I appreciate there are a lot of technicalities to sort out and not knowing how many games you are paying for will be an issue for some, although there could be a way around this by offering some sort of voucher to attend a free away game in the later part of the season (I know not everyone can travel away) but at the end of the day if you are finishing outside of the 8 you've probably had a lousy season, been stuffed by the "good" teams and possibly had nothing to play for the last month of the season.
This way at the end of the season even the poorer teams, at least theoretically, get a series of close games that they actually have a chance of winning and most definitely have something to play for.
I see the biggest issue being if the disparity between the 4 superleague teams and the 4 championship teams is so vast that the outcome is a foregone conclusion.
In my opinion as a solution the restructure is a long way from perfect but also is a long way from the disaster that many people are suggesting it is, time will tell I suppose

surely the feeling behind buying a season pass is that you dont care who the opposition is, and that you will support the home team whomever they are playing?

load of tripe

Totally agree with this, I know people have different circumstances but I find it difficult to believe that for the majority of season ticketholders the reason for buying the season ticket is because its cheaper than paying on the day. Surely its much more complex than this and is primarily to do with supporting "your" club. Once things have settled down I can't see the new structure having a massive impact on season ticket sales.

The very thought!





I accept that being over encumbered by principle isn't a recipe for success in this context. Or many others.

But it'd have to have been finely balanced to give him much leverage.

Giving up on scruple - liberating, innit?!

I really find this hard to understand.

If, god forbid, we finish in the top 8, the 3x8 will be against the top 8 SL teams.

...and the first 22 fixtures won't include the bottom 2 clubs in SL 2014.

I guess it's not worth the risk.

The whole things a farce. I just don't get the idea of the 3rd tier. Is this right?. The 8 bottom places of the championship playing each other for exactly what?. Being poor?. These clubs wont get many supporters coming in as it is. Its got disaster written all over it.

Has it been announced how many games will be played when the 3 split leagues start or are people just making wild guesses ?

It's got "The RFL" written all over it!

I think the best way of looking at this is we will have a 12 team Super League with a 23 game season.
We then have playoffs, top 8, with a guaranteed minimum 3 home games, maybe 4. Following this the top 4 have a straight knockout to get to the Grand Final (so no winning it from 5th). All seem fairly straightforward to me.

In respect of passes I would assume the clubs will offer a pass to cover the regular games and the initial 3 or 4 playoff games, so either 14 or 15 home games. I can see this as being priced as paying for 13 with one or two games free, much as current passes give a discount of 2 games in the discount period.

In respect of The middle 8, they have their playoff for the 4 Super League places for the following year. Yes it's weighted in favour of the existing Super League teams but it does give a possible route into the top flight for the top 'Super League 2' (or whatever it's called). Don't see a problem with this either. And if we finished between 9 - 12 I really don't have an issue if some of our games would be against Sheffield, Fev etc. makes a change and at the end of the day I enjoy supporting Hull and would be there irrespective of the opposition.

The bottom set of 8 presumably play off for increased prize money for a higher up finish and I suspect the bottom placed team will be relegated to Div 3. This would give a long term route to the top for some of the newer expansion teams in the bottom league.

I believe our Club and the rest will do a one season pass they have to, the other scenarios are financial suicide and anyway doesn't anyone consider that if you finish in the top 8 you'll play those teams 3 times maybe 4 times depending on the paly-offs which could at the very least be pretty repetitive, but whatever happens no one will know who they are playing in the last 6 games until round 23!