So they've finally come across the proposal. Fair enough.

A few points - do people actually find this structure complicated? Seriously? Do people also find...say 32 team world cup formats difficult? And the playoff systems difficult? Let alone McIntyre type playoff systems.

If so I'm just surprised...it just struck me as a simple way to keep competitive games. A compromise between Challenge-Ladder type systems, and pure league systems.

As for



I've already expressed my distaste for one up one down P&R. Sure it's simple, but it's damn stupid. Like FPTP elections are painfully stupid, but I guess people have shown they prefer things that they understand how they work and don't understand how crap they are; to things that maybe require 30s of effort to understand and don't suffer the same problems...

I read it - I thought crazy.

But it does give you potentially a lot more competitive games.

You would have to sort salary cap and monies would have to be allocated as to which division you played in.

Magic weekend as the last game before the split could be awesome - 3 points for a win because you would need a neutral fixture for an 11 game to work.

Then start the challenge cup or have an international as breather week.

Grand finals top 4 each division 1 play 2 winner to final 3 plays 4 winner players loser of 1 v 2

All grand finals at Old trafford.

Its probably the best way of reitroducing p and r without killing clubs.

How player contracts would work would be difficult and also the dual contracts.

I'm not a line-by-line defender of this over-complex proposal, but neither do I think looking at structure versus 'finding cash' is an either/or thing. All of this, is always, and always has been, a constant chicken-and-egg situation - we'll never get away from that. What's very challenging in RL, is the high disparity in earning power, and the fact that the sport itself is fairly brutal at exposing differences in strength, more so than any major UK sport - you can't 'park the bus', or kick for touch and collapse scrums all day, etc. if you're a weaker side.

The 'fix' ( salary cap ) causes at least as many problems as it solves, namely, the few clubs that could occasionally afford to pay stars are unable to do so. We can go on and on about 'improving marketing' and no doubt we could do dramatically better - I think the RFL and in particular are p*ss**r marketeers - BUT, nothing is better for marketing than big name, box office players. Like it or not, its also helpful if they're box-office off the field too, whether that's your housewives' favourite like a Johnny Wilkinson or someone naughty like Alex Higgins. Look how snooker suffered since it lost most of its 'characters'.

This is a much more insidious problem than people realize. We talk about 'improving youth development' but a lot of that depends on the amount of interest youth have in the game. If the sport doesn't look like a place that - should you turn out to be a world-beater - you can make a spectacular living, it is less attractive to a talented young athlete. Sure you could do well in the UK and move to the NRL or RU, but is that really the story we want to our kids to dream about? Now, if you're an Olympian purist, maybe you don't want people who think about fame and fortune, that's fine.

I'll drone on endlessly about how I think the cap tries to fix the wrong problem...it doesn't really matter if clubs spend silly money on a limited number of stars (provided they can afford it - though even then its a matter of debate as to whether a governing body should interfere in how a club runs its own finances)...the real problem with the kind of thing we saw in the past, with Wigan especially, is clubs with lots more (relatively) money, buying up talent *which mostly sits on the bench* that ought to be playing first team at other clubs. If we placed very tight limits on the number of players on big money (but that money can be as big as you can afford) then some clubs would be able to retain world-class talent, whilst also being *forced* to have a great youth structure (your squad limit is so small, you need excellent development players).

On the basis of the figures given it seems like a potential goldmine for unambitious clubs

Clubs in the lower leagues get £180k, clubs in the upper league get £1.2m. SC of lower league is apparently £600k and upper league £1.65m.

You could, if you were smart, spend say £900k on wages so you could comfortably beat the lower league teams spending 2/3rds of that, and then get beaten comfortably by the upper league teams spending nigh on double but stay in the upper division and pocket £300k a season for getting smashed for 8 games a year and winning an essentially semi-pro league.

You never have to bother challenging for the play-offs, you don’t even need to bother trying to stay in the ‘top 8’ All you need to do is be the 9th-13th best team in the country and you can run a championship level squad on an SL level grant, and have a pro-team which would only need to finish 4th in an 8 team league where 4 of them are semi-pro. Easy money. Doesn’t help the game in any way but it is easy money someone.

So the upper league cap will be £1.65M? Dear oh dear. Whilst I don't think you have much clue about what the problem is, if what you say is correct, the RFL have less of one.

That doesn’t even make sense as a statement.

Must try harder.

Do you have a link for that information? Haven't seen S/C mentioned anywhere?

So you don't like 1 up 1 down, but you like the idea of 4 down half way through the season.

This will be a disaster for the sport. Yes the games will be more competitive for the top 8'teams. The championship will be a joke. 4 teams on a cap of 180k and 4 teams on a cap of 1.6 mil. That's going to be competitive!!!!!

Also when one if the biggest problems facing SL is a talent drain to union and the NRL, the RFL think it's a good idea to reduce the cap!

Madness and this will take the sport back even more than licensing.

Are you new to the game of RL?

You have to be pretty bad to be able to spend nearly half as much again on wages, and still not be able to finish in the top 4 of an 8 team league where half of them are semi-pro.

Im not saying its beyond our chairmen to f@ck it up, but still………

They can mess around with the League structure all they want...as previous posters have stated its down to lack of money in our sport.

