We need to keep the current structure until a new TV deal is agreed from 2022 (unless the current deal with SKY can be re-negotiated).
Then, the new TV deal would allow a revised, long term structure.

In broad terms, we need a 5 year TV deal that pays £45 million a year in the first year, increasing by inflation. To sell this, we need a minimum of 2 French teams (Catalans & Toulouse) and two North American teams (Toronto & Another).

That would allow the following structure:

Super League 1 : 12 teams
Super League 2 : 12 teams
National League : 12 teams

Below this would be the Community/Amateur game league pyramid

Central Funding:

Super League 1 AND Super League 2 clubs: £1.5 million per annum each
National League clubs: 25% of above = £375,000 per annum each
£4.5 million per annum to be retained by the RFL centrally (including a provision for any team relegated from Super League 2 to the National League to receive a "parachute payment" of 90% of previous central funding for one year only).

Format

All clubs play every other team in their league home and away = 22 events per annum

Super League 1

Team fishing season top awarded the Minor Premiership Trophy
Top 8 play-off culminating in a Grand Final to decide Super League Champions (on same format and on same weekends as the Australian NRL play-offs)
Super League Champions and NRL Champions to play each other for the World Club Championship two weeks after their respective Grand Finals
Bottom club relegated to Super League 2.

Super League 2

Top 8 play-off culminating in a Grand Final to decide Super League 2 Champions (on same format and on same weekends as the Australian NRL play-offs). Grand Final winner promoted to Super League 1
Bottom club relegated to National League (but with 90% of central funding provided in year one after relegation only).

National League

Top 8 play-off culminating in a Grand Final to decide National League Champions (on same format and on same weekends as the Australian NRL play-offs). Grand Final Winner promoted to Super League 2.
Remaining 11 teams have to apply annually for "Re-election" to the National League (along with any other clubs (new or otherwise) wishing to join).

Salary cap

Same salary cap (say £2.5 million per annum) (with marquee player and other exemptions) to apply to all three divisions.

Outcome

• A sensible, long term structure that anybody can understand and accept as credible.
• Fewer fixtures than now to avoid top player burn out
• Fewer fixtures to allow for mid season representative fixtures (to tie in with dates of Australian State of Origin series matches)
• Challenge Cup matches can be programmed in on sensible fixed dates
• Every Super League 1 and 2 club to be required to hold one annual "On the Road" fixture in lieu of one home match (to replace Magic Weekend etc).
• Annual opportunity for any well funded new club (New York? Montreal? Barcelona?) to apply to join the pyramid structure at National League level and with the same salary cap as all other clubs and a clear (if not easy) available pathway to Super League 1
• All depends on a new TV deal at the level the game deserves

I like that games be taken on the road. It's ridiculous that this hasn't been mandated already. We had a world cup here and didn't take games on the road which was absurd. Games need to be played in London, Bristol, Leicester and beyond. Go worldwide ad take games to Dubai, Hong Kong, USA.

I don't like the idea that a new franchise is needs to start below super league. If we get a Money Mark who wants to start a franchise in New York then assess the business and if it's doable get them straight into Superleague.

I'm just curious as given that in 5/6 months there is going to announce another Canadian club tor start in 2019. And that New York, Dublin, Newcastle, Bristol & Coventry (specifically Wasps), are all believed to be strongly in favour of launching a club (especially if licencing were to come back), where you would place these clubs. As your already advocating dropping at least 4 clubs from each division already. And getting rid of 4 to 8 although (theres15/16 clubs already in league 1, till Oxford and Gloucestershire merge as is being reported.

If we are changing the structure.

I'd have.

SL
14 teams, play each other home and away. Top 6 play off, 3 v 6, 4 v 5, Then lowest placed winner faces 1, 2 v the other winner. 14th placed team relegated, 13 plays mpg game against 2nd in the championship at a neutral venue.

CHAMPIONSHIP
14 teams. 1st automatically prompted, 2nd as said above. 3,4,5,6 play off for league shield. Bottom team relegated. Next to bottom place 2nd in league 1 on the saume day but before the above mpg.

LEAGUE 1
16 teams, play each other home and away, Promotional issues as mentioned above. 3,4,5,6 play off for shield.

WORLD CLUB CHALLENGE.
SL winners v NRL winners, Challenge cup winners v 1st in the NRL (If same as GF Winners then in SL top placed team in SL, NRL GF Losers).
Games to be held in neutral venues i.e USA, Canada,Spain,Italy etc.

EXPANSION CLUBS.
Start in league 1, to build a fan based etc, so if it does go unfortunately wrong - A) it doesn't cause to much disruption to the game. B) If they're higher up, they will still hopefully have a core support based, and local support that it shouldn't effect them to much.

CHALLENGE CUP
Finnish it by last bank holiday in May. Clubs who get home draws, Should be made to offer season ticket holders there seat for half price. No game till the final should be more than £20, most less. Final still at Wembley.

