this all along. SL will take care of itself. The RFL have to make the Championship a competition that clubs want to play in for franchising to work. They have to raise its profile and pump some brass into it. Kill off the game at the roots, and it's only a matter of time before the SL flower withers and dies.

Re. franchising itself. 2 years is nowhere near enough time to be able to pass judgement or reap the rewards, IMO. If the main aim is to improve the game by bringing in homegown talent, how on earth does anyone expect to see a massive improvement in 2 seasons? We won the Academy GF last season, but a lot of the lads who may be good enough in the future will certainly not figure at this stage, at least, not on a permanent basis.

I'm tempted to say bin it, because of what we're witnessing now, but I think it should be given another 3 years, with massive effort to support and market the championship clubs at the same time. If the result is still the same at the end of it, ditch it and go back to where we were. At least then, most of us might enjoy our sport again.

Promotion and relegation is what we need

franchising is the worstything that this sport could come up with

Groundhog Day anyone? I could have sworn we did this thread last week, and the week before come to that.

I agree, and I started the thread because of JK's comments on the radio.

JK said that he was initially in favour of franchising, but now he has seen it in action, he is not so sure. He referred the nailbite of a relegation scrap and the inability of at-risk clubs to recruit due to uncertainty. That will always be the case for a couple of clubs every franchise round, unless the RFL close the door for ever to all the rest.

You are entitled to try something and decide that it isn't working. There is no interest at all in the Super League from 10th place downwards. That's 5 clubs playing out dead rubbers. How many fans are not going to bother with the final couple of games when they don't mean anything?

My main gripe with promotion and relegation as it stood before was that whether you came up depended on who was due to come down, rather than whether you were the best team in the league below, with things like Huddersfield "mergers" to keep the Galpharm in the Super League. I have no problem with being relegated if it is because of on-field merit (or lack of it), and whoever shows on-field merit in the league below should come up. Our concern in 2006 was that even if we won the championship grand final every year, the RFL wouldn't let us back up again.

I accept that they will give it one more round, but has the reality of franchising created a better sport? Too early to tell maybe, and I suppose we don't have any whipping boys anymore, but it's pretty dull below 9th spot.

Thread cleaned up.

Does anyone know whether the crowds have gone down in the lower leagues? Or even in the Super League?

The way to assess it, I suppose, would be to see how crowds have been affected at the bottom, rather than the top. How do the average crowds for the final ten games for the bottom five clubs compare to the average crowds for the bottom five clubs for the pre-franchise years?