Great, more of that please. But it's not enough on its own to overcome the structural problems of a league with 8 teams in the playoffs and no relegation.

Apologies for repeating some of the points listed already.
Is this an idea that may have been established at HQ since the days of Lewis? if so are his previous plaudits misplaced?
Or is it that the ideas have come since his time ended from people who simply waited for him to go.
Have Barwick and the board simply felt that the existing system is unsatisfactory or needed to show they can be better? Is barwick too soon to the Greatest Game
I would like to see a list of those officials who put their name to these new ideas!
Who has been consulted or is the recent publicity part of the consultation process?
I assume clubs have already been consulted and if so who have been involved.
Just a comment - with very few exceptions the bottom four/top four two division suggestion would seem unworkable because of differing standards/funding/players.

When will the fans be consulted? We pay the bills after all!!!! If I dont like the outcomes SKY will be sacked and Premier sports will be purchased. I dont know if others will feel the same

What will be televised in future? I want to see at least the variety of teams that superleague has currently although perhaps the 12 teams proposed could work again.

I can see the support of championship clubs being gained because of P&R and I am sympathetic to some form of P&R. However, I support the increase in standards that has shown improvements in grounds - I dont want to settle for less!

Finally, I know the point has been made already, but I worry about overspending by a number of 2nd tier clubs leading to failure at promotion time and inevitable financial results.

Just read the last few pages of this thread and there are some brilliant posts which absolutely hit the nail on the head. The RFL actually does a pretty good promoting their end of the deal. I am forever bombarded with leaflets, letters, brochures etc in the post as well as emails. The other day I had a phone call from a bloke at Red Hall talking about offers for the Exiles game and World Cup.

Considering Warrington are owned by a promoter their marketing is dire and doesn't stretch beyond a poster stuck outside the ticket window for the next home game. No doubt it is the same at many other clubs. Contrast to Wigan and Leeds who really push the club. It is no coincidence that they are the two best supported sides in SL.

A club doesn't have to be winning every week, nor does every game have to feel like a final and be decided by a drop goal for us to get bums on seats. There are clubs in the soccer Premiership who have achieved absolutely nothing in my life time, yet still attract big crowds. I think a few club boards need to take a look at themselves and ask what they can do, rather than sit back and expect the RFL to run the show for them.

what a lot of poo, there is nothing wrong with the way it is now,of all the teams in the championship who would step up to replace anyone in sl no one is the answer fev,fax leigh just would not be able to cut it the support has gone to other clubs. we need to face facts we have only gone half way to the aussie model we need to go the whole way. new teams should be elected to join sl and then given 3 years to prepare for entry go from part time to full time,get finance/sponsers in place build their support up all with the help of the rl yoyo teams does not work P&R does not work in RL, it never has in the pro era and never will. this idea we are being given now will distroy at least 2 maybe 4 clubs just so the likes of leeds wigan etal can have a bigger cut of the cash.

Disagree. I can't imagine that Peter Deakin would have been better for the game at Red Hall than he was at Odsal.

SLE are responsible for marketing the competition - which is an entirely seperate remit to getting people through the gates at Headingley, Craven Park or Odsal in my view. The clubs should be making the job SLE / RFL easier, rather than sitting back and letting them take the flack.

The 14 Super League clubs are indivudial businesses. They're free to employ who they want, where they want and they have the same access to resources as every other club (in sofar as they are recruiting from the exact same job pool).

The only people who should be responsible for marketing the clubs are the clubs themselves. They're free to buy their own media, set their own prices and tailor their marketing to their own local audiences. The people who should be accountable for failing crowds or clubs struggling to make ends meet are the clubs themselves, not the RFL, and to say that the RFL should do "something" about failings at an individual club is letting the most culpable people off the hook. If those clubs could grow their crowds (both in terms of quantity and quality) and their revenue, the RFL / SLE job of finding commercial partners is a hell of a lot easier.

Anyone with an interest in marketing may have come across [url=http://www.ted.com/talks/seth_godin_on_sliced_bread.htmlSeth Godin's idea of 'purple cows'[/url. It's a principle that to make your business and your marketing work, you have to do something remarkable and if you don't, you just look like every other boring cow that's grazing in the field. It's not a new idea or theory, but it's a good analogy.

