If you read my posts properly you would have noticed that I have stated many times on this and other threads that only Widnes are anywhere near strong enough to join SL , and that my argument is the RFL's lack of understanding of what is now needed to help the clubs left outside SL

You say that the RFL are making money available for clubs to find ' investors ' , but in all honesty this shows their lack of understaning more than anything else , without a simple clear path up the ladder no major investor will put money into any championship club , so this ' search for a sugar daddy ' money is just a total waste

Would the arabs have bought Man City if they had to go through a licence process to get into the Champions league ?, ditto Roman Abramovich at Chelsea ? , by removing automatic promotion the RFL have removed the chance of any major investment at any heartland club ever again

As for trust in how to spend money , well lets face it , the SL clubs record on spending money isn't exactly very good either is it , also as I said , I am not suggesting there are lots of clubs in the lower tier that can make SL clubs

Championship clubs need localised marketing to help them get their local populations through the doors , that is the only thing that will secure their future , they also need to look at working together to market themselves and improve the match day atmosphere and experience , this would be better led by the RFL imo ,

If the money to have Toulouse is expansion money as you put it , then fine , but dont include it in the so called 100 grand per club that the RFL suggested is available in their pre season ' spin '

That is exactly WHY we have such a poor set up in GB and why the Aussies will always be so far ahad of us.

The game IS poorly managed and particularly by the clubs who are so blind they cannot see the wood for the trees.

This also applies to the games administrators in GB.

To be fair it has improved under Richard Lewis's watch but he has to fight the narrow minded , eff u jack I'm alright, my club and nothing else mentality of the clubs particularly soooooperdooooooper league clubs who have an arrogance beyond reproach!

Then we can all agree, P+R is and was a pointless and damaging exercise. And that it is a good thing it has gone



Well this is where the specialist marketeers and RFL expertise they are offering will help. To show and to explain to investors why the franchising system will make it easier for clubs to get promoted and stay promoted and build themselves to a sustainable level. Then the investors can target their money at the clubs infrastructure and make it more self-reliant, rather than blow all their money on average overseas players in one season on the hope of promotion

Yes. I see no reason why they wouldnt.

they are helping them with marketing.

you're right, our game and governing body definitely shouldn't be making things sound positive.

Why should the only options for discussion be a annual P&R, or franchising? The purpose behind franchising was to remove the annual threat of relegation, and the destabilising effect that had on SL clubs' ability to plan for the future. Removing annual relegation, and giving SL clubs some stability of tenure, was fine. However, Championship clubs can rightfully claim that there is too little opportunity to move up to SL, and that the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction.

P&R occurring every World Cup cycle (every 4 years) would give clubs adequate security of tenure in a League (especially Super League). In effect, the clubs would be receiving 4 year franchises, and would be judged based upon a range of on and off-field criteria to stay in their league or move up/down. I'd suggest a 3 up/up to 3 down system, which promotes a club for each year (minus the final year of the cycle).. The RFL could decide upon the 3 promotion candidates after the 3rd year, giving them 1 year to prepare for SL, and the up to 3 clubs (depending on expansion taking place) to be relegated at the end of the 4th and final year of the cycle.

Not really no , I fundamentaly disagree with franchising , but as I dont make the rules , I have accepted that it is probably here to stay , therefore it comes down to making the best of the situation you find yourself in



Are you being serious



RFL , Expert , Marketing , if that is the case then where are all these investors who have taken over championship clubs in the last 18 months since the licences were awarded ? , the ' specialist marketeers ' that clubs have been employing tend to leave a few weeks into the job because they soon realise the futility of the job and the totally unrealistic targets set by the RFL are unatainable [ these targets have to be met for the relevant person to get the bonuses as part of the deal



Then you are more stupid than I thought , or are acting stupid again because you know you have no answer to the question , which you do all the time



No they are not , they are playing lip service only , and the clubs are not happy about it



Not by telling outright lies no they shouldn't , maybe you are used to being fed bull s h it and are happy to swallow it , I think you'll find most RL fans dont like it

How did relegation spread money to the National Leagues, other than through the marginally larger away support of the relegated team? Playing against a richer team and getting hammered does not bring money to anyone.
Relegated sides do dominate the league, Oldham, Workington and Leigh can hardly be classed as SL clubs, they were only there for one season, if you can't see the difference between them and Castleford then it's not really worth bothering. Halifax would have been relegated anyway under the new system. An established club with sound finances will always dominate the league. Your second statement is just completely backwards and bizarre.

