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.

I'm all for promotion & relegation if we had enough competitive and self-sufficient clubs to see a bit of variety, and if the chances of survival for promoted sides were better. Unfortunately, the reality is that we probably have about 16 clubs who might be able to make a go of a top flight club even given more time than one season, and the gap between the 2 divisions is just too hard to bridge more than once every 5 years or so unless another club goes into meltdown. It'll just revert again to 11 or 13 constants and a guest star for that season.

To compare to football, it's not really like looking at a promoted Championship team's chances of survival in the premier league (which are not great), it's closer to sticking a League 2 side straight up there with their part-time squad and 2 months to cobble together the best of everyone else's cast-offs (with no transfer kitty) and seeing how they get on.

i saw it written that Wire, Hull, Hull KR, Huddersfield, Saints & London along with wigan have been highly critical of the rfl plans, so looks like we backed lenegan

rlGary 'No interest in Briscoe' Hetherington not best pleasedrl

rlAnd so it continues....rl

Wonder if he'd have the same clout and coverage if he was still running the powerhouse that is Laaandon

That's an opinion, and arguably a guess. The very fact that some clubs don't want to vote on the proposals shows that they DON'T believe that they will have a positive impact on the WHOLE sport.



From what I can see, it's equally the case that he and the RFL's behaviour is very unsatisfactory, as it seems they just wanted to force through an 8 to 6 vote and avoid the fact that 43% of SL clubs appear to have no confidence in them. To me, for such an important issue as the structure of the competition a majority of more than 2 should be required. If you can't get that you need to keep talking and considering other options until you can get more backing.