Exactly.....I support London Broncos from 12,000 miles away.......no matter how crap they are (and believe me, the last 3 years of so they have been) and no matter that they won't make the play-offs.

I miss getting a "buzz" on matchday morning, meeting mates in the pub, the walk to the ground, the elation of victory or the disappointment of defeat, the banter in the Kings Bar afterwards, the bands,getting a bit drunk and buying yet more stuff from the club shop.......going to Warriors games here just isn't the same



...being a fan isn't always about supporting a winning team. True fans are the ones who go day in day out, rain or shine....not those who watch from the sidelines and only go to games at the end of the season.

One of the unique things about RL as a sport in England is that regardless of who's playing in the Challenge Cup Final, 50% of the crowd there will be neutrals with hundreds of different club shirts on show......because we all love the game.

I would go back to the top five, as then teams would have to strive to finish as high up the table as possible to first make the five and then to give themselves the best possible chance of reaching OT. Also having 5 from 14 would give more of a sense that you are watching the elite teams from throughout the year and would give the playoffs that sense of exclusivity that they are supposed to have.

Its largely irrelevant, but I'll be going in the expectation of a competitive match. As for your Wakefield question in the scenario you suggest...well, maybe, but not much. Early season, regardless of comp structure, it would be on the 'easy to give it a miss' list, on the assumption of an easy win. Obviously if it were late season, and the win would seal or almost seal a title it would be a harder one to miss. That's the thing, people sometimes make out that 'good' fans should attend all games, but for the vast majority of people its not so simple. I live an hour away ( at least ) and rarely go without the kids ( they'd be really annoyed!) so choosing to go requires a bit of messing about, travel, and quite a lot of expense. So I pick and choose. Its not that I have a fixed annual budget - I would go to more games if I thought they'd be competitive, but the thought of playing Wakefield ( not to single them out, just an example ) doesn't do enough to make it worth the hassle. We need to help these clubs improve, or reduce the number. Dragging down the standard ( e.g. with a lower cap ) hasn't worked at all.

It was certainly a better format and weighted in favour of the top 2 teams in the comp.
To even have the possibilityl of a team finishing below half way in the league becoming champions, is ridiculous.
Ok, top 8 helps keep some interest towards the end of the season but, the system is flawed.

revenue from ticket sales at play-off games helps off-set the general lack of interest in England internationals.....8 teams give the RFL more revenue...laziness on their part, but understandable give the lack of interest outside of Season Ticket Games, the GF and CC Final...

Well if that's how people feel then I guess we'll continue to have this problem. Personally, when I go to a match I go to watch Salford, not the opposition.

While I liked the five team format better than what we have now three might be better still. After all, there have been many, perhaps most, of the SL seasons where we haven't had five teams in with a realistic chance of winning the GF and where the "big four" of a given year have consequently secured a spot with ease.

Apart from the final, I understood that gate receips for the play off matches were split between the clubs ?

That's not really true though is it? You go to watch them play against [isomebody[/i (or do you watch them train too?) Obviously, for you, any opponent in superleague is sufficient for you to be motivated enough to go the game, but I presume there's a theoretical limit to your loyalty ( would you still go to watch them play a school team? ) For those of us not so dedicated, we tend to choose those games we expect to be competitive.

As I say, RL would have no problem if every fan was as dedicated as you. But there's absolutely nothing to be achieved by hoping for that fantasy to come true. Likewise, there is no reason to be despondent and give up trying to improve the game's structure just because we don't have the fan behaviour you'd like in an ideal world.

If we shrank the size of the playoffs back to 5 wouldn't that harm trying to get the player talent spread around all clubs?

Lower and mid table clubs already have difficulties attracting the same quality that the big 4 clubs do, reducing the chances of these teams playing playoff rugby and a crack at Old Trafford won't help things.

I think we should stick with 8 teams and persevere until hopefully more teams like Hull, Hudds, Salford, Bradford etc. can become genuine challengers.

