I have mixed feelings on this.

First I can see the attraction of promotion and relegation. It gives the bottom teams in the league a lot more to play for and the top clubs in the Championship the chance to work their way up in a slightly more romantic way than franchising.

But then I have my doubts that the game is strong enough for this. People point to recent administrations as some sort of proof that franchising is not effective at protecting clubs from their own over-ambition. I don't know if that argument really follows. I think it could be the case that lots more clubs would have gone to the wire in a desperate bid to remain in the top flight had it not been for franchising. And financial difficulties clubs have ran into are more fundamental than systemic, in that people who own rugby league clubs have a greater tendency to be a bit thick. Added to this recent economic conditions and I think a lot of the recent issues with Bradford, Wakefield, Salford can't really be put at the door of franchising. If anything promotion and relegation would have exacerbated these issues.

Finally from a Widnes supporters point of view. I'm a bit annoyed to be honest. We've played by the rules and now suddenly it's all changed. I think we've had quite a strong idea of where we wanted to be going and now the environment has changed and within a year we have to restructure to ensure we finish 12th or above (if stories circulating are true). I don't really like it. I think our attempts to try and grow our own talent will have to come second to pure short-termism and for us it's a bit of a gamble and for the game as a whole it's quite reckless.

I feel sorry for Steve O'Connor really, it would have been so easy for him to just buy promotion in his first year after administration. But franchising had just come in and he played by the rules and got rejected at the first attempt. Then he stuck around and did everything right to ensure we got a place to dismay of many fans who felt we should be performing better on the pitch. Now we're in super league and improving and we've got to abandon the plan. It's rubbish to be honest.

The bottom line is that to survive next season and into 2015 you have to bring in 6 - 8 NRL players who will do a job for you. That job is to stay in Super League.
You have been doing it right in introducing younger players, however they make mistakes and sometimes they can cost games.
Next season you can't afford those mistakes and that's where seasoned and battle hardened NRL men can do the job for you.
You may not like it, I most certainly don't, you have to deal with it though.
You cannot risk your survival on the current squad.
Cas have improved already, Wakey can win games against their closest rivals and Salford will be far better after Koukash has splashed the cash.
London are in a bad place, you have to make sure you are not!

I do not have much faith in us not being one of the two teams to go with the current coaching set up.

I do not think DB is capable of keeping us in SL.

It will be interesting to see how the rest of the season pans out - if we continue in free - fall then lets hope the chief executive realises that change is required.

Out of interest, does anybody have the stats on DB results since he came to Widnes - championship included.

Maybe Cas, ours is signed and sealed. Opening 2016 if all goes to plan, access road and surrounding units under construction by the end of this year.

About time too

It looks like whos gets the best players next season will stay up,going back to what it used to be like,the days of the yoyo teams return

Not the "best players" it will be the clubs who gets the "best team together". You can have the best players in the world but if they don't "gel" they will suffer.