I would only back this idea if Super League 2 was to be a full time league. Otherwise it's just a glorified Championship.

Would it not be possible to split the next TV deal in such a way that the teams in SL2 get 50% of what the teams in SL1 get?
e.g. (very simplistic example!)
If the current deal is £90m over five years, that's £18m per year.
Spread over 14 clubs (I know there's other places the money goes but I'm keeping it simple for now) that's about £1.28m per club.
If you split it on a 2:1 ratio between the two 10-team leagues, it'd be £1.2m in SL1 and £0.6m in SL2. Not far off what's there at present in the top tier so may need a slight increase in a TV deal (but if Sky get their extra game again for SL2 then you can justify it). Something like £6.5m over the five years (£1.3m per year).

Could SL2 clubs run a full time operation with £0.6m in funding? Maybe partially.

With your telepathic insight into how it would be implemented and the consequences thereof, I don't know why we need anyone to run the game. Its really well organised, with a terrific future. All we need is for you to remain at the ready to step in and declare "end of debate" any time an idiot has the first inkling of an alternative idea.

I think it would have to be a half way house ie the core of the team would be full time the rest as is now.

Good questions and the ones that need answering. The answer to the first one would be how you see the glass half empty or half full. I think Cas, London, all playing in a league where they can win some games and build their fan base is a good thing. People do not want to watch a team that loses every week.



This is the big one for me and where the idea falls on its backside. If 14 full time teams is not viable then how is 20. You would have to say that SL2 would have to have a reduced cap but that could get cancelled out by reduced funding. This just doesn't add up. Maybe two leagues of 8 would make more sense.



No sport has automatic promotion and relegation between ft and pt professional. You will need a licence.



Things like that would only determine if you are in Super League. You would imagine the split will be based on the league standings the previous season, which will add a lot to that years regular season.



Sky, they pay the money. Sky being willing to show a SL2 game a week would probably be the most important thing to such a structure working.



Play offs and play offs. No one running that game is interested in first past the post these days.

Someone convinced me a while back that a two tier Super League is a good idea. Two leagues of eight teams with each team playing each other twice and a single game against the teams in the other league. 7x2+8=22 games.

Bring in a team from the championship (Fev, Fax, Sheffield?) and an expansion club probably Toulouse.

SL1 to have a salary cap of £1.8m and SL2 having a cap of £1m. Promotion and Relegation, 1 up, 1 down.

i think the ~150 extra full time pros would be able to be made up as long as clubs like warrington who have plenty of fringe players who are probably ready for sl1 never mind sl2 agreed to some new form of dual registration agreements with the sl2 clubs

not ideal but it would be an intermediate step towards the dream that in the not too distant future having 20 professional clubs all producing their own pro players with a few imports mixed in

I note how all of the fans of the top Championship clubs seem delighted at the thought of cutting the lower Championship/Championship 1 clubs adrift now they've got a sniff at the pie - a charge they often level at 'Super Dooper League' fans.

Surely the big problem is always going to be money. SL clubs presently want to cut other teams adrift to get more of the pie themselves (forget this we need to be more competitive rubbish it's all about more money). So why will those who want more vote for this and why would those who will be dropped down and get effectively relegated vote for this??

So you admit you hadn't thought at all about what you were posting, and don't have anything further to contribute. Thanks for that.

So the best players from the bottom 4 clubs would be redistributed across SL1, right? How many players do you imagine that would be and how much of a difference in competitiveness do you think they would make? Would it have prevented Huddersfield getting smashed 54-6 by Wire? Would it have stopped the Bulls having 70 put past them by Hull? What about Leeds' 8-50 loss against us? Could these blowouts [ibetween the top sides of SL[/i be prevented by the redistribution of a handful of players from the bottom 4 clubs? And how good will SL2 actually be once all the best players have been stripped from its top 4 clubs?

It's not any freak blow outs between the big sides that's the issue, that's just sport but watching Wigan go in to 30+ point leads on a regular basis last season without breaking sweat is.