MAGIC WEEKEND & SUMMER BASH.
Because of the above suggestion with regards the challenge cup. The summer bash would be moved to the 1st bank holiday weekend in may.
The magic weekend I would move to the last weekend of the season.

TRANSFERS
All signings and loan deals should be completed by the 1st game of the season. The window shouldn't start again till the end of the season. You can do deals, just not announce them, if you have injuries use your youngesters.

INTERNATIONALS
The world cup is obviously every 4 years. So I'll do it from this year. 2017 world cup. 2019 A Hemisphere cup, Southern hemisphere (Australia, New Zealand, PSG, Cook Islands, Tonga, Samoa, USA 1 other). Northern Hemisphere (England, Wales,Ireland, Scotland, France, Italy, Canada and 1 other). 2 groups of 4, 1 v 2 as semi's, final. The 1 other would involve a competition of smaller nations the year before, winner takes said place.
2020 - British Lions v Anzac's (obviously a combined Aussie & Kiwi side)tests. 3 test, plus full tour I.e. Midweek and Saturday games. Repeat every 4 years.

I would also alternative between hemisphere so 2017 WC Australia, 2020 Lions test northern hemisphere etc.2021 WC northern hemisphere. 2023 lions tests Southern hemisphere.

Just a few ideas how I would like to see RL move forward.

The only thing I would like to see is the million pound game scraped if we are keeping up and down 1 up 1 down will do

Exciting times we just need swap out Woodsy with a visionary.

by 2020 i would have a 16 team superleague all based on franchising along the line of the nrl. i would also look at the possibility of introducing bye rounds for some of the teams. all teams play each other home and away, and no magic weekend - instead properly marketed on the road games to be introduced. this way we don't get the same 2 teams playing each other 4 times or more a season. end of season top 8 play off again along the lines of the nrl. like it or not the nrl system works, it produces high quality games and they don't tinker with the structure as much as we do. i know people will say we don't have 16 teams of sufficient quality but really if we can't put together a 16 team top flight given the developments in the game over the last couple of years we might as well not bother.

Agree the bottom play of has got to go its crap and stinks that a team who finish bottom don't go down and a team who finish 2nd bottom do its not fair and nether will be

Plus I like the fact that you can get a team like the cowboys finish 8th and still make the grand final. This whole super 8's concept in theory sounds great but what we have seen is the gap between 4th and 8th is so wide that it's near enough impossible for the team in 8th to reach the semi finals.

A straight up play off system does allow it. Catalan near enough did it! Yes I rememaber that the play off system was full of one sided games before anyone brings that up.

I think we should go to at least a top 6 or just 5 play off system and ditch the super 8's. The aim of the competition should be to expand it and create at least 8 strong teams every season.

And finally yes let's ditch this ridiculous MPG.

I think the Super 8 system has led to teams at the top of the Championship becoming stronger than they were before, meaning that if they were to expand the league to 14 then the quality of the teams wouldn't be as thinly spread as it was last time there was a 14 team league.

The suggestion that the winner of a comp made up of mainly part time teams should automatically replace the bottom team in SL is ridiculous

Super League 1 and Super League 2 is just playing around with words.
Super League 2 = Championship

TV companies are hard enough pressed to show SL, never mind second tier RL.
You could call it whatever the feck you want but, it will not matter.

Far better to expand the comp properly, to either 14 or 16 clubs and if this number cannot be funded, why the hell are we adding more expansion clubs into the mix.

The game is spitting in the wind and trying to expand what essentially is a domestic competition all over the world and whilst it will bring some short term exposure, the medium term is just bonkers and this will be born out at the end of next season in the qualifiers, when success will depend more on how the fixtures fall, than which is the "better" team.

There has to be a serious increase in the TV deal to make it worth while or, quite simply, we should not be getting involved in the North American experiment and even with increased funding, we are gambling with the games future.

There needs to be a clear strategy to deal with the games expansion, with appropriate increases in funding. If not, we are committing harakiri.

The structure is a red herring. The clubs need to generate more money through their fan base.

Just alternating the structure will do nothing to get more bums on seats and more people watching and hoping TV will be the saviour

take your point but TV is the saviour of nearly all sports nowadays - gate money is becoming less and less important, especially at the top end

In reality it's a bit of both, but before we can go to broadcasters and demand more, we need to look at whether we as a sport are offering more.

The clubs simply have to expand their reach and grow their audiences. We need more people engaged with the sport, and we need more of the sort of people that broadcasters and advertisers are willing to pay to reach engaged with the sport.

And this is where I disagree with the anti-expansion sentiment, because I don't see heartland clubs doing that. I don't think they are capable of marketing the sport to those people, simply because I don't think they're good at marketing, because those new audiences aren't there, or because they have saturated their market. I simply don't see certain clubs growing their reach and their crowds beyond what they currently have. Clubs like Huddersfield are still giving away season tickets for £120-odd every year - is under selling the product really what passes for marketing over there?

