Potential changes to Super League from next year. It is understood this included the awarding of the League Leaders' Shield after 23 rounds, rather than the current 30, and the resetting of points tallies for the Super 8s stage of the competition. I'm not really bothered when the league leaders shield is given out, but resetting all teams points after round 23 is a dreadful idea. Hope it doesn't happen. https://www.sportinglife.com/rugby-leag ... nges/77674

Potential changes to Super League from next year. It is understood this included the awarding of the League Leaders' Shield after 23 rounds, rather than the current 30, and the resetting of points tallies for the Super 8s stage of the competition. I'm not really bothered when the league leaders shield is given out, but resetting all teams points after round 23 is a dreadful idea. Hope it doesn't happen. https://www.sportinglife.com/rugby-leag ... nges/77674

LLS should be awarded after the initial rounds, no point resetting the points for the Super 8s - if you want to do that why not just make it a knock out playoff instead? That makes it better for the players because they ultimately play a few less games.

Games kicking off earlier on a Thursday is a stupid idea, a lot people struggle to make the games for an 8pm kick off so why would that help improve what is already a crap idea?

Radford and Powell were both in favour of resetting points after 23 rounds. I wonder if their stance has changed?

so why bother trying for 23 rounds? just coast through, lose a few who cares, come 8th then kick on.

the fans will be ripped off big time. why buy a season ticket? waste of time and money. wait till the super 8's then go

I would prefer a 7:45 or even 7:30 kick off on Thursdays and Fridays.

So stupid that it's bound to happen.

This.

If the competition itself sees no value in the regular rounds, why should the supporters.

What difference would 15/30 mins make to someone who doesn't go to matches.

There are no tweaks which could address the deep fundamental disadvantages of this stupid system which we have. (which has not only seen poor attendances when we were promised growth, but has seen a precipitous decline in tv viewers).

The structure was put in place because of a huge misunderstanding of what the problems the game actually faced were and we invented this fudge to solve a problem that didnt exist and created a whole heap of new problems.

This was forced upon the clubs by the RFL and should cost the jobs of the Wood, Rimmer and Barwick.

The icing on the cake is the brilliant self sabotage of us going in to a world cup with such huge uncertainty. Again. For the 2nd time in a row.

I will not go to any of the first 23 rounds

Welcome to the championship !!!

Didn't Powell suggest that first gets 8 points all the way down to 8th getting 1 point? It's a better idea than a full reset.

What if teams are level on points? It also creates a situation where club a could finishes lower in the table to a club who wins fewer games because of when those games were won.

There's so many tweaks that need to be made and each tweak causes its own set of problems, so many compromises and square pegs in round holes and all for what? To create a set of games that are poorly attended, can't sell corporate hospitality to, introduces huge instability, can't plan for, is fundamentally unfair, means the championship is no longer even a competition, has left league 1 hugely uncompetitive, and in the case of the million pound game culminates in a game that causes huge damage to players and clubs and is of very limited appeal.

For me scrap the Super 8's. Have the standard play-off's. Introduce a mid-season international break seen as though we would save about 3-4 weeks from scrapping the 8's. So clubs get a break mid-season a couple of weeks after Easter maybe? And play an International. That would help the international game grow and the England lads get a bit more consistency.

Then have a weeks rest before the playoffs in order for the top 8 to have a rest and get some injuries sorted. That way the fans can see the best of the top 8.

Meanwhile the bottom two clubs in SL and the top 2 of the Champ play off in a mini 4 team competition (3 weeks) to determine promotion/relegation. Or have the bottom of SL and the top of Champ have the £1million match.

Just keep this one for a while instead of always chopping and changing and not allowing things to settle.

So you like rubbish, go back to 1 up and 1 down has long has the team coming up has a good ground

The amount of different formats being muted on this thread alone show that there isn't a perfect model to follow.

Personally, I don't mind the 8's concept. But, if I was to play God for a moment and change the format; I'd go with a 14 Team Superleague, 26 league games a year as 30 is just too many, at the end of that have a top6 playoff over three weekends for the grand final, and a playoff for relegation/promotion from the bottom 2/top2. No Magic Weekend, it distorts the fairness of the comp & is nothing more than a cynical moneyspinner for the RFL. I'd much rather a free weekend be used to progress the International game.