The people at Red Hall can't find or generate enough (down partly to the Stobart disaster). Until the ones at the top are replaced by people who are better the sport won't go forward.

Money aside, as this is obviously the main stumbling block, I think it could work.

11 games played before the split (5 at home, 5 away and one at magic weekend). The challenge cup could be started earlier so that more rounds are played earlier in the year. The final round of games before the split are played at the Magic Weekend on the bank holiday at the beginning of May, with the challenge cup final on the bank holiday at the end of May.

Then the split occurs, giving three leagues of 8 with everyone playing each other home and away, giving every team 25 league games in total.

Not read all the thread but have the other 3 options been posted ?

As I understand it there are 4 proposals which will be voted on at the end of the season. These are....

1. The split league structure as per this thread

2. Retain the current league structure with 1 up / 1 down P&R between SL and Championship

3. SL1 of 12 clubs, SL2 of 10 clubs with automatic P&R between them

4. 4 leagues of 10 with automatic P&R between all leagues

Correct. We've got very poor leadership. Thus a lot of what they propose is daft, and when they do propose something sensible, they're not competent to implement it.

Your point is depressingly true - it's all effectively hot air anyway, because self-justifying clowns remain in charge whatever we do.

It's a total mystery to me why the sport tolerates it. I'm amazed we haven't had breakaway threats from various groups, whether the top 8, or the championship, or both.

Because as soon as they did that the morons who infest the game would suddenly realise the people who are really to blame are the clubs themselves. God alone knows why they get such a free ride, especially with the marketing of the game.

The RFL’s marketing isn’t great but it is infinitely better than that done by the clubs.

The RFL are a very convenient scape goat.

The reason the clubs can appear 'moronic' is that there's a huge amount of diversity in what's 'good' for one club, given (not least) their vastly different earning potentials. Any committee formed of such a diverse group is highly unlikely to produce something optimal, or even near optimal, for all. It's like a bunch of people wanting to cross a river and unable to decide on a raft or a bridge so building half of each.

Which is precisely why the game needs very dynamic leadership from the centre. Leadership powerful enough to win the respect of various stakeholders, and get things done which are good for them in the long-term. One way to help prove that dynamism, and win respect would be an aptitude for finding sponsorship and money. It's amazing how much more willing people are to listen when you've produced some cash. Frankly, whether the lowest championship side, or the highest SL side, if I were a club chairman, my attitude would be: "why are we listening to a bunch of people that can't even find a sponsor? Marketing advice from Red Hall? You're having a laugh surely?"

Similarly, if you were the RFL chairmen you would think why am i dealing with such poorly run clubs who dont attend seminars on sports science and youth development, dont come to the meetings we run on best practice, dont listen to the advice of the clubs who are succeeding, dont take advantage of what we offer them,

and why am i getting the blame for their failure.

When the RFL are doing things to help clubs be successful, and the successful clubs are implementing them and being successful, and the not successful clubs dont even bother to turn up, then whatever adjectives you want in a 'leader' wont make a blind bit of difference.

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I'm astounded that the 5th option hasn't been mentioned:

Stop buggering around blaming everyone else for any problems in our game and put the time and effort in to make what we've got work

I don't like the idea of replacing bad teams with worse ones, no. Making teams play other teams at a similar level would be much more interesting imo.

[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/22438732SPL clubs agree league reform[/url
Must be catching,




the SL team finishing bottom = Automatic relagation
the Championship Team finishing top = Automatic promotion
the SL team finishing 2nd from bottom join 2nd 3rd 4th ,championship sides in a play off , overall winner taking the other SL position

Agree, good post.

Two superleagues would struggle for funding IMO. If any additional funding is coming into superleague any time soon let's raise the salary cap and keep the structure we have.

Hock, mossop, graham, briscoe/tomkins possibly, 4 burgess brothers and more are getting lost to the NRL. Money speaks volumes aswell as the quality of their league however if we raised the cap we may have more of a chance of keeping our countries best players in this league.

Half way through our franchise and we are improving a lot IMO allowing youngsters to get more playing time which is invaluable.

We finished bottom last year and if it was p&r we would be in the championship. However the franchise has allowed us to build on last year and the evidence is there for all to see.
The franchise isn't the reasoning behind clubs going bust, it's the opposite IMO, the reason clubs go bust is because they are poorly managed. If we go back to promotion and relegation, that's what makes clubs overspend and panick buy so they can fight against relegation, this creates financial problems. Like somebody has covered already, I think your just swapping a weak superleague team for an even weaker team in the championship, who instead of having a few seasons to catch up to SL standard, they have 4/5 months.

Strangely I agree both with this and the above qoted post as well, ultimatly the structure will only achieve so much, how well the structures are managed both by the governing body and the clubs will have a much bigger bearing on their success

Although some clubs are contempt, do you not think the current qualifying for a franchise guidelines we have in place are good for the championship teams?

Stadium facilities the biggest one IMO. Needing to win a NRC final or achieving GF status also keeps the playing side of the competition healthy.

Also agree with the post you quoted in your post. Pick a structure and stick to it and give it a chance.