As we know it yes, but that's not the same as not having one is it

And are we having one?

Have all the issues that the game had thàt necessitated the last change of structure all vanished or will we go back to the old structure in the hope of slowing the decline? I wonder about the place of Toronto and Toulouse in the new scheme of things.

Mr Fev ain't happy.... www.totalrl.com/featherstone-cha ... al-change/

Mr Fev ain't happy.... www.totalrl.com/featherstone-cha ... al-change/

From the little that seems to be out there, I think the biggest issue is that whilst GH agrees with the need to grow the sport, he disagrees with the way to achieve that. Reports from one of the meetings suggests that GH doesn't believe that the format is the issue, but that the clubs are themselves using the format as an excuse for their poor commercial performance. I actually agree with him on that point.

However, GH was a strong proponent of this format and so I think it would be natural to be defensive about it. GH is also a big proponent of dual registration - another issue that seems to be under fire.

GH is also an RFL man. Whether you approve or disprove of it, he has always been close to the people at Red Hall.

But I also suspect that there is a bit of brinkmanship here. GH knows that the 'SL Eleven' are weaker without the support of arguably its biggest club, and undoubtedly its biggest market. Lenaghan's dream of mega sponsorship deals are going to be much harder to come by without the support of the game's commercially strongest club and only strong 'big city' market - and Rob Elstone is already on record effectively saying as such. It wouldn't be unlike GH to use that leverage to get the concessions that he wants.

So you are highlighting that Hudds v Salford attracted =#FF0000only 494 more spectators for an =#FF0000all Sooper Dooper League game !!!
I highlight that it suggests Hudds, Salford & Widnes are on the slippery slope to oblivion, no doubt their Chairmen have voted for a bigger slice of the pie & to cut tiers 1 & 2 adrift effectively closing the shop !

Thank you for the insightful and detailed post. Duel reg needs major work if it's going to be fair and a success , I'm sure more sides will run a reserve grade comp asap. I'm sure there will be more changes to come.

You could almost expect that the SL protectionists will cut central funding to Championship, League 1 & take all of the pie, then increase the Salary Cap so that no lower tier Club will ever be able to compete, it is a recipe for disaster & I am not at all surprised by the reaction so far from Championship Chairmen.

The old qualifying criteria for SL such as attendance, stadium standards, on field performance & sound business & financing will be set aside yet further still *it was never enforced anyway* & the likes of Giants, Salford Widnes & to a lesser extent Wakey will be encouraged to take & eat the pie without actually contributing to putting any pie on the table.

Catalans, Salford, Hudds, & Widnes are surely licking their collective lips that the scheming of Eric Pollard & his cohorts is successful.

I foresee a lot of damage will be done over the next few months.

As Mark Campbell says, the gap in class between the top Championship clubs and the bottom SL clubs has narrowed. Presumably the SL chairmen don't want this. They want to return where there is a vast chasm between the Championship and SL, as was beginning to open up under licencing.
Fev's first home game under the new regime was against newly relegated Bradford. They destroyed Fev. But later that season on the hottest day of the year Fev beat Bradford at Braford. An indication that Championship clubs ere improving. the fact that Leigh toppled Hull KR two years ago was another pointer. They are now taking action to put a stop to this phenomenon.

I agree. looks like the sl clubs want a closed shop. the top of the tree is only as strong as its roots

Their point being that championship sides haven't improved but SL clubs are getting worse and its a race to the bottom that they want to reverse. They want Super League to be bigger and better and therefore RL as a whole gets bigger and better and everyone benefits. Everyone including Featherstone.

That's with the Giants selling season tickets at £125 a pop.

Whilst I can understand people want things to change you have to be concerned with the way this new guy and those 3 chairmen conducted this. That it turns out talks are still ongoing and nothing is settled and that a month ago everyone agreed to make no public comments on things really makes yesterday look unprofessional. What do you think the likes of Sky and current or future major sponsors will think of people who conduct themselves in that manner.

I'm not sure what Elstone achieves by having those 3 chairmen there, he'd have been better off doing it solo as he already looks iffy by having certain chairmen there and what good is that going forward. Talks about a positive relationship with the RFL but how do you have a positive relationship after they went ahead with yesterday unbeknown to many.

One thing about fans criticism of the 8's is that lack of time knowing the fixtures is a big problem but at the same time the champion having the rounds of the CC closer together which is the same thing, you only have a few weeks to know who and when you're playing.

The Fev fans turned out in fairly large numbers for the Catalans fixture last season, short notice or not.

I've watched Championship rugby for a good few years now, and you're wrong if you think things haven't improved in this league. I won't comment on SL sides getting worse, but whoever's in the bottom 4 are in for a fight in a couple of months time. The SL sides should still prevail, but it's closer now than ever (ask Salford about their game against Leigh).

Rugby League, yet again, shows just how utterly unprofessional it actually is.
The greedy muppets from Wigan & Saints just couldn't hold their water and gave some kind of fake news conference to tell the world something that hasn't even been agreed. Disgraceful behavior.

Whether or not the game abandons the current format and it probably should, the sport should be able to organise itself well enough to get maximum publicity and benefit from the change.

The sensible thing right now would be to increase SL to 14 clubs and include Toulouse and Toronto and if we then want 1 up 1 down so be it.
However, what seems more likely is a reduction in clubs to give 10 SL clubs a larger slice of the Sky cake.
Talk about killing the sport, what the hell is going on ?

