Why do people get so touchy about league formats? There are posters on here saying they will give up the game if the split comes in. Why? Does your club change? Does your home ground change? No. Only difference is most games matter, rather than few.

Pure licensing stagnates the league as shown now and in recent years. It also rewards mediocrity in a way. Its not fit for purpose.

Pure P and R bankrupts clubs and creates the yoyo effect. While giving some good games it doesnt allow clubs to grow. Its not fit for purpose.

Fans are unhappy, attendances are dropping, no sponsors and hard times.

In response the RFL come up with a blend of Licensing and P and R withh increased money to lower clubs to allow growth and in the hope the more meanigful, and hopefully more entertaining, games attract the money and spomsors thus allowing the game to grow further.

Im not the biggest fan of the RFL at times but at least they are trying. And who, honestly, on this board has the experience and insight to know what effect the split will have?

Noone. Three options, two tried and failed, time to try the other

licencing bancrupts clubs as well

Honestly Richie,if you think things have been equalised upwards in the last 4 or 5 years,thats fine with me,my opinion is they've not,my opinion is standards have dropped in the last 4 or 5 years.
You might think standards have risen because wigan and leeds have become better clubs ,but the rest of SLE hasnt changed one dot.
You might think more SLE standard players are being developed than ever before but you'd be thinking .
Nothing has changed,Its the same clubs that are producing the players

At least nobody has simply said: it is too complicated. You have to be pretty dumb to think it is.

I have a preference, but I can see both sides of the debate. There are obvious, and not so obvious, flaws and benefits to each league system.

What I like about this 8x8x8 system is how the play-offs will be structured. One of the main criticisms of the current system is that people can 'do a Leeds' and be tripe until September. I think this new structure addresses that as, from what I understand: points will be carried over to the split and then the top 4 will play-off for who would reach OT. This would give us a meaningful play-off system as under the current guise week 1 (for the top 4) is basically repeated in week 3, with the exception of Leeds replacing one team

. For eg, we (saints) played Wigan twice and Warrington twice in recent seasons. It's just pointless for the fans to shell out for the same match twice and for the players who have to beat their opponents again. Last season we beat Warrington in week 1, but they beat us in week 3 and that means they go to the GF? It's pretty illogical.

I just hope that whichever one is picked will be the same system in 10 years time, especially if, as predicted, they go for the 8x8x8 system. That system has obvious long term goals for the Championship clubs and it would be a waste of time if people expect short term results from that and it is shelved when people moan after a season or two.

The way I look at it, is from a neutrals point of view. It is hard enough as it is trying to explain the play off system to them let alone explaining the leagues combine after so many games.

I think what we need in Rugby League is to keep things simple and build on it, not panic when things don't go our way. I think P + R is essential for the sport to expand and grow, but I also see the financial difficulties in that.

What we need is more national exposure IMO and trying to get as many games on TV as possible rather then worry how it will look on TV. People would rather watch a game of RL then an omnibus of Eastenders on a sunday regardless of whose playing for example. National exposure will lead to stars being born and more players becoming household names which will only attract more sponsors. Let sky have the pick of the first two games of each round and then sell the rest off, even if they have to give some games away to broadcasters.

The problem for me is not only the downfall of attendances but the lack of a good feel factor we now get at most games, its like we are watching a game but only so many are allowed to know about it. We don't market the game properly and that is the downfall of our sport, everybody knows about the RUWC 2015 being over here but how many could tell you when the RLWC is ? We only market to our own fans and I feel its going to be harder then ever if we start putting novelty systems in place.

Add to this the rising prices of games (some tickets worth 61 quid on saturday) and the poor standard of refereeing and you see that is why we are in a poor state of affairs.

Why didn't you just answer the question?


Standards wouldn't equalise upwards by Wigan and Leeds becoming better clubs, but by the teams towards the bottom getting better. If only Leeds and Wigan improved, the the gap between clubs would widen, not equalise.

What does which clubs produce the players have to do with anything?

When people are complaining about a stagnation or decline in standards, they seem to have completely forgotten that over the last five years not only have we increased the league by 2, but we have also massively reduced our reliance on overseas players. There was always going to be at least a slowing in the improvement. As a game we are now producing more players, of a higher quality than we were before, the question is whether that we are producing enough to fill 14 sides as opposed to 12, and whether we can produce 15 or so ‘starters’ to fill those sides rather than 15 stand-ins to surround the 10-15 overseas ‘starters’ clubs used to have.

