is too many?

Leeds will face Widnes for the 4th time in competition this year in the middle 8's, as will Toulouse and London, whilst Wigan and Wire together with Hudds and Catalans will also meet for the 4th time in competition when the Super 8's start....and Wakey v Hudds will meet for the fifth time this year.......five games in the same season????

If (as I think they will do) they scrap the concept, promote the top 6 in the middle 8's to SL XXIV and then have one up one down in a MPG between bottom SL and Top Champs, with a top 8 play-off then PLEASE GOD can they stick to the system longer than a couple of years.....on the current tables standing, that would leave a Championship with Toulouse, Bradford, Halifax, Featherstone and possibly Leigh (once DelBoy puts his dummy back in) scrapping for the chance to meet probably Widnes or London in a MPG......so not to dissimilar to what we had this year but without the cheating mancanadians......

The middle 8's have grown on me, but too much repetition of games is making fans stay away....and to a neutral, Wakefield v Huddersfield for the fifth time (with an average gate of 4,127) in a season makes us look a small and localised sport that only a few towns in the north play.

Great argument from someone who wants to cull the smaller clubs, absolutely brilliant.

High praise indeed coming from Mr "I'm not anti-expansionist........but"

I’d go to a 16 or even 20 team licensed SL. Play everyone once and then play the other 7 or 9 from your half of the table again.

Would give 24 or 29 league games per year including Magic weekend. Then a top 8 playoff.

I agree with this the problem is in the championship is that the top six all want to play SL and the rest don’t so you have two leagues in one extend it to 16 is the best option

....what, 16 clubs in the top tier with no P&R, a live salary cap, all games televised......you're dreaming. Where in the world would that ever happen?

Exactly. And people forget that the NRL is tailored to help those clubs in the bottom half of the table.

We should do the same. It clearly works.

Would Toronto have worked straight away with licensing, probably not. The current TV deal means they has to be some form of P/R and that's unlikely to change.

I was going to question this, but stopped myself and after reflection, you're spot on. Torontonians are getting to know a new sport and it's far better to be attracted to a winning side than one getting hammered week in week out....as they surely would have if they'd been dropped into SL straight up.
2 Years of winning nearly every game and only one defeat at Lamport has enabled them to build a base....so next year, when St Helens stick 50 on them the week after Wire have hammered them, there will be a hard core support who will hang around,,,,,but they will need to bring some new cash to the table and quick, because otherwise they will just be another London....well intended but ultimately useless.

I know many super league grounds ain't the greatest(character I say) give me a visit to Cas or Wakey over a visit to a soulless football stadium like Wigan or Huddersfield. But, would Toronto's ground be upto scratch.

As long as it doesn't have a WF post code, it will be ok.
Toulouse ground is pretty small AND they have some history in coal mining, GMG must be panicking now.

I'd go 15 (the current SL plus Toronto, Tolouse and London), not sure we have a 16th team who is ready to be honest, and two bye weeks may be useful to sides with mounting injury concerns/a cup run. Everyone plays each other twice (28 games) then a top 7 play off as follows:

Week 1 (Quarter finals)
2nd v 7th
3rd v 6th
4th v 5th

Week 2 (Semi finals)
1st v Lowest ranked week 1 winner
Highest ranked week 1 winner v Middle ranked week 1 winner

Week 3 (Final)
The two winners from week 2

Bottom team to play the top team from the Championship over two rounds (home and away) for the final spot in SL. If they are level on points and points difference (unlikely), then keep the status quo. No relegation in year 1 to allow Toronto, Tolouse and London to get up to speed. 1 years' exemption from relegation for any team who earns promotion thereafter as long as they run an academy or reserves which completes all its fixtures.

I am not aware of any suitable stadiums with a WF postcode that have the required health and safety certification




No fear......Toulouse, London and Halifax are only in the Q's to give Widnes and Salford someone to beat before those 2 sides meet in the MPG. Next year, your already plummeting attendances will be hit by the loss of one of those GIANTS of the sport and their associated hoards of fans...the financial impact could be crippling

....especially if you get them in the Cup at home.....

P and R works in football because the teams at the top of the Championship are pretty much as good as those at the bottom of the Premiership. The same generally cannot be said of Rugby League. I would not mind having an expanded top division that would be P and R free for a couple of years to allow new candidate teams to bed in or even for some teams to have a licence that protects them for a certain time. I know that it would lead to a lot of dead rubbers but so does any simple P and R system.
Personally I like the 3x8 system although I know that it is not popular. More of the games have value although it ultimately makes promotion more difficult. I also agree that we devalue individual games by clubs playing each other so often. Perhaps we need to know how many teams could realistically survive at Super League level and go from there. It seems a shame to have teams with Super League costs playing a division down and living on the edge like Leigh.

