For a football club to join the proffesional ranks (league 2) they need to meet certain criteria.
In the past the winners have failed to be promoted on the back of this fact.

Im sorry SB but in this case I have to disagree with you as an example P&R screwed Hull City over completly.
The previous chairman spent money they didn't have on players that were 'ok' for a premiership club in a vain effort to sustain them in the Prem.
It was a s..t or bust move.
They are now in the championship and they are deeply in the s..t again.

It has happened 3 times in 20 odd years (and for the last seven years, two clubs have gone up). All three affected clubs have since been promoted to the football league. Such criteria can prevent promotion at multiple points in the pyramid, not just between the conference and league 2.

I don't see the relevance to a discussion of franchising, though. When RL had promotion/relegation to the top flight, Dewsbury & Hunslet both won the NFP but did not get promoted due to lack of a suitable ground etc. There's a huge difference between:

- having promotion/relegation decided by league table position, but sometimes disallowing promotion to clubs who don't meet minimum criteria

and

-having no promotion or relegation but simply having the sport's administrators decide which clubs play in which division.

I was just using the promotion to the football league as an example.
Also I have made no metion of you other points just commenting on 1 of your points.

Roverswall, he/she has destroyed your theory accept it, P&R to SL always had caveats.
You will never stop over ambition as per Hull City, the difference being in RL SL contracts are not valid in the championship and we have a salary cap.
The withdrawal of P&R impacts mainly on Cas, Wakey, Hudds, Salford, Widnes, Leigh and Fax. It protects half and punishes the other. Give each of the clubs a similar run of success and SL handouts and all would be fairly equal over a period of time.
Ringfence expansion, ie Wales, London and France, and let the rest live dream.

WTF are you on about?
What theory?
I made a true statement.
The fact you don't like it now just gives me extra pleasure.

How did P and R ' screw over ' Hull City ? , it was their choice to spend the money they did or to offer the contracts they did , I often hear how Leighs one year holiday in SL caused us financial difficulties , we actually made a profit that year despite making some terrible decisions with regards merchandise and the like , maybe Hull should have tried to emulate Bolton and bounced up and down a couple of times until they got it right

Look at the Prem apart from the few exceptions its awash with high dept.
Also why did the prem/FA install the parachute payments if not to stop clubs going pop when they left it?
You quoted Bolton as an example of how to do it that was a diffrent period of Prem football IMHO the footballing world has been changed massively since Chelsea and just of late Man City have gotten hold of it.
You only have to look at the Derby situation they bought almost nobody in for their 1 year because the prem money went on existing depts and they ended up with the worst points haul in Prem history.
Unless you want to be embarased almost weekly you have to spend plenty of cash and even then it promises you bugger all.

So the answer is what ?

Salary capping, and a P&R system that looks at a club as a whole rather than simply the results of a team over a few months.

and dumb ass sport would do that, the fans would be marching on parliament

Not really it doesn't take Albert Einstien to work out that football is going to go bang in a big way if controls are not put in place at some point

I think the controls we had were enough, Clubs were never going to get into Leeds or Hull debts, relative or not, the banks simply wouldn't lend that kind of money to RL, picking up the peices would not be of Risdale proportions, financial constraints of clubs were and could still be tightened further, and the whole debate seems to run at a complete paradox to the expansion process i.e. money from a central pot is dished out to clubs failing under an umbrella of expansion, franchising isn't about security, consolidation or youth development, its about agenda and marketing, were all paying for it while the product is diluted and devalued. The system must be revamped, and will be, no doubt, its just a case of when people smell the coffee and wake up.

nonsense, banks did lend money to RL clubs, thats why they went bust.

The product is in no way diluted or devalued, the only people devaluing any product is the fans of championship clubs bemoaning the only reason to watch the championships is to try and leave the championship to spend one season in SL, and it proved time and time again to be bad for the clubs outside SL and bad for those in it.