We probably aren’t at the moment so the options are either to give up and go back to what we used to have in the hope there will be a short-term increase in quality as we cut the number of clubs draft in the kolpak stiffs and bartercard rejects the game was full of in the 90’s and early-mid 00’s, or we put more effort in to doing what we are doing, keep investing time, effort and money in to coaching and development of our youngsters and put in place the long-term structures to increase our standards exponentially. Sadly, the game seems to have bottled it. We are seeing a return to the cowardly regression of 2000 and we are undoing a lot of the good hard work that got us to this point.

What we are seeing is what happens when leadership hasn't got the first clue what a strategy is. Random thrashing about in other words.

There is nothing random about what is happening right now. It is clear regression in all aspects of the game.

And what people seem to be forgetting is that when there is this steady progression of a club up, there will be the corresponding progression of a club downwards.
This is still the case for this league structure.

this would massively reduce the competitiveness of SL1. It should certainly not be encouraged.
I also don’t see how they can commit to progressively spending more money on players when we have a system which could result in their income falling a HUGE amount on the basis of a 7 game play-off series. Any club spending the full SC, who had a terrible run of injuries and got relegated would be pretty much destroyed. Their crowds would fall by probably a half at least. Their best youngsters would leave and their first team squad would be decimated. There is a good chance a club would never recover from being relegated.

Look at those league standings in your example again. Look how uncompetitive and uninteresting the VAST majority of games in this league would be. In this, your best case scenario.

You win 4 games you are done, you are through, your season is over. In your example, in a 7 game league, Team A have 3 dead rubbers, Team B have 2, team C has one. Team H realistically has 4, but if they lose their first 2 games to clubs from their league, they would be all but done with 5 games to go.

Realistically, if you are one of the 4 looking to get promoted you would need to win all your games against your fellow clubs fighting for promotion. If you don’t you are looking at needing to beat at least two SL1 sides. So as soon as you lose a game against one of those three clubs, you aren’t going up, fans would lose interest, players wouldn’t really bother. If all 4 SL2 clubs take points off each other, which if that league is functioning and competitive should happen every time, Then getting promoted gets a whole lot harder. The temptation then is for those clubs to spend more money on players chasing a payday in SL, and we all know how that works out.

The only thing I can compare the split to really is Apetura and Clausura, in South America. But there the season splits and you have two champions. I think if the winnings are fairly distributed, and the salary cap makes the competition fair, 12-12/8-8-8 is a goer.

Do you know, after all the ideas have been put forward I still haven't heard one which is any better than the Lancs and Yorks league split, with play-offs, which we had up to the early seventies; every team [all 32, shown in one league table in the 'top' division, every team with a chance of the championship The new suggestions are no better, just needlessly more complicated.

Get rid of the Lancs/Yorks and have East/West - job done.

Can someone answer, in the 8-8-8 system

How the top 4 championship clubs on sub 1million salary cap compete with the bottom 4 SL clubs on 1.5 million?

How bottom 4 SL clubs will be more financially sustainable playing championship clubs likely to reduce crowds for that part of the season?

How SL clubs will sell season tickets for a comp that may include a third of the season thrashing pt championship clubs?

I've been wondering who else would ask that question, Pike....

I've posed the same question, all be it in slightly different words, myself and still haven't got a sensible answer... and truth is, I don't think there is an answer. When we get more full-time clubs we might be able to go with these schemes but that time certainly isn't now nor is it going to be very soon, to be fair.

As a Wakefield fan, it is likely that my team will be involved.

Where have you seen the salary cap limits for the 3x8 system?

2 of the 'championship' clubs will likely be from next season's SL.
Wakefield don't spend the Salary cap anyway, so the difference could be less.
I doubt games against Featherstone and Halifax will have worse crowds than Salford or London (or Catalans)
If you're in the middle 8 play-offs, you could well be winning more games than you did in top 12.
In the current set-up the last 5 or 6 games are fairly unattractive
We would have something to play for at the end of the season once the top 8 bid failed (again)
An increase in home games (14/15 versus 13) would help with season ticket value for money.
As few as 2 games could be against teams who were not in SL 2014. 2/31 is not a third of the season. Even at the limit (4 teams not from the 12, and then don't make the middle play-offs) that's 4/29, which is still no-where near a third.
I'm not convinced playing Featherstone, Castleford, Sheffield and Halifax will be the thrashings you imagine when they have a carrot of guaranteed 'promotion' and more cash.

This system is the best fit for RL at the moment.
Closed shop has made the inter-league difference much wider.
Straight 1 up/down has been tried and failed, as just because you are the best of low budget league, doesn't mean you can compete with the top league.
The proposed system means that the best 12 teams will play in the top league each season.

