Just want to throw my two cents worth in as a Widnes fan.

I thought licensing was the right way to go, I thought we as a club were gradually building, bringing through our own players, and slowly catching up with the big clubs.

We had been, in my opinion, harshly treated twice by the RFL, firstly missing out on the original SL to clubs such as Workington and Oldham, when I thought we had a lot more to offer, and again when we were overlooked for the Crusaders. Much as I would have loved for them to succeed and spread the game at the top level, it felt at the time as though the RFL/Sky were being bullied by their owner into including them.

All this pales into insignificance when you look at how we are being currently treated.

Our previous custodians, Steve O'Connor, his brother Brian and our fabulous CEO James Rule have slowly drained the club of all funds over the last few years, to the extent where at the time of our entry into admin we had around £750 in the bank.

Looking at our playing squads over the last few years it's blatantly obvious that they weren't overspending on players, we've been awful for the best part of three years, the money was just going on salaries for themselves.

Our current problems have come about from all the season ticket money raised and the percentage of parachute payment received disappearing before the season got going. On the back of this we have had the rest of the parachute money withheld as well as £70k of funding for the academy, which is the only decent thing to have come out of out time in SL and, without which, we wouldn't be fielding the majority of this years side.

I understand we need to be punished but having the points deduction, which will cost us money for next year due to a lower finishing position, and then the other monies withheld feels like a triple whammy.

It's a horrible time to be a Vikings fan, we are constantly putting our hands in our pockets to help try and maintain our club, while the people who put us in to this position seem to have got away scot free, and the powers that be seem quit happy to watch us die a slow painful death.

Of course a Widnes fan would say licensing worked, you got promoted from 5th in the final season with having a team that was nowhere near the standard of the league leaders at the time.

Yes, cos that was the criteria set out by super league, hence we go promoted. Its not that hard to fugure out really.

The parallels with the truly gut-wrenching times in the past years of following Bradford are clear. It's the fans putting their hands in their pocket to try and rectify the mess they didn't cause which I find upsetting for any club that goes through it. It's also something people need to think about when they freely use the abstract "they deserve it" line for any club docked points or are going through the mire. I know for a fact not a single person who posts on here deserves that kind of thing for spending their time and money following the clubs they love and we'd do well to remember it.

We are too tiny a sport to embrace the same parochialism as football. I lament any and every club going through bad times. As a Bradford fan, do I have a sort of primal pleasure from seeing Fax, Giants and Leeds lose, well yeah I'm not a weirdo. But do I want the club and the fans to actually suffer absolutely not. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. I have a naive liberal snowflake wish that we'd look out for one another in our tidgy little sport,and we'd be stronger for it. But it doesn't happen.

"I have a naive liberal snowflake wish that we'd look out for one another in ousr tidgy little sport,and we'd be stronger for it. But it doesn't happen."

Which is why the game below SL is stuck in the 70's. Widnes, Bradford the game qouldn't miss them in the [i[umodern[/u[/i era.

And here I was thinking the Championship is now a fascinating competition featuring clubs from around the globe. I didn't pick up on the 1970s 'another bloody sunday' vibe before. Come to think of it, I'm sure I saw the Bradford lads smoking during the game yesterday. They definitely had a few pints of bitter at half time and the collars were HUGE.

I can't be faffed having the "would SL be stronger with Bradford in it" discussion again. I have an obvious opinion on that and it's probably shared by as many people as not.

Obviously, your business model wasn't very good then.

So where are these extra half a dozen or so teams going to come from in the long, nevermind short, term to give 14-16 teams who will be able to survive with 10,000 crowds and/or a sugar daddy ?

I'm in talks with Walter Mitty's estate about the LA Unicorns, the junior team are to be called the Leprechauns, then we have the possibility of Ankara Anchors, it's a brave new world...

I'd have the current 12 toronto and toulouse..... Possibly 2 more from the championship...... Beaumont would bankroll leigh with the assurance of top flight survival..... Widnes were successful under licencing.
The NRL, AFL, NFL, NHL, NBL...... All successful without P&R.... Weve had 100 years of jeapordy and were still tiny.........we need a top tier with strong teams and a minimum spend on marketing...... If peoe see full stadiums they want to be part of it....