Yep. A point reset would make the first 23 rounds pointless as you could just coast in and rest players at various points if you were secure, why would fans want to pay to see that.

I still say going back to the old top 5 place play off system would work, rewarding the top 2 yet giving 6th 7th and 8th a shot at the play offs at the time of Super 8's.

Definitely don't think we should reset the points. I could understand awarding double points for super 8s games so that teams 6, 7 and 8 still have a chance but not a total reset. Don't care either way about the LLS, it's meaningless

If you reset the points after 23 rounds, you have two separate competitions. That could be a good thing.

The first 23 rounds determine the SL Champions, making the Shield properly meaningful. It also determines who qualifies for Super 8s Premiership, with the Premiers being crowned at the Grand Final.

ATEOTD there's only so much kudos to go around, and this would slightly diminish the prestige of the the GF, but I think it could boost the league - which is currently just an elongated qualifier.

I do like the one we currently have, can be tweaked and improved upon with options like losing the MW and moving the cup schedule but it's certainly more interesting than others mooted which I personally think are rubbish.

If money were no object, I'd go with 20 teams in two conferences (say east and west). Home and away vs the other 9 teams in the same conference, home [ior[/i away against the 10 in the other conference, giving 28 fixtures. Conference Champions play-off against the runner-up from the other Conference in the semis.

Everybody accepts that in any league format there will be some games that might only make a difference to your chance of finishing sixth instead of seventh, for example, but that any game is worth winning in of itself. I can dream!

We sadly don't have anywhere near 20 SL sides.we don't have the players, the stadiums, the infrastructure.

We should go with conferences because it opens up so many options and frees us to structure a season around what is best and what works.

If we did move to a conference structure there are 16 other sides we could involve, as well as allowing us to grow as and when we can.

If money were no object. Two conferences of 6. Player your own twice (10games) the other once (6games) split the NRL in to 2 conferences of 8 each team plays 8 international games 4 home and 4 away. So 24 games in total Top 6 qualify for a top 6 play off to win the SL grand final.

In the NRL two conferences of 8 play each in your own conference once. 6 international games. (20 in total) plus 4 cross conferencengames. Top 8 go in to play offs for NRL GF

A week later the NRL champs play the SL champs for the world championship.

Bundle the rights together for both leagues, play international games in staggered blocks of 4 and you could end up.scheduling pretty much continuous live RL in both hemispheres from Friday to Monday from may to August which would miss most of the harsh Australian summer but take advantage of our limited window for good weather(With the huge added bonus that each broadcaster wouldn t really have much additional broadcast costs because most of the additional games would be being filmed by the other broadcaster anyway)

For the lower leagues we are told that the games against the SL sides are necessary, then fine expand the challenge cup to include a group stage, include it on season tickets and those clubs will be guaranteed SL opposition every year.

If the RFL do persist with resetting the points, which I don't agree with but think they will, it more or less creates two competions and I'd like to see more done to make the first competition (the first 23 rounds leading to the league leaders shield) more meaningful. I know there can't be a day out at Old Trafford for the winner of the leaders shield, but more of a financial incentive could be made to even things up and make teams take the first 23 rounds seriously.

I've no idea how much a team wins for winning the leaders shield, or how much for winning the Grand Final, but make it so say 40% of the prize money goes to the shield winner, and 60% for the winner of the grand final. Still makes the grand final the bigger event, but means it's not just a hubcap and a handshake from big Nige for the shield winner!

We could just go back to having the league champions crowned, after everyone had played each other twice (once at home and once away) and then have a play off competition for the top 8 and possibly a plate competition for the bottom 4 (plus the top 4 from the Championship), which could also be used to decide any promotion/relegation.
There is so much ing about with our game that, it's becoming meaningless TV fodder.

As for more Thursday games, search meaningless TV fodder.

Spreading the matches over 4 days is stuffing the actual paying fans big time and we wonder why attendances are dropping.

Nobody minds an occasional change to their weekly "habit" but, Trinity for example have only 5 games at their "regular" Sunday kick off time and we dont like playing on Thursday nights