It's not really poor management to invest a certain amount of money based on the level you are at. Unless you are suggesting that all clubs should have invested National League amounts in case they were relegated. Sports teams are not like other companies, but no other type of company has the chance of its business model unconditionally thrown out of the window for reasons beyong its control. And how has 'franchising' possibly not stopped this?

There was no contradiction at all. Surely you can see the differences between schools, the amateur game and actual club's youth set-ups? The first two exist all around the country, where there are no pro clubs. Cas being a strong RL area and having the best schools has nothing to do with the Tigers, it just means the majority of kids from Cas come from a RL background.
Do you honestly think Cas would have played the likes of Westerman and Owen in 2008, and as a result finished bottom? No, they would have signed more overseas players or journeymen to try and avoid being relegated. It's obviously going to follow that all clubs are now free to play more younger players, even if you want to ignore the examples I've provided it's still the case that fundamentally they are clearly more free to do so now.
Maybe for a one-off occasion (although that is the only example ever of any sort of decent attendance for a relegation match). The games were always shocking though, that Wakefield match was one of the worst of the season, do you really think that new fans would be most attracted to the sport by constantly watching the two worst teams?
This wouldn't be a problem at all if there wasn't such a gap, or if the Championship was a full time league, there would be no issue with P&R at all. But not everyone is responsible for a club being relegated, the coaches and players fair enough but they would lose their job under the current system. Off-field staff such as marketing and community staff can take no blame whatsoever and shouldn't have to suffer, if these are all established then one bad year under P&R would rip the heart out of a club, as it did to Castleford in 2004. Do you think Cas would have finished bottom in 2005 had they not been relegated? If not, what did relegating them actually achieve? It's different if the club is in a state like Halifax were, they would be relegated anyway under the new system.
You can't use Celtic's failure to evaluate the system as a whole though, they were a one off case because the league was expanding, as it turned out they would have been promoted via P&R anyway since they finished 2nd. That sort of situation won't occur again, because hopefully a team will never be promoted before it is ready. How have I only dwelled on one part of the argument, have we not been debating the merits of P&R?
Crowds have continued to grow, the average was brought down because Salford and Celtic were poorly supported teams. Test series results are circumstantial and I don't really care about them, although I don't see how you can say there have been better Ashes results when there hasn't been a series since P&R was scrapped. The big 4 is gone and the league is a lot more competitive now. Playing standards fell last year, but logically how could you attribute that to licensing? What factors of licensing could have contributed to this? It was more to do with a saturation of the player pool with 14 teams. The 14 teams thing is a different debate altogether really, I'm still unsure as to how many teams there should be in the league. No team is entitled to play in Super League, there's no guarantee that a promoted team would be stronger than the relegated one, in fact in reality the opposite was almost always true. Under the current system, if a club is strong enough it will be in. Your points about expansion aren't really anything to do with this debate, I agree that planting teams in locations was stupid and it hopefully won't happen again. Nobody is reducing heartland numbers, they are increasing year on year as they are nationwid.e
Lol, out of interest who do you think my club is? I watch Scorpions most times they are at home, and follow Catalans and Crusaders in Super League as they are expansion teams. It's quite funny that someone has tried to accuse me of club bias when I don't even support any club, nor did I even try to bring this into the equation, it was a Workington fan or someone so I'm not sure why you are trying to lecture me about this. You say don't use one club to reflect the situation, yet thats [iexactly [/iwhat you have done earlier in your post.

ahhh, so what you want is clubs, you say arent ready and cant survive in Super league to be promoted to super league. riiiiiiiiiggghhht

So what do you want then?

You have said money given to these clubs would be wasted, so we dont give them it.
You say they need help with marketing, so we do it.
You say they need more money to help with infrastructure and marketing, so we help them find it.

so tell us all, why wouldnt Abramovich or the City owners have invested in these clubs if they had to invest off the field before joining the CL?

when you have explained that, maybe you would like to explain the eye-watering amounts Chelsea have spent on training facilities, youth development etc, and why they wouldnt have done this had Uefa asked them to?

they are never happy. With the way the championships have been run previously, owners not being happy has become a sign for things being done correctly.

well it isnt outright lies is it? it is by your own description 'spin'. Frankly we should be disappointed if they werent doing it

