rlReported here.rl

Sounds like Lenagan wants to go down the same road as football with the Premier League.

Pull up the drawbridge, keep all the money and let the lower tiers of the game rot.

I will quote 'uknown' we live in interesting times

I'm opposed to the 2 divisons of 12 into 3 divisions of 8 proposal which seemed far to complicated but now seems matters are in dissaray, with talk of staying at 14 teams. It could only happen in RL.

Hope we still go down the route of 2 relegated this season and a 12 team SL with 1 up 1 down thereafter.

Anyone know which way we voted?

last time I checked the English premier league still had promotion and relegation!

as for our club, didn't we go for league of 12 with one up one down?

I hope it does stay as it is. It hasn't been given long enough to see if it will help produce more young players in the long run and the calls for change just seem to me to be panic because of the loss of quality imports and exodus to the NRL. The only thing that does want looking at is the size of the playoffs. 6 teams would be better IMO.

I think it's the loss of interest from fans that's the worry.

No relegation has created dead rubber, meaningless matches.
The top 8 play-offs have lacked intensity and interest.
Having the same teams has become stale.

There needs to be P&R. For all the benefits of player production in a licensed system, there are harder felt negatives from a spectator viewpoint. I was sat on the fence at the time of licensing, but the game is becoming dull. The need to win league games all the time seems to have gone.

2001-2007 were by far the best seasons in RL.

I liked the idea of the 3 x 8 it would give the top 4 in the championship time to build gradually for a full on tilt at SL. In much the same way that football clubs build towards a good European campaign. I certainly failed to see what was so complicated about it. Maybe thats just me. For me it seemed that one person claimed it was complicated and the rest followed. 24 / 3 = 8 whats complicated? Top four of championship challenge themselves against the bottom 4 of SL and if they finish 4th or above they get a bigger bash at the big league next year. Not rocket science. Or have I missed something. The only issue I saw here was the salary cap for championship clubs.

Promotion and relegation how it used to be will only work if the championship clubs go FT or SL clubs are allowed to opperate on a PT basis. This is something I can certainly see happening as FT status is not sustainable for all the clubs.
The salary cap has produced a product that is much the same as before. Only 6 clubs have made the GF and one of those is so skint now it can't even make the play offs. I would relax the cap and allow clubs to spend as they see fit within a squad of 20 which then leaves space for youngsters coming through as no club can opperate with a squad of just 20. This way clubs like Hull who have better revenue streams can flourish. It really irks me that clubs like London can allegedly spend to the full cap the same as us, yet we have really made massive strides to progress the club financially off the field. (I am a supporter of the London franchise though. Its simply run shockingly.)

I am really concerned though that with less than a year to go until these changes were to come into effect they are now scrapped and we are still drifting. It will not assist the game commercially one bit. The RFL need to grow a pair and quickly or hand over the game at the top level to the clubs, similar to the Premiership in football which is seperate to the Football league.

TBH the RFL have made their beds there the second they bent over backwards the way they did with Bradford.
Franchising/licencing became untenable the second they showed that hand because it then became clear that the rules were not being used fairly.

There have always been these types of matches.


Reducing the number of teams in the play-offs to 6 would largely fix this.


Even under P&R you largely had the same teams with the same 2 or 3 yo-yoing between SL and the lower league.


There really doesn't. In fact, it's the last thing SL needs.

But then with licensing's flush having been thoroughly busted, that just leaves the NRL model. Which has been a success - but do we have the stomach for all that entails? Finally and unambiguously pulling up the ladder? Rationalisation (mergers!)?

Bottom line is crowds are decreasing, even the most ardent fans seem to becoming disillusioned. The top teams see league games as pointless and bottom clubs look resigned to having next to no impact on the season.
This kind of apathy is killing the game and something needs to happen, what that something is is the key question.
Back in the heady days of the 80's there certainly seemed more to play for. Yorkshire cup, JP cup, league, relegation, premiership, floodlit etc... Now one hard cup draw early on and a few injuries and it can be season over.

Or, just possibly, years of austerity and real-terms pay-cuts are biting and folk have other things to spend what little cash they have on. Like food, water, gas, and electricity for instance.

Licensing remains the best way forward IMO. But it has to be reformed.

P&R never worked in the past. What's that definition of madness again?

Lenagan and the majority of the other club chairmen have rejected a joke of a proposal. Good on them.

The only way P&R between Professional and Semi-Pro leagues could be made to work was to syphon funds from the Pro league and give them to the Semi-Pro league. In effect they wanted to reduce the quality of SL to bring it closer to the Championship just to make P&R remotely feasible. They should be looking at how to level up, not down.