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.

You can't reform or revivify something so utterly damaged, IMO. 'Licensing - this time we're going to do it properly' - try selling that to the Championship clubs!
They trusted it once and will be familiar with that definition of madness too, I'm sure.

While that would help improve the quality of play off games, it also contributes to more dead rubbers, as teams further down the ladder find the play offs beyond their reach.

Having just read the RFL statement about how administration of the licensing process basically made them useless at the commercial stuff I think I may change my mind and agree with you. FFS.



If we have a chance at putting together a competently run franchise/license scheme that remains by far the best option. Of course that would seem to be predicated on replacing the entire RFL now...

BTW, I'm really not interested in selling anything to the Championship clubs. Way too much 'tail wagging the dog' goes on in this sport as it is.

Exactly right. So called professional clubs are often just an amateur organisation that are trying to buy status usually by paying players more than they are worth or can afford. Too many of these teams are trying to emulate their neighbours and compete with them for talent and spectators thus simply diluting the pool of talent and money available. If we keep going down that route we'll end up with a bigger game at a more and more amateur level. The best talent will always look to exploit it and will go to other sports , Union especially , if there is no prospect of making money and hitting the "big time" in League in the UK. There just has to be an elite group of clubs for the best talent to aspire to and it has to be of a size that allows that talent to be spread so that the competition is more intense. 12 teams max and a top 5 or 6 playoff and carry on with the , admittedly flawed , licence system with some tougher rules in the hope that the young talent that is around the academies of Wigan , Saints , Leeds and hopefully Hull and Rovers are given a truly professional game to aspire to.

The dead rubbers are a result of the vastly differing quality of clubs in SL. No system is going to eliminate them without first addressing that underlying issue. Stretching the playoffs to include clubs with no realistic chance of competing in them fixes nothing.

The same with P&R - it would be the same few clubs involved every year, changing only when one or more of them went out of business.

Possibly, but we can't then be surprised if they decide to go off and pursue their own agendas and interests. Or FOaD.

A tail-less dog, with a multiple personality disorder and no master, is my fear for a SL club coup.

My bet is on some sort of half-d compromise that manages to combine the worst of all possible options. But then I'm both a cynic and a pessimist.

At least you won't be disappointed!

I would imagine you would struggle to get anyone to take up that bet.