When talking about England's failures against Australia people often mention lack of big and intense matches for England players. Surely the same rule applies to clubs who would miss out if the playoffs went down to 5.

I think we make a mistake if we think of player talent as being a fixed pot of resource to be spread around. It's a bit like the (also incorrect) argument that some people make about 'immigrants taking our jobs' ( which assumes, wrongly, that there's somehow a fixed 'pot' of jobs to be taken - whereas in fact immigrants often create jobs for the indigenous population...but that's another argument ).

The most important thing is to generate as much talent as possible - if there's enough, then hard squad limits on the number of players you can pay superstars wages to will automatically ensure a good spread. I think this is best achieved by tight (tighter than now) limits on superstar squad size, but not by a fixed salary cap (or at least not one as small as we have now. My reasoning is this: if a very wealthy club ( perhaps by virtue of a wealthy backer ) can afford superstar wages - but restricted by the rules to only be for a small ( definitely no more than 13) number of their squad members, then provided the club is not at risk (e.g. big debts placed on the club) then let 'em spend it. That way, the likes of Tomkins etc can earn mega-bucks and kids will be able to see that, for the very best players, RL can be a lucrative career. No matter that very few will make it, the point is about ambition.

For me, the more we try to equalize competition by holding back the top, the worse we make the problem of spreading talent...[ibecause we've got less and less to go around[/i It's a vicious downward spiral.

Under a better system, even if one mega rich club paid for the world's best player in shirts 1-13, we know for a fact that the world's no 2 player in each shirt must, by definition, be at another club. With injuries, etc. even with an amazing first 13, you'd have no guarantee of winning everything.

13 players on whatever your club sees fit (subject to affordability) to spend, the rest on 40 grand (or whatever) or less.

I don't want top clubs being held back (I think the calls some have made for lowering the salary cap are ridiculous) but we have to guard against the top clubs getting too out of sight of the others.

In football they haven't held back the top clubs and the likes of Man Utd & City & Chelsea. Those 3 teams plus Arsenal, Spurs and Liverpool are the only clubs you can realistically see challenging for the Premiership for a very very long time. That's just 30% of Premiership clubs with a shot at the title and also the money rich Champions League.

We have a similar problem with Leeds, Wigan, Saints and Wire deemed the current only realistic challenges for the GF, a similar 28.5% of all clubs competing. But I think we stand a much stronger chance of introducing more contenders than the Premiership does providing we don't let the 'big boys' race away into the distance.

Reducing playoffs to 5 teams, and calls for the top 3/4 teams to play in an expanded WCC will see finances, fan bases, reputations etc, of the current same old clubs increase even further still away from the chasing pack. If we can attract more fans to the game who are they going to support? A mid table team or a team that spends every year in playoffs and WCC's? Sort of the situation where you get Man Utd, Liverpool and Chelsea fans coming from all areas of the UK and over the world only widening the gap.

As for the big clubs in SL, they'll only hurt themselves in the long run if we try hurting their competators now. It's frustrating because these big clubs haven't done anything wrong, in fact it's usually been sloppy management from the lower clubs that is at fault. But hopefully with new people in charge at the likes of Bradford, Salford, Wakefield and Hull we'll see them follow the examples the likes of Leeds, Saints and Wigan have shown on how to BUILD and run a SL club properly.

No argument with you there. As I say, for me, the cap should be about nothing but sensible finances. Keeping competition reasonably 'even' ( lets face it, you'll never 'equalize' it - and I don't even think you'd want to - periods of 'glory years' for certain clubs are part of the fabric of sport) can be done with very small limits on the number of highly paid players (but not limits on what they're actually paid. You can argue whether it should be 3, 13 or 20, but you get the gist.

Couldn't agree more! I've been trying to make similar points on the Wigan board, but they don't seem to understand. I can only guess that's because they have not experienced decades where their team stood no chance of winning anything.