That's exactly what Bradford did. They created and marketed a matchday experience that had never been seen in the UK before (let's ignore the debate about 'stealing Cougarmania' for a second). They turned a "turn up for an hour and a half" event into an all-day family event with colour, light and music. They created a 'purple cow'.

The problem with these ideas is that suddenly, everyone is doing them and, when every cow in the field is purple, they all just look boring again. Unfortunately, nobody at any club has come up with that next 'remarkable' idea, other than mass discounts. They're playing it safe and as a result, nobody is talking about RL any more (at least, not positively).

Exactly. Some fans, and sadly some people within the game seem to have got it in to their heads that if only there was P+R, if only the play-off structure changed, if only the person who was in charge wore a nicer suit everything would fall in to place. Its stupid.

Get out and sell your bloody clubs, stop waiting on a silver bullet and stop blaming the RFL.

1 - 4 different divisions of 10 teams

2 - Alter the salary cap in each division to suit every team's capability to afford the full cap in that division

This may mean having the ability to increase the salary cap in the top league to keep the higher quality players from exiting the league towards Union/NRL.

This may also mean the teams who now play in Super League that will go down to the 2nd division that are now operating at full cap will have to lose a few of their better players to the top division. This will make for a better top division.

3 - Top 4 playoffs for each division, 1 v 4, 2 v 3 then the final of the winners.

Simplicity towards the end of the year will put emphasis on the playoffs as the most important part of the season, fans will no longer be dissilusioned with the playoff structure, and will be more likey to attend them accordingly.

4 - Season passes to accommodate the semi-finals, but not the finals considering they already sell tickets convincingly.

Fans will have an even greater incentive to attend the semi-finals, and treat the playoffs as the most important part of the season.

5 - The RFL should assess the salary cap differences from division to division, the team who wins their division should then go under a review of their finances to see if they're eligible to be promoted. The bottom team of each division should be relegated depending on the decision made after the financial review of the promoted team below.

6 - Games from the top two divisions should be televised to make up the lost revenue from Super League not having its overly-elaborate playoff structure anymore.

7 - Also, more representative games to fill the spaces left in the calender that should be treated as competition for places in the England team.

That should do it.

False dichotomy. Look it up, or ask your teacher to explain.

Given the gulf between our salary cap and the Aussie cap, raising our cap to within affordable limits for UK clubs wouldn't prevent our talent going down under. So when that fails, what next: maybe we could build a beach with heatlamps and wave machines to replicate the surfing experience? So forget raising the cap to make our game more attractive.

Fiddling around (again) with league structures won't do anything to make the game more attractive either and some of the proposals will be so confusing as to put many people off the game anyway. It's difficult enough trying to explain the current playoff system.

Why? Do you need someone to explain what one is to you? Because that clearly isn’t a dichotomy of any type, never mind a false one.

Maybe ‘learning what things are before I try and use them’ could be a SMART objective for you?

We should definately do this. Even if it doesn't work at least we'd have a beach with heatlamps and wave machines to replicate the surfing experience.

How about Rugby League run as the world's first mass spectator computer simulation? We could have a virtual salary cap of a trillion pounds and it wouldn't cost a single real penny. We could cut down on injuries by fiddling with the settings, and referees would be perfect... and could have massive green mohawks or be dragons.

If the two tier, P & R system comes into being, and licensing is abandoned, there will be little prospect of expansion of the game. Rugby league will be become even more of a parochial Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cheshire, Cumbria confined working class entertainment than it already is. As such it will increasingly be a source of ridicule lin the British media, and remain nonexistent in the French national media. Thus corporate sponsors in Britain and France will shy away from it even more than they do now.

If so Brian Barwick and Nigel Wood will go down in history as the men who eschewed visionary leadership, sucked up to the tin pot little clubs of the north, and in this way destroyed rugby league in Britain.

I am sure that Richard Lewis, seeing all his visionary innovations scrapped, will feel that he wasted a decade of his life trying to help a sport that is run by losers.

It's all on the hands of SL chairmen Jean.

