Did a work experience kid come up with the idea?

Yee god no! Give yourself an uppercut whoever came up with this idea!

So the teams placed 9th in the top division and 5th in the 2nd division would have a far greater chance of winning silverware than the teams that finished 8th in the top division and 4th in the 2nd?

Even by RFL standards this is crazy.

I'm not so negative on the concept. Seams more of a return to an older system that we used to opperate under with a few tweeks.

The big question and one that is not resolved is money.

The top 12 will have more than the bottom 12.
So when the split comes, between the bottom 4 from 1 and the top 4 from 2; there will be a massive gulf in salary and quality of player.

The system would work if everyone got a fair share of the cash, but I can't see SL clubs voting for that. Although you could see non-SL clubs voting for it, to get some paydays. The question would be, will the crowds turn up????

In the end money is the issue and until it can be addressed pretty much any system will have issues and drawbacks.

No No No and No!! What a complete joke!! I hope the SL Chairmen don't vote for this nonsense.

Somehow I doubt that would be the case. Presumably playoffs would be top 2-3 max under such a system.

But yep, the problem with this is that we don't have 24 teams that can compete, or even survive with the money we can bring in at the moment.

The league structure itself is hardly complicated.

What a crackpot idea this is. Where is the extra money that will be needed to finance this going to come from? As things stand the second level teams would just be playing for the right to be flogged by the teams that drop down from the first level.

Would people be willing to buy season tickets for Cas, Wakey, Rovers or Salford if they think that there is a good chance that their clubs are suddenly going to be playing the top clubs at one half of the season to playing second tier clubs the next?

During the second stage of the season teams will more likely to be playing each other home and away to make up for the smaller divisions, so for the top eight clubs that would be three times in the league plus Challenge Cup and any playoff system. It would be like going back to the overkill of several years ago.

SL needs to come up with a plan to increase funding by 7 mill a year, then the club grants can be at an amount that actually keeps the league sustainable.

This has nothing to do with Championship Chairmen. The meeting to decide this loony scheme was attended and voted on democratically by SL chairmen. It's designed to stem the tide of SL clubs going bust.

Don't taint "the lower leagues" with the sticky brush of SL

It’s a proposal from the RFL which has been presented to the SL club chairmen. It hasn’t yet been voted on, ratified, or anything else yet. Hopefully the proposal was laughed out of the room with derision it deserves.

I would suggest it's highly unlikely that the RFL are changing the structure of the elite competition just to placate [i"a minority of lower league clubs moaning very loudly"[/i but your obsession with small clubs having the impudence to speak out is duly noted.



The real reasons are:

... and....

It's the SL clubs that are moaning - and now they are getting a 12 team superleague whilst everyone argues over the details. Throw in a few red herrings and they get what they want in the same way that the kerfuffle over proposed mergers allowed summer rugby to creep in the back door

Do you think it will be dismissed by the majority?

So we're tumbling towards a 12 team and then an 8 team top flight, fantastic..........really fantastic.
Stuff like this should improve spectator numbers for the amateur game, because nobody is going to want to watch the new pro RL pantomime



The important thing is to work out the reasoning behind this.
Is it to pacify the big boys at the top of the pile and promise them super intense games every week and then to soften the effects of the axe swinging at the bottom clubs and then to give a ray of hope to the tope 3 or 4 CC clubs.

Somebody needs to explain what, exactly, they are trying to achieve.

More competitive games
Promotion and relegation
Expansion in France/ Wales
Increased TV income

Current Whipping Boy SL Rabble clubs and their supporters in particular are going to have a real problem with this proposed structure.

I had to check the date I thought it was April the 1st we are not fools we are supporters of the best game in the world this idea is

What worries me is that a lot of SL clubs wont be affected by it. The traditional big clubs aren’t any more likely to fall out of the ‘top 8’ under this proposal so its in their self-interest to vote for it because they will swap games against the lower sides for more games against the bigger sides. Some of the clubs who are really struggling might like it because it allows them to ‘step down’ without admitting they have failed, those boards get to keep their pride. I cannot see why any club who is on the cusp, the lesser sides who are ambitious, would vote for it. I cant see why the likes of Wakefield, Hull KR, Salford, and those who are in some ways one of the ‘bigger clubs’ but maybe haven’t been as successful as they would want, like Bradford, Hull, Les Catalans, would ever want it. It would make budgeting for them impossible.

At least you will see average attendances improve for the top 8 !
The numbers watching the other games will plummet though.

I can see why having a 'spectrum' of competitions to balance the fact that our clubs are a disparate bunch would appeal - but that is way too complicated and messy.

Some hard choices have to be made, and for all that there'd be howls of pain and derision, running away from problems (like we ended up doing with licensing) won't escape them.

Wakefield's attendances will plummet as soon as they start charging more than £125 for an adult season ticket.

The middle one should be called the Intermediateship.

See now you've spoilt it. Don't come up with practical objections. It's just boring.

I sincerely hope this was some kind of joke proposal just to see if RL Meltdown is still working.

How would the fixture list work?

You'd only know who you are playing until the beginning of April.

...which won't help season ticket sales at the middlin' and lower clubs.

I think it is difficult for us to comment at this stage, when we have only seen Sadler's beer mat explanation. The idea won't have been thought up over night and the clubs will have surely been presented with a detailed proposal and an answer to the questions posed on here and more. He hopes!