The fifth & eighth placed teams in the Super League played each other at the birthplace of Rugby League in the first round of the play offs the attendance was given as 5869
At the Blue Square Premier League football match between Luton Town & Cambridge Utd the attendance was 6691 makes you think don't it.

it's the age-old problem of spreading the game to the southern parts of england to get more people interested etc etc
it's the same problem in france - nobody north of Toulouse has any interest in the 13s version except or a few ex-pat southern frenchmen in the Paris area
unfortunately these attitudes will never change...

Game will never spread whilstever the RFL and superleague keep ing about with daft rules like Stevo's favourite 'momentum rule' and no promotion/relegation etc and plonking Superleague clubs in disinterested backwaters while letting traditional clubs rot.
The whole set up is a farce.

spot on Gargoyle but don't include Perpignan or Toulouse in the definition of 'disinterested backwaters' - the potential is massive down here

Theres 'potential' everywhere, the Summer conference is almost nationwide. But the spread of the game in England should have taken place gradually away from the traditional heartland of the M62 corridor (Mansfield/Nottingham, Gateshead, Scarborough spring to mind) then onwards towards the Midlands.
Instead we get outposts like London/Harlequins, S.Wales (that has flopped yet again!) and Paris St Germain/Catalans and Toulouse playing in leagues they were never promoted to and clearly aren't good enough to compete in!
Meanwhile traditional clubs like Halifax, Featherstone and Dewsbury struggle and others (Bramley and Huyton for instance) go out of existence.
Superleagues emergence has alot to answer for.

It's all well and good spreading the game, but it has to be done fairly. How can business plans be accepted for promotion when they have no business background to back these projections? If they are in a league the should abide by the rules, i.e. overseas player quota, salary cap etc...

why are traditional clubs like Fev,Fax,Bramley Huyton etc etc etc struggling ? not because of Toulouse or Dragons cos' they DO have positive business plans just as snagsbosun indicated - the model is from his town of Doncaster - after all the ups & downs of Donny over the decades Carl Hall & co are TRYING to make it work at least - the failure of all these so called traditional clubs in the championship etc is mostly of their own making - you have to cut your cloth accordingly,end of.- RL in London area is booming according the reports i've heard - it's fashionable to blame the RFL & the SL for everything nowadays but the clubs have to take responsability for themselves - the good old days of flat-cap rugby league is finished,it's time to move on...

Most of the current clubs outside of the Super League haven't yet managed to find the back door entrance to the Super League & they aren't allowed to have large numbers of Australian & New Zealand players in there squads

BTW the Giants have increased their Crowd 111% in last ten years and still get stick from some of the other super league clubs fans on numbers viewtopic.php?f=26&t=470759

BTW the Giants have increased their Crowd 111% in last ten years and still get stick from some of the other super league clubs fans on numbers viewtopic.php?f=26&t=470759

not everyone can be in the SL or the Championship/1 so the obvious way to make it fairer would be to go back to the promotion/relegation system and scrap the present franchise lottery - you either earn your place or not,as the case may be

I used to like it when the Shudds played at Fartown.
They were the fart owners.

Totally agree Promotion and relegation whoever the club may be should be the way forward.

I think if the same rules & criteria as used in the football premiership were adopted for SL ie parachute payments for relegated teams etc I think it could work.I also believe a more polished form of the 'dual registration' system would be a great bonus for the lower leagues,allowing the general standards to rise throughout the lower divisions.
Another contraversial idea - why not have two SL leagues of ten teams each ? the bottom two from each are relegated and the top five from each go into a play-off series with each top play-off team playing in the Grand Final ?
OK lads & lasses,shoot me down !