Widnes just announced Harrison Hansen.

Leigh's situation shows just how steep the cliff is between SL and the Championship, as well as from the top end the the bottom end of that same league.

They basically are doing a leigh yes. except Toronto bring something to the table and Leigh bring a smaller fanbase and a town without a train station.

Im not happy they are in financial trouble but after the sheer arrogance they displayed whilst knocking part time clubs about and giving it the big'un about how they'd be more of a competative side than the bottom f SL clubs then yes. I am happy they've been relegated. After the way they handled their relegations and how they'd still be more than a match for the championship and how they'd bounce back, yes im glad they've not managed promotion.

they talk a good game but in the end thats all they can do.

whilst toronto are doing the same thing now and it seems hypocritical of me to not wish the same upon Toronto; Toronto actually bring something to the game that we don't currently have. An expansion club in a city with 7 other professional sports teams yet still attract higher crowds than Salford, Huddersfield, Widnes & Wakefield. They've promoted the game better in their two year existence than the RFL, SL or sky have managed in the last 10 years.

so whilst i don't particularly like Toronto or Leigh, I can actually get behind Toronto due to what they offer and what benifts they can bring to the game.

Point 1 is the main issue there, but its also that our clubs don't have the financial power compared to the Aussie clubs especially given the depreciation of the pound. If you scrapped the salary cap you would probably get a handful more biggish name Aussies coming over, but you'd also see wage inflation amongst existing players and some SL clubs getting themselves in financial trouble.

I remember about 10 years or so ago on these forums the general view was that there were too many Aussies over here and if we clamped down on Aussie imports a load of superstar young British players who were not currently getting their chance, would pop up to replace them. Well that hasn't happened. Since it has become harder for clubs to use the NRL route we've just seen more home-grown players who are really Championship standard, coming through and playing 3 or 4 seasons before they get moved down to the Championship whereas before they would go down more quickly. You see that with the self-congratulatory posts on here about how many Warrington Academy players became regulars or semi-regulars in our first team over the past 5 years. Apart from Currie how many are actually top drawer...?

On the other points about the rules the interesting thing is that people also say the NRL is a boring over-structured league these days and SL is a more exciting product.

As for the league structure I think the Super 8s is a bit crap. We had good playoff systems in the past with a top 5 or top 6 playoff and one-up, one-down providing the Championship winners meet the criteria for SL. That was one thing that wasn't broken, that we tried to meddle with rather than fixing things that are broken.

Good post. My next concern for the rules is that we will adopt the "armpit or lower" rule for tackling for player safety (as being trialled in RU). This will sterilise our game even further. People refer to RL as "the greatest game on Earth". The fact is, it isn't and people are voting with their feet.

I agree that the NRL style of rugby is boring. The strange thing is that they have posted a 5.5% year on year increase in attendances to an average of 16k+ and an increase in TV money*

As you know I have never argued that Warrington would develop their own star players. We have an abysmal track record. You mention Currie as an exception but he was developed at Wigan.

*https://www.nrl.com/news/2018/05/22/nrl-crowds-and-ratings/

The game needs to get back to being the slick handling spectacle it once was with less emphasis on kicks. Maybe do away with the tackle count for a start ,& use player stat technology to give bonus points for entertaining & enterprising rugby .

My proposed changes would be :

1. An increase in tackle count to 8 may be helpful to allow a team to have attacking aspirations in their own half and to reduce the number of end of set kicks.

2. Reduce the interchanges to 4 substitutions.

3. All players (except the player tackled and dummy half) must be behind the ball when it is kicked to be onside. This will get rid of the "downtown" feature and reduce the benefit of the kick which is basically where the ball is fielded less 10-15m.

4. 5 points for a try.

5. Ball to go down middle channel of the scrum.

I think these changes would encourage more running rugby, less kicking, less predictability.