I would imagine a Challenge Cup round - probably the semis - will be the weekend after "Round 23" of Super League to ease this problem slightly.

Personally I think the whole thing is a stupid gimmick, but all I really want from Super League is for Warrington to finally win it, so carry on.

You could have different tiers of salary cap though.

In the middle tier there will be 4 clubs playing off a salary cap of £1.65m and 4 clubs playing off a cap of £300k.

So what would be wrong with having different cap levels in the top tier? Koukash wanted Salford to play off a different cap than the others: why not raise the cap for the richer clubs (Salford, Warrington, Leeds etc)?

The 4 championship clubs will have a salary cap of 900k for 2015. It should be surprisingly close.

Will the lower clubs still only have the one quota space compared with the 5 at Superleague?

I will see how it pans out but would never boycott the club I love. Bet the players wont be happy playing so many games.

With the extra games it means you rotate players, you do it wisely now though, bit by bit, not just wholesale because it's Widnes.

I hope it makes the league more competitive and also bridges the gap between leagues which will make the CC a better competition.

I don't believe so.

The only reference I can find to the quota rule in the proposed changes is:



This would imply that those with a full time academy (which is complicated) will have space for 7 quota players in a squad of 25 and those without can have 10. There is no reference to which league a team is in so can only assume it's linked to the academy and therefore across all leagues.

But there isn't the quality in numbers coming from Down Under to get all these quota players anyway. That is why the NRL is looking at our players in a different light these days with a view to attracting them to play in the NRL.

Because of the salary cap and the exchange rate, that's the only reason.

Don't see a problem with it, it's more complicated but not over complicated for me. Looks quite exciting frankly. Though I am not sure what happens when the eights play off against each other.... what does it accomplish having the bottom two leagues play off for?

whens the boycott starting? the saints game?

I'm already boycotting, sat at home all yesterday.

I too am boycotting SL, but would like to say that this structure only works with at least 6 clubs spending the full cap in tier two. The funding for 1-4 in this years championship for 2015 was rumoured to be £650k £600k £550k and £500k which should ensure all 4 go full time together with the 2 dropping down
This makes that promotion fight very interesting especially in year two onwards

It's the middle tier of this proposal that intrigues me most. As I understand it (!) the top 3 go up, or back up, 4th plays 5th to determine the other promotion place, and 7th and 8th are relegated. That is a heck of a lot riding on only 7 games for each team. It's unlikely, but not beyond the realms of possibility that a team could start one season in SL, become demoralised by losing frequently in the first part of the season, then face a few teams who have got used to winning, lose a few more, and thus start the next season two tiers lower.

One tier lower, there are only two tiers at the beginning of the season...
I see what you mean though, that team would then have to finish in the top half of SL2 then the top half of minileague2 to play amongst the big boys again the season after, but is that not a good thing giving teams an incentive not to fade away at the end of a season?

I find the structure simple to follow, it's hardly chaos theory, but I don't get what most of the third 8 will be doing for the last 7 games... Maybe they could have the league leader's shield...

The more I think about it, the more positive the setup becomes. Maybe wishful thinking....

Re the bottom 8.....isn't there a trap door where a couple of teams can finish up in the division below with a couple of teams coming up to replace them ?

Err, good luck with that, kiddo.

Bottom 8 play the same way about he top tier does for the championship grand final. The bottom two from the third tier go down and the top two from Championship one come up into the secondleague the following year.

I really don't know what the fuss is about. Anybody who actually sits down and looks properly at the new system will understand it. It gives incentive (to clubs below) and makes games more meaningful. I'd be very surprised if we lose any real supporters from these changes.

The more i look at this new setup, the more i like it.

I don't know how you can afford a new deckchair every year, you are clearly earning too much.

Congrats. on the new addition by the way.

many thanks... little deckchair is 9 weeks old now and a little terror.

and i always get a new couple of deckchairs before the new season starts

I am also coming round to it a bit more, I think with a tweak to the actual format of the top 4 playoff rather than 1v4, 2v3 which I think is the weakest part of the whole thing, then it would be a decent system.

The mid tier in 2015 and 2016 might look something like this

Hull KR
Castleford
Widnes
Bradford
Wakefield
London
Featherstone
Sheffield

You can replace Featherstone and Sheffield with two other Championship clubs, its just an example.

Effectively it will be made up mostly of teams with SL pedigree, with a ticket for a couple of the Championship clubs to come to the party.

If this works well, it will be an opportunity, albeit a difficult one, for a current Championship to win promotion through hardening itself to playing teams which will probably have SL standard players in them. The good news is if a small team can compete with those guys then there is less fear that if they come up they will be totally outclassed.

However if there are big discrepancies in salary caps and the former Championship clubs that get in the mid tier are totally outclassed every year so it just becomes a boring rotation of the usual suspects yo-yoing every year, then it will become stale quite quickly and also the supporters of smaller clubs will start thinking this is a sham promotion system designed to make it sound like they have a chance but with the salary cap realities stacked against them.

The other issue is if you do just get the same teams recycling round the top flight, who has it actually benefited? I expect it will be harder for the likes of Cas, Bradford, Widnes etc to secure sponsorship from next year onwards because sponsors won't be sure they will be top flight teams.