Again your purely seeing this from ivory towers.
I know plenty of people who ask how clubs are doing, any chance of promotion, when replied to with 'no its a franchising system'







ensues! or






It seems that this will just have to run a bit longer...
As for the banks, i did state 'relative or not' and mention the fact that controls were in place and could have been tightened further to ensure a reasonable amount of stability. Football we are not, Sport we still are though.

thats because this is a two year old system, it will take a little time to inform those who dont really know about the game the new process, but they will get it and see a game going from strength to strength.

And relative or not clubs still went bust, the banks still lent them money and they still went bust, often. And the financial controls we put in place must either
a)be applied as a flat rate across the board including to clubs which are much much bigger and not in danger of overspending to keep the game competitive as such damaging the ourselves where we are strong
or
B) applied relatively allowing the big to get bigger and leaving the smaller to get smaller.

thats because this is a two year old system, it will take a little time to inform those who dont really know about the game the new process, but they will get it and see a game going from strength to strength.

And relative or not clubs still went bust, the banks still lent them money and they still went bust, often. And the financial controls we put in place must either
a)be applied as a flat rate across the board including to clubs which are much much bigger and not in danger of overspending to keep the game competitive as such damaging the ourselves where we are strong
or
B) applied relatively allowing the big to get bigger and leaving the smaller to get smaller.

Were not gonna agree, even if you quote me and tell me twice


I have recently seen the saying 'I'm not arguing, I'm just explaining why I'm right'

I shall not though.
Each story has two sides though, I would probably think like you in some circumstances, but unfortunately at the moment i cannot, and i find neutrals tend to be bemused by the present incumbents also.
I think we can safely say, 'Nobody knows when they are going to retire'
So until then we shall watch the game meander along its marketing yellow brick road, before we get back to normality with a united Rugby League family.
I would add one final note though, and not directly quote you, but, we are already damaging ourselves where we are strong, and just like the people may take a few years to see the benefits of Franchising, it may also take a few years to see the damage it is doing.

and that strength is relative, where you think we are strong, relatively we arent, we are just stronger than new areas.

It is likely that a fair few times this year, the entire aggregate attendances for the championships are less than the attendance at Headingley, the DW and the KC.

This is the huge gulf we are talking about, and even in SL fax were looking at attendances a 3rd of Leeds, Hull and Wigan with no prospect or even an expectation that that gap was going to be massively narrowed, SL left some clubs behind, clubs with 3-4k attendances could no longer compete as they had done when the players worked in the pits, that era is over, gone and it will never come back. However much money we pour into the heartland there is a finite amount of fans and a finite amount of players, we simply cannibalise them. We cant wring much more from the heartlands, we do fantastic to get what we do, really we do, if we could mirror that strength nationwide we would comfortably be the 2nd biggest sport in the country and the garden would be very rosy. But bunkering down in the north will simply lead to the game dying

The gulf isn't all that big , if Widnes can make a million pound profit on a 2.5 million turnover in the Championship theres hope for us all



They even announced their 2012 SL season ticket prices today

I agree.
it's not like wendyball would ever copy the play-off system that RL brought to the table...or that Union (and soon wendyball) will use another official in front of a TV to review decisions, or that Union would ever use a sin bin.......oh...hang on a mo!
RL is a small game in the scenario of the available disposable income on offer from the UK public. As a result, the game needed to ring fence it's top teams (with a liberal sprinling of expansion clubs) to ensure thw game survived. What happened to Widnes when they chased the dream was pretty much what would have happened as an on-going experiment...and clubs like Haven would have become the norm.
Lewis is good for the business...if not in the eyes of traditionalists...a fact borne out by the profits now being made. RL was never going to be big enough to support 30 clubs in the UK if it had been left to it's own devices......but I believe that in 20 yrs there willbe 20 teams able to stand on their own in the UK.....That's the benefit of having someone like lewis at the helm.
You try making an omlette without cracking a few eggs

Not much fun , if you re an egg

playoffs, video refs and sin-bins are all American innovations aren't they?

shush...its the rfl who are full of good ideas.

i wonder who wigan will choose to play in the playoffs..now thats a good idea isnt it

Stop urinating on chips, you have to play the SL tune now Steve