Definitely. The game needs to stop being short sighted. If one thing does come of Leeds Wigan Kr etc being in relegation battle i hope it gives people a kick to stop relegation.

I would agree with most of that, and certainly the direction. However, I feel there should be a genuine thought process to look at dropping Wakefield, Salford and Leigh from it, and possibly Huddersfield should be forced to merge with Halifax. I would have liked to see the game support as soon as possible to grow a big challenge from the Cumbria region to replace one of those, even if that involves mergers in that area, and hopefully Newcastle can replace one of the others.

I agree with what's been said above. I suspect that if Leeds or Wigan are in danger of going down this season towards the end, they'll announce that the number of teams are expanding.

Loop fixtures are a complete farce!

With regards to franchising. I seem to remember a few years ago that a RU championship team finished top, but weren't allowed to be promoted because they couldn't meet requirements for grounds. That strikes me as the best idea. Have certain standards you must meet if you are to be in SL. Mainly, have a decent ground (or be working towards it actively) and an academy/reserves/womens side. If you win the champ and don't have those in place, you can't get promoted.

I do think it's too boring at the bottom end of the table if there's no threat of relegation. Too many meaningless games.

Yep, agree 100%. With every team in superleague being competitive and with the championship going the way its going, nxt season would seem an ideal time to move to 14 teams. Its rugby league though, probably makes way too much sense for it to happen.

In some ways that's a good thing, for some reason (and this started with the stupid middle 8s) the focus is all about the bottom rather than what's going on at the top, clubs should be striving ti get into the top 5 not scrabbling around trying to stay up.

The NRL doesn't have this issue but then again it only seems to be the British that are overly bothered about P&R. Look at the table as it is, there's 8 points between bottom and 5 with 24 points still to play for, theoretically every team has something to play for as they could all make the top 5, instead we are all talking about relegation - the focus is all wrong, IMHO.

Indeed. And i would imagine the play offs would be extended to 6 teams in the similar format to what we have now with the top 2 getting the second chance still.

Like you say everybody should be striving to get themselves in the 6 not just surviving in the division.

I am a confirmed expansionist and certainly agree that Cumbria should be explored , but just out of interest what makes say Castleford a more attractive proposition than the teams that you consider worth dropping ?

They have proven they can attract crowds. They have a fine youth production record. They have formed a brand that seems to work now. The areas of say Wakefield that are really captured by the game go to Cas anyway.

Agree we as a sport bottled it last time with licensing. We gave in to the demands of the lower league clubs, the tail was very much wagging the dog. I’m not keen on Robert Elstone because I trust him as far as I could throw Lolohea. But I hope at least his appointment means that the sport won’t be making such decisions in the future.
Unfortunately they’ve made the same mistakes as 10+ years ago with the boring, unimaginative, lazy loop fixtures.

I’m massively in favour of licensing. I don’t see how the sport can ignore the massive success and growth of the NRL that a licensed league has played a big part in helping create.
However, I can’t help but remember that god awful, cringe-inducing press conference we had at the start of licensing where the charisma black-hole that is Richard Lewis was stood in front of a sh|t PowerPoint presentation of spinning club logos as each one was announced.
Please, please! Anything but that again!

Not sure what all this talk about licensing is about weve only just gone back to 1 up 1 down surely were not changing again????

You can change SL to as many teams as you want but it will mean less money for the clubs currently there and they wint vote for that.

Elstone cant be judged until the next TV deal is announced. If he comes back with a mega deal hes good if he doesn't hes just like the rest. That and the next world cup in England are the 2 most important things for the sport

What if he got an improved deal but that meant the same money per club and more clubs?

That's my view Batley - genuine expansion bringing in overseas clubs has the potential at least to lead to a bigger TV deal. It wouldn't be hard to get Sky's views on the impact of different mixes. One thing's for sure, the idea of replacing a Wigan or Leeds with Widnes or Leigh would make the comp instantly less attractive.

Easy to say that as a Leeds fan. Wonder if you would say the same as a Widnes or Leigh fan?

There isn't enough of them to bother about that one though. When there are, then their voice should be heard.

That's irrelevant tho. There are probably more of them than Salford and Hudds certainly in Leigh's case.

They would probably take more fans than we did to Wigan, Salford and Wakey games also. Our away following is embarrassing.

I find this Cumbria for Super League rhetoric bizarre. Yes the amateur game is played up there but one club is at the bottom of the Championship and the other 2 are in League One, they generally get attendances of under 1000.

The towns are too small and isolated to become anything other than a Championship club. It would be great if the three of them were able to become strong Championship clubs.