Ill ignore your contradictions and where you point out obvious solutions to problems but dismiss them for no other reason than you want to (becasue they support my arguments)
there is no point me stating again about why there are more young english players in the league this year and last, you simply arent listening
you live in a different world to mine, clubs have contracts with their employees based on being in SL, and these change or are dissolved if the clubs are relegated the same as in any sport - it's the real world!
How will franchising reduce the gap beween the divisions? if it wont how is it good for the game?
if franchising has nothing to do with expansion then what is it for? we already had ruls to stop clubs overspending and to increase the numbers of english players
as i have stated, lots of things got better under P+R, what has franchising done and what will it realistically do that P+R could not?
No one says P+R is perfect but it is a lot better than the franchise system for the future of Rugby League

you stated in this thread that Crusaders are "your team" if they arent it makes no difference to my points, just that you are contradicting yourself AGAIN, you still had a hissy fit every time they are mentioned, they failed I cant change that, so did Gateshead and Paris, lessons need to be learned and if the RFL dont listen then we may waste more time money and opportunities

I'll post it all again so you can read and try again
Quote

Not really no , I fundamentaly disagree with franchising , but as I dont make the rules , I have accepted that it is probably here to stay , therefore it comes down to making the best of the situation you find yourself in





Are you being serious

RFL , Expert , Marketing , if that is the case then where are all these investors who have taken over championship clubs in the last 18 months since the licences were awarded ? , the ' specialist marketeers ' that clubs have been employing tend to leave a few weeks into the job because they soon realise the futility of the job and the totally unrealistic targets set by the RFL are unatainable [ these targets have to be met for the relevant person to get the bonuses as part of the deal





Then you are more stupid than I thought , or are acting stupid again because you know you have no answer to the question , which you do all the time




No they are not , they are playing lip service only , and the clubs are not happy about it




Not by telling outright lies no they shouldn't , maybe you are used to being fed bull s h it and are happy to swallow it , I think you'll find most RL fans dont like it

we can do this all day if you want,

or you can just admit you are wrong and couldnt answer the questions or address the points? whichever is easier for you

promotion should be a right for any team who wins the league, no argument about crowd size ,stadium capacity etc

this is one of the fundamentals of any competitions worth its salt.

try to explain the current system to anyone outside the rugby league bubble, and watch them lose interest in the game before your very eyes when you try to explain to them that

whoever finishes top of the league are not champions

the team who finishes eighth could be

the team that finishes bottom are not relegated

the team that finishes top of the league could (theoretically) be relegated

the team who wins the lower league does not get promoted

the team who finishes 5th or 6th in that division could be promoted

hope this clarifies how simple the whole process is. its a laughing stock if people cant understand how the system works we will not bring them through the turnstiles!

As much as i like your argument, i don't think that's why more people don't come to the games.

The financial gap between this countries main top flight leagues and it's lower divisions is IMO killing the concept of P&R. In the days before all the TV money went into the Super League, Premier League etc. clubs could rise through the lower leagues and be competitive. Now the gap between the top flight leagues is too big for that.

Now you can't just put any club into Super League without them being able to first show that they will be able to afford to be there. Under normal P&R it would be the last year of existence for a lot of clubs.



Off the top of my head I can think of more sports in this country that use playoffs to determine it's champions than those that use a straight league. If someone allows this to put them off from having an interest in RL rather than what they see on the pitch then I would say that they never really had any interest in the first place.



To many teams do make the playoffs but again anyone wanting to take an interest in the game shouldn't use that as the sole reason to be put off.



RL isn't the only sport where it doesn't happen. What's the big deal?



Just how likely is that to ever happen? The RFL won't have the nerve to do that.



Again RL isn't the only one who does that. Why should it assumed that because a club wins one league it is automatically good enough for the next one.



Will people drop all interest in football because Blackpool were promoted after finishing 6th?



If people can't understand how the system works than it is likely because they don't want to. What should bring people through the turnstiles is what happens on the pitch, not how the league stuctures are organised.

How much extra debt are you now in since you entered SL ?

It worked for you though didn't it

Once again it didn't happen for you until you got to SL did it , the East Hull masses didn't want to know you when you were in NL 1 , and maybe you are right about people through the turnstiles , but I guarantee you would not have got the financial investment that paid for your promotion if you had been relying on getting a franchise rather than just winning the league

i am not saying for a minute that the team who wins the national league/championship will be good enough to survive in the league above, the fact is they probably wont. however i believe they have earned the right to try their luck.

the salary cap in the championship/national league is far too low and in effect makes it almost impossible to run a full time operation outside of superleague.

however if you are going to promote a team this should be based on what the club has achieved under its financial restraints.

if you cant put a decent team on the field in the lower division you wont be able to in superleague.

also on the point of other sports doing the same things as RL ?
are any of these sports as successful as football, or are they minority sports?

Simple but its the post of the century!