I see teams like Catalans, like Toronto and like London as a way to address that. Clubs with potentially big markets, with an opportunity to reach the audiences that broadcasters and sponsors will pay to reach and an opportunity to expand our playing talent pool.

I keep reading that the sport needs to "focus on the heartlands", but what does this mean? Does it mean giving clubs more money? If so, from where, and what should this money be for? Does it mean giving more a place in Super League? If so, can those clubs sustain a competitive team - and how do those clubs enhance the sports appeal to new audiences? In short, what is the "end game" of "focusing on the heartlands"?

All these suggestions go to show that the answer really isn't that simple.

If we didn't have so many weak clubs this wouldn't be such an issue.

6,888 fans turned up yesterday to watch arguably there most important game for years.
6,888.

I think it's a fine balance of expansion whilst not throwing away tradition. Expansion needs to be exactly that, expanding the comp not just the geography. What I mean is that introducing eg. Toronto will be good but to do that we shouldn't collapse leigh which is what we seem to do.

TV is critical but to appeal to tv we need to fill stadiums as well. Why would tv be interested in a product fans can't be bothered to attend.

No easy answer

That's an interesting point.
However, I would suggest that TV is mainly interested in itself and not actually interested in what it may be showing, other than having something to air for "x" hours per day/week.
Since the onset of SL, we have gone from playing fixtures on Sundays, to having them on Thursday, FRiday, Saturday and Sunday, which has rock all to do with anyone wanting full stadia, it's purely down to Sky wanting to maximise the number of hours that it can fill the screen in the corner of your room.
We have effectively made it harder for actual fans to watch games in order to give Sky more games to broadcast, which necessarily, reduces the quality of the "product" on view.

Great for the armchair viewer but not great for the actual fans and the chopping and changing of fixtures, just to suit the broadcaster has a negative effect on attendances and ultimately means that the "true" fans struggle to make it to every game.

My club had every on of it's Super 8 fixtures changed, all at relatively short notice.
Some of these were because our game was on Sky and others had to be moved due to the ripple effect of other games being chosen.

Please tell me how this can help ANY club improve it's attendance's.

I struggle to see the issues with the current structure - it's one with a lot of competitive games, and plenty of showpiece events that can attract audiences and TV coverage.

I definitely see an issue with changing the structure every few years. It makes the sport look amateurish. It annoys people within the game to an extent that it both stagnates growth and actively turns people away from the game.

Licensing, one up-one down P&R, and the current structure have all been tried. They all have their positives and negatives. We should just disagree and commit to what we have, and instead focus on growing the sport's audience - that doesn't happen without marketing effort. If the RFL hired a decent marketing director and put in place a long-term plan that would be a good start, at the moment I suspect they have no idea on what type of audience they want, let alone how they attract them to our game.

Whatever system we have it'll attract complaints.
An obvious example is that any system that churns out a few dead rubbers gets criticisized for that, but introduce more jeopardy and soon enough somebody will be along to complain about coaches being under too much pressure to take a chance on young players.

The thing is to accept and acknowledge that every choice is a sacrifice, and then stick with your choices understanding what they entail. We've now pretty much exhausted the main options and seen their advantages and disadvantages - from yo-yo clubs, to 'clear, indepently assessed crit... hang on a minute, Bradford are in trouble!'

It would help if we had a better system for policy making. The RFL attract a lot of flak, but they have to put everything of importance to a vote of the club owners who have disparate preferences - so if we do ever manage a coherent plan, it'll be more luck than vision.

TV isn't the saviour of anything other than the bank balances of pro sportsmen.

The problem with the marketing is that it isn't just the RFL's problem to fix. The bulk of the marketing actually has to come from the clubs - and that in my view is where the key point of failure is. The clubs are the primary point of consumption, and the building of any audiences comes at that key point.

The RFL's "consumer" marketing isn't that bad - not perfect, but not anywhere near as bad as some will make out. The problem is with how the game is marketed commercially, but this is where the RFL are hamstrung by the clubs.

The RFL can only approach prospective sponsors and sell the audiences that are provided to them by the clubs, but when the clubs aren't growing their audiences or reaching new audiences, not attracting enough "ABC1" audiences (despite there being plenty of them on the doorstep of RL land), and grossly under-selling the sport with poor marketing initiatives and poorly executed cheap ticket offers, there is relatively little they can do.

If I were the RFL, I'd be spelling out an ABM strategy to each and every club. Tell the clubs that "in three years time, we want the Super League to be generating £x million in sponsorship, we want the competition to be sponsored by y and we expect clubs to generate annual ticket sales revenue of £z million" - and then give the marketing directors at each club an opportunity to present their marketing strategy to attract the audiences that will help them to achieve that.

The RFL needs to be more ruthless with the clubs who are underperforming but without the framework of licencing, there's not an awful lot they can do with those that don't perform.

Well smart pants, we are doomed to the championship now, so good luck with your theories, and blame some F@@@@R else.

Well I wasn't making this about Leigh, but whatever.

Have a nice day Cokey.