A smaller top division would naturally ensure the best players would be spread amongst those sides and mean more competitive games 'more often'. The 2nd tier competition would obviously be of a lesser quality then superleague but if they could manage to make it fulltime it would certainly be better then the championship as it is.

How they manage to make that happen is the challenge! The salary cap would need to be lower the the top tier as would the distribution of TV money and obviously that would mean the players would be paid less but then they'd mainly get what their quality warrants. The players in that 2nd tier, like the clubs, would have that carrot of getting promotion up to the top division and therefore a salary increase to aim for.

It'll be interesting to see if it can happen, I hope it does.

The main problem with all these ideas is one of money.

There's not enough money in RL to support the league as it stands, let alone adding more clubs to the mix.

That lack of money is also why there's such a shallow player pool. Why would a kid want to be a 20k a year RL player when he could be a 20k a week footballer?

The RFL and the SL clubs need to improve the money coming into the game as well as the games exposure. At the moment we've a number of clubs who are walking a knife edge regarding their finances. We need to stabilize and strengthen what we have before we start fooling about change it.

The answer and the point are the same , outside the top 7/8 in SL, interest in the game is waning, the bottom SL clubs are not improving on or off the pitch as they have absolutley nothing to play for, ditto the top 4/5 in the Championship, the lower Championship clubs are all grasping the tie ups with SL clubs to desperatly avoid dropping into the financial oblivion of next years Championship 1

The gaps are all too big to bridge and too deep to survive dropping into, so the answer and the point is make the gaps smaller and easier to jump, and give the fans of all clubs hope that they will progress by what happens on the pitch, failure to do this will result in more clubs disapearing and less money coming into the sport

This is essentially the idea

How much do SL clubs receive from SKY?
How much do Championship clubs receive from any TV/Media company if anything?

If we went 10 & 10

How much would the top 10 clubs receive?
How much would the lower 10 clubs receive?

Only with those questions answered can we even begin to realise if this is a good idea or not?

Are SKY themselves willing to pay extra to fund another 6 clubs because they believe that there is some substance to the idea and think THEIR revenues will increase with the extra investment, are SKY willing to play the long game and tie us up to some long term deal in the hope this increases the popularity of the game?

SL clubs get 1.2 million, Championship clubs get 90 K ' central funding ' down this year

The rest of your post is the 32 million dollar question, but are SKY happy with the way Franchising is paning out as regards enough exciting games to bring in viewers and advertisers? , if they are then nothing will change, simple as

I doubt that money is the incentive to the vast majority of kids when deciding what sport to play as an 8 year old

As for stabilizing and strengthening, that will not happen when the vast majority of our supposed clubs have little to actually play for

As much as i want this idea to be the future of the sport its clearly not going to happen without a lot more money coming into the game,and It seem pretty obvious sky wont pay anymore at the moment.

So If this idea is to work properly, and for the good of the long term future of the game,then french tv must be got on board,which obviously means the involvement of at least two more french teams, which would be great for the sport in the Europe.

We don't have 14 either. Or 12. Or even 8.

5, 6 tops with little sign of improvement.

The rest are making up the numbers, running headstrong into spiralling financial disaster chasing a salary cap that without the Sky money would be akin to a street beggar walking into a Range Rover garage saying 'I want that one'.

If you read the clubs accounts rather than the RFL spin, you'll see it too but you might need to open your eyes first.

Of course it makes sense and I would go as far as to say this is a MUST to save RL dieing on its @r5e!

Under the new proposal - Teams compete on a level with teams generally comparable with them to make an interesting close competition which will invigorate the current dour super league we currently have, where games can be over before they start.

Teams like Castleford / Salford/ London / Widnes are not realistically ever going to compete with the bigger teams like wigan / leeds/ wire /saints/ catalans however long they play in the same league, as they are simply much smaller clubs and are currently holding the top clubs back.