That should read "in the hands".

think that should read in the hands of 4 maybe 5 of the most powerfull chairmen the rest will just follow suit depending on what is promised to them as when sl was first muted but then when it was done and dusted some were given a kick in the knackers and just told tough, the big 4 money men will allways get there own way in the end

P&R Is a catastrophic idea....why do people think the problems that led to licensing have suddenly disappeared?

even in the richer code of Union p&r is a joke where a club wins every game in the championship then goes up and loses every game week in week out for the whole entire premiership season

The problems that led to Licensing havent disappeared, but a whole new set have appeared, boredom and ompotence

Who's bored??

certainly not me we have on of the closest SL seasons for a long time

we have 4 teams with a shout of the league leaders shield and all look like they are good enough to win the GF

just because they're are a few teams at the bottom that aren't up to scratch which by the way happens in every sport in every league we should totally change the structure of the game.

at least with licensing the bottom clubs get time to develop they're squads to a competitive level. just swapping the bottom teams every year will bring nothing to SL. clubs will go back to the boom & bust football hiring & firing coaches buying a load of expensive aussie's that once they get relegated have to get rid of.

Not really correct, the onus is on the "big 4" to try and stop the other 8-10 from voting for more money and security.

If it's 1 man 1 vote, then often the smaller clubs win the day as they are the one's that don't have the money and rely more on the SKY Money.

I am not suggesting any change of the structure, just pointing out the facts

come on we all know how it works,you vote this way and we will make sure you are ok but when the time comes sorry old lad we didnt mean it the big 4 will allways get their own way

A major hurdle with P&R is the OCC anti-tampering deadline.

By the time promotion is confirmed any quality players that were on the market have long since signed elsewhere, meaning the side that needs strengthening the most only gets the leftovers to pick from.

This wasn't such a problem when the National League season finished before the OCC deadline but since the seasons were aligned Hull KR are the only team to achive promotion to SL & not finish bottom the following season.

P&R was abolished for a reason. Relegation last year would have set Widnes back a long time and Sheffield would now be getting flogged every week, probably with other SL clubs cast offs. Licensing shouldn't be dismissed as not working after just one and a half licensing periods. There should be at least a couple of more periods before any discussion is made.

The main problem with the SL structure is too many teams in the playoffs, as most of the playoffs teams are decided already by this stage of the season and the second half of the season just trundles along until the playoffs start. Reducing the playoffs would mean a more intense fight for playoff places but the season would be over for the teams in the bottom half of the league as the season goes on, but pro sport is supposed to be about winning to try and be the best, not winning to try and avoid being the worst.

One of the best ways to increase commercial revenue is more exposure to a wider audience on the BBC. As there isn't going to be a new knockout comp introduced anytime soon the best solution is probably to split the playoffs between Sky and the BBC and, if the BBC can't replay the Grand Final in full, at least have more extensive highlights on the BBC than there usually is.

Agreed, but whilst the 8 team play-off, us and then scenario continues, it is stillthe responsibility of the clubs to sell themselves to their target audience.
I can only really use the London Shambles....sorry, London Broncos as an example, but AFAIK, sine Ian Lenagan was told to "let go" by the RFL, the club have....

1. Placed 5 quarter page adverts in the London edition of METRO,
2. offered 2-4-1- tickets on Grab one (or the like),
3. given away free tickets twice in exchange for facebook likes,
4. handed out 15,000 travel ticket holders at Canary Wharf,
5. released 2 "viral" videos that have been seen by less than 3,000 people,
6. included info about the rebrand in the wembley double header programme,
7. flyered fans on the way to England v Australia at the big house in 2011.....
8. in 2013 started placing 1/8th page generic ads in the local papers.
9. leveraged increased coverage in the Evening Standard
10. stickered/liveried 10 London black cabs

Now, if this had all been done the week after IL walked away or even over a few months, all well and good, but [size=200THIS IS THE TOTAL MARKETING ACTIVITY OF THE CLUB FOR THE 5 AND A HALF SEASONS SINCE LENAGAN LEFT US.....[/size.....it makes my blood boil when I think of the number of missed opportunities the club have experienced.....the latest rumour regarding our new home is a 5,000 capacity stadium in North West London.....