Just need to change 'the team who finishes 5th or 6th in that division could be promoted' to 'the team who finishes 5th or 6th in that division could be promoted at the expense of the team finishing top if it beats them in a one off game'

That's what i can't leave behind. No matter how much i hear about the merits of franchising i just can't ignore this "old fashioned" sporting characteristic - [ujust rewards for winning[/u.

Thats fine, but we have to take it to its logical conclusion, we have it as a true and open competition. No quotas, No Salary Caps, No bar on entry to Championship one, no bar on entry to super league, and clubs outside the championship system have the same right to enter SL


Either we accept limitations for the stability of the sport or we dont.

Pick your dummy up , or then again why not , get rid of all the rules and ' Rollerball ' here we come , they had ' franchises all over the world

Would I be right to think that it is pretty much impossible for a championship side to go full time anymore? With the salary cap in the championship being as low as it is? Also what are the caps for the 3 leagues? Isn't SL about 4 times more than the championship?

That's not a logical conclusion, you've straw manned his argument, and unnecessarily polarised the debate. There are a multitude of possible models that other sports use to crete competition stability. Like I said in an [url=http://viewtopic.php?p=15228868#p15228868earlier post[/url

i disagree. I dont believe it to be a straw man, though i would agree it polarised the debate, but only to highlight the hypocrisy.

i dont doubt that there many options in between, that isnt what my argument was against

there are many ways in which the administration of the game places limits on clubs, demands certain standards, and other way influences the way that the club is run, not always in that clubs best interests, to safeguard the stability of the sport.

Either we accept that as a necessary evil, or we dont.

It is hypocritical to say we can place restrictions on what clubs can spend, how many overseas players they can bring in etc, which may in some cases be to the detriment to an individual club but put in place (rightly or wrongly) for the benefit of the game as a whole, but not put a restriction on who gets admission to the league even though it is restricted for the benefit of the game as a whole. Especially when the argument put forward wasnt that this would disproportionately disadvantage the lower league clubs, but that it is fundamentally wrong to restrict clubs.

It is also one of the clearest examples possible of the flatcappers hypocrisy that demands p+r between Pro and Semi-pro game, but not the Semi-pro and amateur game.

Cant believe I'm rising to your bait, but youre such a plum, smokey.

You may call me a "flatcapper", but i am not against promotion and relegation to and from any league - it's sporting reward for achievements on the pitch and reward for failures on the pitch - everybody knows where they stand at the start of each season and you dont get all this pathetic in fighting amongst supporters of a minority sport that needs everyone pulling together if it is to expand and become better watched. The in fighting you seem to love fanning the flames of.

My point is this, although you rabidly support licensing and all it stands for, you seem totally opposed to salary caps. Even you cant see the hypocrisy in this? Licensing is designed to make the game fairer, allegedly, and to stop all clubs overstretching themselves. Yet the salary cap, which is designed to do exactly the same thing, as well as make a competition fairer, you oppose? Is that because your beloved club cant buy their way to success - I seem to remember them trying to do that for many years and throwing good money away after bad. How can you support one scheme to improve the sport, licensing, which is an underhand scheme to deliver the sport Sky wants and removes natural selection, but not support the very thing that is saving clubs from themselves and looking after british talent.

I'm sure the salary cap has saved my club Halifax from itself in recent years and know for a fact that it has turned the championship into a fantastic competition. It is that hypocrisy that us supporters of "lower league" clubs cant abide

You've come up with this suggestion before and I'm genuinely puzzled. You posit it as a 'half-way house' between annual P&R and franchising. And it would be, if franchising was as it is in the NRL, for instance: once you're in, you're in for ever. But that's not the case with the the current SL licensing system. And four year licenses is not in any way a compromise between annual (semi) automatic P&R and the current three-year license system. In fact it's the opposite. To oppose the current three-year license system and offer as a compromise a four year license shows, imo, either stupidity or a total lack of understanding of the current system.

everybody knows where they stand at the start of each season now.


you have just made exactly the same argument i have. Exactly the same. How did you think this was an argument against it?

also, you are wrong, i do believe in a Salary Cap, just not this one. I have always argued that the SC should be part of an overall effort to get clubs to what we need them to do. I want to make it harder for clubs to buy success, i want them to be forced to invest in youth, i want them to be forced to only bring in the BEST overseas players. I want clubs like Hull KR which regularly put out a team with no youngsters they have developed, or one or two at most. Clubs which are finding ways to bring in their 11th/12th overseas player to be punished by seeing a poor product on the field. I want the SC to be used to do this. The current one doesnt do this. The current one is counter productive to this.



if you bothered to actually read what I put rather than having your jerking knee block your vision, you wouldnt have to be unable to abide none-existant hypocrisy