In reality what is the difference in support / facilities / crowd numbers / finances of the top championship teams and the bottom SL teams? The answer is very little - yet the bottom SL teams are miles away from the top teams, with the same position being replicated in the championship (teams like Swinton / Keighley, Doncaster are miles behind your Leighs Halfax's et in the same way) - so why do we persist with two un-competitive leagues (with a vast disparity between the top and the bottom teams) and freeze out the clubs at championship level who could move forward and compete with the lower SL teams (ie/ Fax / Featherstone / Barrow etc).

The current system is absolute madness as your castlefords / salfords / londons in SL hold back your wigans / leeds / wires etc, while the same happens in the championship with Doncaster / Swinton holding back your featherstones and halifax's who, under the current system wont get their chance! This system puts together teams who are pretty even and who can compete with each other to help the game grow!

I've supported wigan for 25 years yet next year is the first time I am considering not buying a season ticket as I am frankly bored $h1tless with half our home games (which are over without us even breaking sweat after 20 mins) and disillusioned with the current set up of the sport generally. While I say this supporting a top club the same must surely be said for Cas / London / Widnes / Salford fans - it can't be much fun for them knowing that 70% of their games, they are tonked out the game by half time and getting hammered most weeks - Surely they would rather compete with clubs on their same level each week and have an exciting and dynamic league?

This would create interest and two very compitive tiers of SL - And you could ensure that tier two is not simply a re-branded championship by having a fixture list with some cross pollenation - Ie/ Tier 2 clubs play 5 tier 1 clubs at home - thus have 5 marque fixtures which they can raise for across the season and may have half a chance in a one off fixture against tier 1 opposition ( like featherstone in the cup this year) but cant compete week in week out!

I think you would find crowds in both tiers would go up massively - Tier 1 I would expect crowds of 12-14k as averages within 3 years and tier 2 averages of around 4-5k due to the fact that generally, fans want to watch a vibrant competitive sport, and endless drubbings of top teams over bottom teams do nothing to achieve this!

Additional funding would come from increased crowd numbers and interest in the game and would more than pay for itself!

rubbish idea

we have a an elite of 5 teams all good enough to win the title Leeds, Wigan, Saints, Warrington, Catalans then below that we have competitive teams Hull F.C , Huddersfield, Bradford and a few clubs capable of breaking in to the top 8 like Wakey & KR

we don't need to change the league structure...we have a good competitive league I'd dare say more competitive than RL has been in 20 years

every league in any sport has bottom sides that are the whipping boys....its up to them to improve not for us to throw them out of the league

Just look at football , most leagues around the world only have 2 or 3 teams that are good enough to win the League and have 6-7 teams annually fighting for safety that struggle to get there win column into double figures

Because he plays rugby and not football

And its better than stacking shelves for 6.08 an hour

Your last paragraph points out what is missing, do you seriously think these clubs can improve to the point of competing? , and if not, how long do you expect fans to keep turning up to watch them?

The British people are very tribal and love thier sports

British people have been turning up to watch there clubs in Football, League, Union and Cricket for 100 years and at least 90% never win anything or have any chance to, but the loyal fans still turn up to watch.

I don't understand why you think for example fans of Wakey will stop turning up in the next few years because they are sick of not winning anything, despite not winning a pot for 40 years.

Another point to this is that in football, fans don't forever keep turning up expecting them to compete because if they don't improve reasonably quickly they get relegated into the next division.

Look at the premiership as proof of this - Teams that spend a long period hanging around the lower parts of the division, trying to stay up (which the past poster referred to), will eventually improve or will run out of luck and be relegated in a relatively short period of time. The bottom 7-8 clubs fighting to avoid relegation will be different teams over the course of every 6-8 years.

We don't have that currently in SL so we have stagnant clubs at the bottom, doing nothing, who consistantly hold the both the top championship and SL clubs back.

Two leagues of 10 where anyone can beat anyone would give us the intensity we need like the NRL, and provide the opportunity for positive promotion and relegation to keep teams at the right level!

I would go as far to say this is needed to save the game....we can't carry on as we have been as its a slow death IMO.