Well, yes it is, to be honest.



Correct, I do go and watch them against [isomebody[/i, but I don't turn up to watch Leeds, Warrington, Wigan or anyone else we might be playing, I turn up because Salford are playing. If the former were the case I'd go to watch games involving different clubs each week. The watching them train argument is a bit weak, as well. Watching a training session is a bit different to watching a full, 80 minute fixture.



The only limit would be finances and any other commitments that might arise during the course of the season. If Salford are playing and I'm physically able to get there, I'll go. And there's not been many fixtures that I've expected to be competitive over the years.



But what do you change in order to make games more meaningful? Reduce the number of teams in the playoffs and more teams are involved in dead rubbers. Reduce the number of sides in SL and you push the problem further down the chain. Make the Champions the team that finishes top and you have the dead rubber problem again. Unfortunately it seems the only thing that could make a difference is changing the mentality of the supporters, but as with most sports in this day and age I fear it has gone too far.

That's the one thing that's beyond anyone's power to do. You can't "change the mentality of supporters". You might wish people had different attitudes, but it's kind of useless in terms of doing anything. I don't even accept that supporters have a 'mentality' problem. Society changes, yes, and entertainment, including sport, has to reflect that to keep up. Back in the 'old days' you might work six days a week and the match, no matter who you were playing, was pretty much the week's main (maybe only) entertainment. Now we have a huge increase in the number of things competing for attention. I can't go to every game, because I have a family, and whilst they enjoy Rugby, it wouldn't do every week - they have other stuff on.

There's no point wasting a second of thought wishing people had a different attitude.

As I've said, what I'd 'do' (but I'd need to be in charge of the NRL too!) would be to create a champions league, making a top 4 finish really, really count. Sure, you'd still have clubs with nothing to play for come half-way through the season, but we can't have everything.

Extend the WCC to 4 teams both GF and LLS winners from both leagues, if both one in the same use the GF finalists.

It isn't the duty of the spectators to be entertained, its the duty of the teams to be entertaining. It's a bit like suggesting a "true" music fan should buy a CD regardless of what's on it.

Exactly. Blaming fans 'attitude' is as useless as blaming customers because your restaurant is empty. In a theoretical sense you may be 'right' that the local philistines don't understand good food, but if you want to succeed you'd better start working out want they want to eat pretty fast.

Realistically how important ( comparatively, as I know many on here do not even accept footballs existence) was yesterday's Wigan v Warrington game , compared with today's Southampton vs man city?

A true customer would eat that food regardless! They owe the restaurant a living goddammit!

Yeah but the difference is, if you are so unhappy with your energy supplier, you can always go to another one.

I question how much extending the playoffs to 8 teams has really changed the motivational landscape for lower clubs. Do they really think that scraping to eighth gives them a chance of winning the GF? Only Leeds have shown that a lower place finish is 'OK', but from fifth, not eighth, and even then, Leeds, with the quality in their squad would retain belief that a win from fifth was possible, regarding their lower regular season finish as something of an anamoly. Until someone wins from eighth, it'll always seem like a bit of afterthought - "oh go on, plucky loser, we'll let you have a few more games". But paradoxically, I think a lot of people, certainly me, would be very concerned about the eighth team winning in terms of the meaningfulness of the regular season.

I think top 8 is almost a lazy response to the problem of varied club ability - we sort of say " top 5 is more or less nailed on, so lets make it 8 just to let others have a go in the playoff". It should be top 5 at most, and get on with solving the real problem of uncompetitive teams.

I suspect that depends on the form of the team going into the play offs. Wakey certainly believed they were capable of beating Leeds last year and had they won I'm sure they would have had similar belief for their next tie. Conversely, had they gone into the play offs in the manner of Huddersfield, say, they'd probably have had very little confidence. Not defending the top 8 system in any shape or form but it is conceivable, albeit unlikely, that a lesser team placed 6th-8th might one day win a GF.