Promotion and relegation needs to be decided on the field, with a minimum criteria for entering Super League. The only exception to this is I would grant any North American club an exemption from relegation, a transatlantic Championship makes no sense whatsoever.

I agree Sir Kev but is this even up for debate???

I disagree about P&R. It exists to keep a few teams happy, does nothing for the long-term of the sport and the 'interest' it creates is really closer to panic as clubs struggle to get up/stay up and makes it really hard for anyone to build for the future.

There are lots of pro sports around the world where P&R doesn't exist, and I don't see that the supposed benefits (keeping a few thousand Championship fans happy) outweigh the costs. Don't anyone say 'tradition' - the sport has still had far longer without any P&R (right up to the early 70s) than it did with it. The long term solution for me is franchising from a position of strength, and gradually expanding if possible, based on expanding total player numbers.

P&R makes sense when you have a very strong second tier with plenty of viable top flight clubs around. Like football. RU has all but got rid of it because they recognise that they have basically just 12 English teams of sufficient size and the rest are nowhere. That's in a much richer sport with a far bigger geographic base. In SL we have 4 or 5 genuinely 'big' clubs, and a bunch of second tier ones. Suggesting that Widnes or Leigh, neither of which will ever be more than mid-size in SL is no different from Leeds or Wigan is laughable.

Great post.

I’m not sure I really agree with any of that.

Franchising only ever seems to be proposed by the “haves” not the “have nots”.

If there was a genuinely independent and fully transparent way of doing it that not only looked at lower tier clubs wanting to come up but also upper tier clubs that weren’t making progress then I might be on board with it.

The fundamental problem isn’t P&R it’s a lack of money in the game IMO.

The problem with franchising is their is very little between Wakefield, Huddersfield, Halifax, Salford, Leigh, Widnes, Bradford, York, London in terms of what they add to the competition. How do you choose who should be in Super League and who should be in the Championship.

You may be right but isn’t franchising a better vehicle with which to bring in new money, rather than the merri-go-round of “traditional” clubs dancing between the leagues every year?

A big component for me would be youth development and community work. Spreading the catchment for players just can’t be a bad thing. Too many clubs squabbling over too little talent in too small a geography isn’t the future IMO.

One of the problems with the old franchising model was that the criteria and KPIs were so poorly thought out. They measured the wrong things and encouraged the wrong behaviours.

The attendances one was a classic case in point - clubs were graded on whether they averaged 10k or not (I think that's the number). For clubs that could sell 10k reguarly, it was an easy box to tick. But for the rest, it simply encouraged them to offer cheap and free tickets across the board, under-selling the sport and cutting their profit margin.

It was particuarly acute for a club like Bradford. They were on that 7/8k mark at the time (if I remember rightly) and introduced "The Pledge" campaign - cheap tickets if enough committed to buying them. It meant that they ended up giving massive discounts to people who would have happily paid full price, rather that offering more targeted and tactical promotions. It was a stupid idea, lazy marketing, but the franchsing criteria encouraged it. Whilst it wasn't the cause of their financial worries by any stretch, it certainly didn't help their cause.

We're still seeing the fall-out of that culture. The sport has massively under-sold itself for years to the point where, despite being one of (if not the) cheapest professional sports to watch in the UK, we have discount codes left, right and centre for England internationals, Magic Weekend tickets with extended "50% off" offers and clubs like Huddersfield still offering tickets for barely over £100 a season. And seasoned fans know the drill now - there's no 'fear of missing out' encouraging you to buy early, and buying later usually means you can take advantage of special offers and discounts to what we keep being told are showpiece or "blue ribboned" events.

It's one thing to say that we need to get more money into the sport, but this culture of under-selling has been practically giving money away for years.

Got any evidence for that? How do figures compare in past periods of P&R vs periods of Franchising?



Until you can clearly decide what the criteria isand agree it with all clubs and make the final decision totally transparent and independent it will be criticised and seen as a conspiracy by those that miss out. It also has to apply to SL clubs who may be relegated as well as those wanting promotion.



How you decide what components should be part of a bid and how important those components are is key. For some clubs they already have a big catchment so they might not do a great deal. Some others might do heaps for little return in a non heartland area. Who provides the most value to the game? It’s not an easy decision.

I actually think that RL is incapable of running a franchise system that is fair and independent. There isn’t the will or expertise to do it properly. There will probably be another half assed attempt soon that safeguards everyone at a certain point in time. The rest will be given warm words but see their funding reduced and get forgotten about. That’ll see off a few clubs. The game will shrink making it less of an attraction for broadcasters and so attract less money. Then what?