It's all or nothing. The moment you slip in silly exemptions is the moment the system loses credibility. It's why we are here now. It's a sport, winners and losers. Finish bottom and you're relegated. Adapt. Get a better survival plan. If you're gonna bring back P&R instil the sporting mentality back into the game. If London finish bottom, tough crap - they're gone. And for the Capital protagonist on here - relax - tell me when London did finish bottom last?

Let's bring some credibility back into the game.

How many RL fans would travel the time it takes us to get to a home game? 1, 2, 3, 4 hours round trip or more. Oh and the home keeps getting moved on a weekly basis. £18 return train, £9 each way taxi to a ground 3 miles from the railway station. The Broncos fans who turn up are superb. Hopefully we move to Leyton Orient and get out of union territory. We do very very little marketing which needs to change. Let Barry Hearn give it a go, he seems to make a success of other sports.

One in the 1441. X

Point of order....the NRL has no P&R, supports it's expansion club (Melbourne) through additional finances and makes no bones about that their comp is a closed shop until such time that they can afford to expand further.....they are just starting a 5 year period where they are getting in excess of $200,000,000 a year for the TV rights alone.

The RFL needs to man up and take control of the expansion club London Broncos, or put them out of our misery at the next round of licencing....1,441 now delivers the Broncos a season average of 1,837 after 6 home games. This is down 35% on last year and it curently means that the Cricketing and Curry Loving CEO has managed to lose 45% of our fans in just 32 home games over 2 and a half years.....he is not qualified for the role and the RFL should look at charging David Hughes for bringing the great game of Rugby League into disrepute....he is making the game a laughing stock with his refusal to admit when he makes mistakes and his insistance that he won't spend money marketing the club.

London Broncos are a dead man walking...the RFL must act now or revert back to being a northern hobby......no doubt that will have the sponsors and advertisers rushing to sign up

That's the point I think - if you choose licensing, do it properly.

There are examples all over the world of P&R working, and examples of closed shop licensing working. There are plenty arguments about which is best for RL in the Northern Hemisphere, but its hard to seperate the idea from the implementation. Implemented badly, its always going to look like a terrible idea, whichever you pick.

For me, if you choose a licensing model, it puts a bigger responsibility on the administrators and they need to be administrators of the highest quality, because so much depends on their choices. If you're going to insist on a London team, you're going to have to be serious about taking responsibilty for it. Time and again we've seen that it can't be just willed into successful existence.

Whose idea was it to play at that time on a Saturday? Clashing with amateur games and the Grand National, bit silly.

Grand National, Amateur RL, Premier League footy, Grandma's knitting circle. Excuses not to attend. RL fans love em!

Scheduling definitely isn't the issue!

Similarily just stating you want the lower tiers to become ' Vibrant and worth winning ' wont happen unless you actually have a realistic plan of how you are going to achieve it

But it seems words are all the governing body are any good at , and unfortunatly that seems enough for far too many followers ( fans and club administrators ) of RL

It use to be funny listening to the excuses for why these clubs were failing whilst in a protected environment like a liscenced league, now im tired of listening to them.

I'll stick to the amateures for now and see were the pro game goes in the next couple of years

Indeed. How any jobs survived the Crusaders debacle is beyond me, but in this day and age, skillful excuse making is valued more highly than taking responsibility.

Very well said. I feel for the London fans who have to upsticks and move around for games, the cost and hassle wouldnt seem worth it to many up North let alone down there. Mackay is killing them, simple as that. No marketing, not a clue how to run it, making strange deals with his best mates sportswear company et al.
Like someone said earlier, a move to Leyton Orient could do it the word of good and id love to see Barry Hearn at least look at helping out somehow. The man knows lots of people and that should only be good for the Broncos and RL in London

How about a move to Cambridge? I know a few people there who like watching the game and they reckon it'd take off

London need to stay in London, even if it's in the Lower divisions.

There is a lot more to it than that. Cas have been relegated twice from SL and there attendances held. I know relegation battles do give the season some meaning as opposed to this year. However I feel this is far more a protest stay away and little to do with the season being over though of course that is a factor.

RL In the uk is not big enough for franchising. If we had 12 clubs drawing 12000 each at £25 a head I would give franchising a chance, we don't so end it now

Sad thing was, not even 1400 there. Obviously had to count all the ST's to inflate the gate a bit. As they are entitled to do.

Looking around, I would have estimated 300 or so Bulls, 4-500 or so Broncos.

The Bulls fans who had already made the decision to go down for Friday, will , in the main, made the changes necessary to go to the match Saturday, with a few grumbles.

I'm not sure how many London fans will have stayed away over this but it looked like the London support was down, compared with the similar (300) numbers Bulls brought to Orient last year.

Keep licensing, make it much more clear. With the very first round of licenceing Boots 'n' All did a segment each week on a club who had a bid entered and they did their own gradings using the guidelines. Last time I dont recall anything of the such.

The RFL also need to grow some balls and throw out teams who do not make the grade. An obvious example imo is the clubs like Wakey, Bulls, Salford shouldn't be in because of the financial difficulties they have had since the last lot of licencing. Also Cas, Wakey, HKR off the top of my head for old stadiums.

It's a shame but we can all almost predict the clubs that will be selected and I very much doubt that any of the current SL clubs wont be in it.

I would agree at throwing out teams who aren't good enough if there is a club ready to replace them. If SL is 14 teams (and all it can realistically be reduced to is back down to 12, which I wouldn't favour anyway) then licensing's job is to pick the 14 best clubs. I also think the licensing period should be 5 years not 3.
I don't see why a club that goes into administration should be relegated, plus if you get rid of Cas, Wakey and Hull KR that's 6 clubs gone, who replaces them and why?

The problem with licenceing is the lack of transparency in the process, which leads to the supporters (including me) to think that there's an element of fiddle in it. A few years back in soccer the League of Wales threw out their then champions (Rhyl) because they didn't reach the required standard - could anyone, even in their wildest dreams, see that happening in RL?

I think the easiest option would be to stay at 14 with P&R coming at the end of 2014. Agree with the comment above about taking away the element of fiddle. Well said.

you could have P & R with a help to the team promoted that they can't be relegated until third season so they can build from within. If they finish bottom in year 1 or 2 then the next team above them who hasn't been promoted in the last 2 years gets relegated. This would help as no new team coming up would be competitive in it's first year and would still struggle in year 2. It gives them time to build a squad with transfers and from their own academy.

I agree with that, I know the RFL release a summary along with a grade but I think it needs to be much more detailed with a relatively detailed report and a grade in each of the key areas (facilities, finances, youth, on-field performance etc) along with with the overall grade plus areas where each club needs to improve, and if they've improved on areas from last licensing round.

The above has been done before hasn't it ? I remember Cas Tigers finishing a place above the drop zone but were relegated instead of Catalans in their first year.

Yep Catalans were exempt from relegation to start with to give them time to become competitive, no-one can build a squad if you are promoted in September from the championship and start again in February in SL. there are just not the palyers available. Look at Widnes in their first year back in SL, they were the weakest team but are gradually improving

£8M new North stand is in the process of being built at CP.
That clearly isn't enough for some folks.