I agree with what you say why they the RFL and super league can not see it it is bloody stupid to carry on the way we are

I’ve always been in favour of P&R but the problem is when a team gets relegated nowadays if they don’t come back up straight away they go bust or have to go back part time I think we could easily accommodate a 16 team league just add Toulouse Toronto Leigh and Bradford and you have Halifax and Fev waiting in the wings in case things don’t work out for any of teams

When we say that P&R is ingrained in our sporting culture, it is worth remembering that we had no promotion and relegation between 1905 and 1962 or 1964 to 1973, when we had a single league. As well as more recently, when there was none to and from SL from 1998 to 2000, and from 2009 to 2014, when there were other divisions. I’m not saying those are models we should look to recreate, but it isn’t the case that P&R has always been part and parcel of pro RL in this country.

I think P&R has only recently started being used in domestic first class Cricket, though it’s not a sport I follow closely.

I've said elsewhere, 2 conferences of 8 sides, with 14 Home and Away games v your fellow conference sides and 8 (4H/4A) games against the others.....that's 11 home games.
Then, top 4 sides of each division play each other once (4H/4A) as do the bottom sides....another 4 Home games.....15.
Then, in the top division a straight 1st v 8th, 2nd v 7th scenario........better teams rewarded with extra home games........
At the end of the lower 8 comp, If there's an applicant for a Licence that has been approved (diligence, but not in the Bradford sense), then the bottom side plays them home and Away with an aggregate winner staying up.

15 home games.....and no bloody loop fixtures.....

St Helens,
Warrington
Salford,
Leigh,
London
Toronto
Catalans
Castleford
Leeds
Bradford
FC
HKR
Wakefield
Huddersfield
Toulouse
Featherstone/Halifax

Let's not forget York who are 4th in the Championship. I'm absolutely chuffed for them and how well they're doing. It suggests we might have another top flight city team in the making.

Interesting, no Wigan?

How about lets stick with what we have for a couple of seasons



Apart from the missed opportunity of not including Toronto and Toulouse in the last format change, surely, we should stick with the system that we have.
Of course, it's bloody uncomfortable for those under threat and nobody wants their team to go down but, at least with the current format, there is always the opportunity to re gain promotion.
If we go to any kind of franchise / license system, we will still exclude the rest of the Championship clubs and make it difficult to add "expansion" sides to the comp.
The key to what may be possible in the future is likely to be massively affected by the next TV deal and who knows what that may bring.

I really hope Toulouse come up sooner rather then later, hopefully if Toronto bottle it again Toulouse will be waiting. Be better for the game as a whole to have another French team in the top league.

I would repeat my annual, or perennial, question - to which I have never read anything from RFL or SL that remotely addresses it - Where are we going with this?

On current rumours and possibilities you could in a couple of years end up with a SL including
1. Toronto
2. Canada 2
3. New York
4. Catalans
5. Toulouse
6. Barcelona

I will ignore the "no away fans" argument, but that leaves the colossal expense of half the clubs having to jet half a plane of people to and fro every week.

But back to the plot. Where are we going with this? Are we actually looking to build and cement a World Super League? Like a RL version of the Champions League?

Or is the aim (as I thought it was with Catalans, though it was never said) to use the foreign club as a standard bearer to promote RL on their home patch, with a view to the foreign team eventually retiring into a newly vibrant own domestic league?

Or is there, as it has always seemed to me, in fact no real overarching plan whatsoever and never has been, and we just get random applications from moneyed enthusiasts and for as long as they can inject the cahs, we are happy to accommodate them permanently?

Compared to soccer, RL is skint. One leading player's Premier League wages could probably pay the entire RL weekly wage bill. Yet no country allows foreign teams into any of the premier (or indeed any) divisions. If it is such a great idea, then why not? For example, "promote" Man City to La Liga?

I just don't see that the present arrangement of foreign clubs being allowed to come in and stay in seemingly on a permanent basis is healthy for the domestic game. As at today, if you added 5 foreign teams to SL then Wakefield, Leeds, Huddersfield, Hull KR and London would find themselves in the Championship to keep Bradford and Leigh company.

How long would all those "SL level" clubs manage to stay at anything like their present operations, given that at best, only one of them could be promoted each season - and that might be at the expense of another English team anyway.

So your plan isn't actually for 14-16 viable clubs, but merely a bit of deck chair shuffling!

^^This^^

^^This^^

Cardiff/Swansea in the Premiership?
Derry City in Ireland?
Monaco in France?
Vaduz in Switzerland?
Toronto/Vancouver/Montreal in MLS?

I don’t think there is an overarching master plan beyond trying to exploit opportunities that emerge and seeing how it evolves.

I doubt the New Zealand Warriors will be playing in a NZ-only competition any time soon. In fairness they’re a good bit closer to Sydney than a potential domestic expansion team in Perth.