Should be 14 teams play each other home and away plus magic (with the matches based on league position) with the 14th club relegated and have the million pound game between the top 2 in the championship.

I disagree with you there.

Every club that gains promotion from The Championship in Football has one aim and one aim only, to survive their first season and then look to build, pretty similar to RL.
What they dont have is 1/3 of the clubs battling it out in a "survival league" every season.
They do have to avoid the relegation spots but, in effect, this is 3 from 20, rather than 4 from 12.
Every promoted side in football has to strengthen their squad, just as any promoted side in RL.

Going back to RL, the obvious solution would be to include both Toronto and Toulouse and find out just how both they and the game itself can cope with them in the top flight.

1 up 1 down again seems blindingly obvious and if we have to have the theatre of the MPG then, so be it but, it really isnt necessary.

What would help is if Magic Weekend wasn’t an extra game and it was changed to:

Play the same team two years running
Year 1 it takes the place of the home game of Team A
Year 2 it takes the place of the home game of Team B

You wouldn’t have that unneeded extra game then

Unless team A or Team B were relegated in year 1.

To me, by far the most important goal needs to be making the Championship a valid competition in its own right. If the only importance of winning the Championship is getting to Super League then no licensing system can ever fill the needs of the game. If, on the other hand, we can create a situation where the Championship level is regarded as a competition worth winning simply for its own sake and is self-sustaining then we can start to talk about licensing systems, moratoriums on p&r for promoted teams and so on. The most obvious difference between Britain and Australia is that all the sides below the NRL, in Queensland Cup and so on, do fine where they are. Their whole existence is not based on reaching the NRL because that is the only way to be successful. How this is to be achieved is the hard part but I would suggest we need to start by looking at the goals of clubs - do all clubs want to be full-time professional outfits, for example? I'd like to see a separate broadcast deal for the Championship and I would like to see a new England or GB team added to the structure that selects only Championship players, giving those players something else to aim for and creating a team that would probably be good competition for nations below tier 1. Basically, celebrate the Championship!

P&R has existed since the move from one division (barring a few years in SL). That has meant that a lot of clubs have moved between divisions in that time. I’d expect all those clubs to believe that they should be capable of playing at elite level again. If they don’t already play in SL then they aspire to at some stage. Remove that possibility and you remove the motivation for many players and supporters and then if you do that you remove the attraction to sponsors.

How do you retain the motivation and attraction without the aspiration to play in SL? I think a separate broadcast deal is great in theory but I doubt it would generate the income and prestige that would be needed to retain interest. RL at elite level struggles to be taken seriously in the media so I imagine at a semi-pro level the challenge would be even greater. It’s a crowded market in the UK in comparison with Australia where RL is the dominant winter sport in NSW and Queensland.

Some teams don’t aspire to be fulltime but the middle 8s offers a chance for them to test themselves, get a big payday and some TV coverage. Many know that they’re probably not realistically going up but the illusion of a chance to go up is enough to maintain the interest.

I like the idea of a championship rep side. That would be a thing for players to aspire to and put themselves in the shop window. It might also be a useful trial game for England or England Kinights. A lot of fans, myself included, would welcome a chance to see Championship players smack some SL bigheads.

RL needs to pull completely away from the influence of soccer. Even the old RFL logo was similar to the EFL logo ffs.

RL should align with the NRL. They know how to make a general success of the sport. Drop the whole 'Super League' branding as well. It's dated and irrelevant as phook.

Maybe rename it Premier League.

Rugby League sounds good. That could work.

I agree RL should copy the NRL. They have the right structure in place in my opinion.

I don’t think we should move away from soccer though, I think we should move toward it. I think we have more in common with soccer than Union for instance and should target football fans in specific areas. If we were doing a rebrand of clubs I’d tie some in with local football teams. Even see if some football clubs want to take over the RL club and run it jointly alongside the football.

Where we should follow Union’s lead is with internationals. They’ve nailed it.

All fair points but the problem always remains that in RL the team going up is always the most likely team to go back down because they do not have enough time to prepare sucessfully and unlike in football, where there is enough money to protect the relegated team from the cost of their promotion run, the relegated RL team will always suffer. The perfect solution would be to have a vibrant Championship where the wealth of the two leagues is not so different that it does not matter. Until that happens we just recycle the same players who get relegated every year.