On the subject of 2 x 10 SL1 & SL2, this is just a cull of the top flight and re naming of The Championship.
Nobody will give a toss about SL 2, again, just stupid.

Why? What do Toulouse and Toronto actually give to the game other than a bit of international glitz and expensive travel arrangements? Toronto add a bit of interest at the moment (which will wane), but Toulouse are established as a Championship team that needs an expensive flight (all flights are expensive compared to road trips) and accommodation to get to for away teams.

If the away team support is irrelevant, what do each of these teams actually give to the UK RL game in tangible terms?

Some of what you say is perfectly correct, however your chairman has backed this move & it is nothing more than protectionism from the mediocre, the poor & most likely to be involved in an 8 way fight for survival/promotion & greed from the very top. Only Leeds have come out to say that they do not back these mooted plans.

Yours & Widnes, Salford & Huddersfield attendances & revenue from ticket sales are pitiful for established Super League Clubs & no doubt all those Clubs will benefit from taking all of the pie *which is what Lennagan & Co want* while having the protection that the lower tiers will never compete without funding. Many of those lower tier Clubs will go to the wall & a breakaway or split may be on the cards if SL do not play ball.

What revenue do you believe Toronto & Toulouse will bring to your Club ?
Will Salford, Widnes & Hudds, KR, Catalans & yourselves be claiming your slice of the pie without ever really being anything other than bottom & mid table fodder ?

Will this lead to a breakaway or a complete split ?

Lennagan in particular & McManus think they can just railroad this through & all will just suck it up bit are they confident they won't destroy the sport in the process ?

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Did they heck. They took about 30 and I was one of them ! Not that I blame them as they played Toulouse 6 weeks previous and the Catalan game was televised. But if you're defining 25-30 as a large number then damn.

Your club has voted for it. Barwick and Rimmer can,t run Superleague they don’t have the dynamics to increase the image profile of our game.
There is still a lot of deadwood in RFL, marketing and sponsor values of our game are atrocious.
The game needs a fresh approach, Barwick just doesn’t do anything at all for our sport and Rimmer can’t view things from the right perspective. Hethrington will lose influence hence the dummy spat.

You say 'International glitz' as if its some glib throwaway benefit, but its actually very important in challenging some of the perceptions that hold this sport back - that we're a sport where big men just barge into each other in poor northern ex-pit villages.

Clubs like Toulouse and the proposed North American teams represent opportunities to change those perceptions and sell something different to the public, to broadcasters and commercial partners.

Whether the sport takes those opportunities is another question entirely, but the cost of a few flights is, in my view, an opportunity cost worth paying. European travel, at the every least, is common across pretty much all professional sports and given that we regularly see SL clubs flying out to the Canaries for warm weather training, I don't think it's a cost we can't bear.

Who has this perception? I've done a lot of work down south and in particular London and this isn't the perception I encountered once. The perception I got more was that club scene was pretty strong and in comparison with union - but international scene was non existent. Pretty accurate really. Plenty of people I spoke to acknowledged that the skill level is high and it's an exciting game.

I believe genuinely that the biggest detriment to our success is internally we do not believe we can be as big a sport as we want to be, and that our own parochial views hold us way back more. It's like we don't want to attract big sponsors and push the boat out no the basis we already think that they believe we are a northern pit town sport when in fact that is not the case, but we accept it and then give our sponsorship away for pittance.

Regarding Toronto & Toulouse.
Either stick them in the top flight and take whatever benefit there is in having additional overseas sides in "our" comp or, get rid completely.
I still dont know whether there are any major benefits in having them (in terms of profile, exposure increasing sponsorship & increasing revenue etc). However, there is sure as hell no benefit in having them in the lower leagues.
Cant argue about increased costs etc and these are, relatively speaking, far higher in the Championship, where the visiting clubs are less able to afford the additional expense.
IF they are needed in the comp, it makes sense to have them in SL, if not, well, they should never have been invited to join.

Regarding what they give to the UK in tangible terms, this will only be measured in future years and maybe we will se a huge increased TV deal


As I said, i'm not convinced but there is only one way to find out.

You and your stereotypes. We're a poor northern ex-fishing village I'll have you know.

That perception is certainly there in the commercial world and, on many of the metrics that advertisers consider when looking to push their message, the RL audience scores poorly - this like MOSAIC profiling, average household incomes, etc. That's not going to change without some form of expansion.

The advertising world has changed since the Internet era. It has become very cheap to reach the audience that we speak to. Facebook means that I could set up an ad in 15 minutes and put it in front of 4,000 people in Widnes for less than £200 (and I'd get the data from those people I reach). When it comes to sponsorship, that's what the sport is competing against now - not Union or Football, but Google and Facebook. One of the reasons we're so appealing to bookies and pay day loan firms is because they're still somewhat excluded from those cheaper platforms. The only way to tackle that is to reach an audience that is worth more (and so advertisers are willing to pay more) and harder to reach. Those audiences are usually in big cities.

I think you're right in that people can appreciate the skill, but we don't portray that very well. Too few of our players are properly media trained, with a handful of notable exceptions they aren't eloquent in front of a camera in the same way that players in other sports are, and it supports that 'thick northern lads' image irrespective of how skillful they are.

I also agree with you that the sport holds itself back, almost fearful of success, although I'd argue that's more an issue at club level.