I don't expect big changes in the top 12 or 8 season on season, but the system allows change. Ambition, hope and dreams are the mainstay of sport.

If say Toulouse enter the lower 12 in 2015 it is possible, although highly unlikely, that they could win the SL grand final in 2016.
Top 4 lower 12, top 4 middle 8 (2015) followed by top 8 upper 12, top 4 upper 8 and win the play-offs (2016).

The important factor is that the RFL have the bottle to equalise financial pay-outs to the 24 teams as far as possible. The top clubs' incomes will still be higher due to other income. The salary cap should be equal for all teams as it no longer serves to limit clubs' overspending, only limiting top clubs' recruitment which is needed until the sport as a whole increases its income.

The proposed system could encourage more external investment by having a clear route to the top and removing the whim politics of RFL 'franchising'.

Sounds great in theory but I very much doubt it is going to help the bottom SL clubs at all.

There is no way the salary caps are going to be close never mind the same unless the bottom clubs end up losing so much money in this system they have to slash their spending in which case you might as well have an 8 team SL to start with. Good luck signing any decent talent if you are likely to end up in the bottom 4.

I give it 3 years tops before it is changed again if they go with this stupid plan.

Fev may believe that Mr Nahaboo has got all these ‘investors’ ready to throw hundreds of thousands at players. He may even do so. Fax may believe that they can get enough sponsorship and fans through the door to compete with the lower SL sides in a 7 game series. Even Leigh and Sheffield might believe they can scrape together a squad which doesn’t get embarrassed by the bigger boys, and the two relegated sides next year might believe they can keep it together enough to see them back amongst the top dogs in a years time.

Best case scenario for this idea all that happens.

Best case scenario see’s 6 clubs who could, at least feasibly put up a half decent show at the bottom of SL.

Still, Batley can’t compete with those at the bottom of SL, Dewsbury can’t put together a competitive full-time squad. Is anyone expecting Donny, Whitehaven, Keighley, Swinton to be able to?

So how interesting and competitive is the 1st part of that season going to be? Where more than half the games the likes of Fev play are an absolute walkover? And this is the BEST case scenario. Where half the season is a cake walk.

How are the likes of Dewsbury supposed to survive when they are getting smashed by full-time squads every other week?

it's more like the lower end Premier division teams having matches against the semi-pro conference sides, utterly ludicrous.

Great post!

Explains why the new structure will be fantastic for the game in this country from year one - never mind when it beds in over 5, 10, 20 years and we see the resulting growth in the game as a whole.

On a point of detail. Not sure if it's been decided yet but I'd like to see the 3 points for a win and one point for a 'bonus point' loss (a loss by no more than 12 points) apply in all divsions; the 12's and the 8/8/8 split.

I've yet to be convinced by bonus points. Does it really make any difference to league placings? Would it be open to manipulation? It could be sold to me though.

The RFL seem to have stated that the points for the top 8 will not be reset, so maybe there is a case for 3 points for a win in this section.
The difference between 4th and 8th after 22 rounds could be such that it would be almost impossible for them to make the play-offs, undermining the major aim of the system.
I'd prefer the points to be reset so that the last 7 fixtures would be more intense, but then you'd have top teams sandbagging towards the end of the top 12 games, as they do now. 3 points for a win in the 2nd part could be a sensible compromise.

It made for a FANTASTIC game tonight, Featherstone v Sheffield.

People are posting a lot of "if", "what if" "maybe" and "possibly" type assessments here in regard to 8-8-8.

The Fact is the worst team in SL has this year accounted for the top 2 Championship teams with ease........I suspect that the bottom 4 of the SL 12 will always prevail over the top 4 of the SL2 12....once a bottom tier club loses it's first game, then essentially any chance of promotion is over.

There are onluy two likely scenarios for the 8-8-8.
A) CC clubs are even during first half of season but SL clubs thrash CC club in the second half of the season
B) Top CC clubs thrash lower clubs in first half of season but are more competitive in second half of season against SL clubs.

The chances of 16 clubs (4 weakest SL clubs and 12 CC clubs) all being even close to equal is so remote it is off the bookies scale.


coco supposing your club misses out on playing Leeds, Cas and Hull at home in the SL season do you really think playing fev, fax and sheffield in the second half of the season is going to make up for those losses? Your club is one that has slowly gone about its business well of building its fanbase and attendances, despite not being top on the field. Clubs like yours have the most to lose out of them all I would think?

How many people watched it?

Why would 16 clubs need to be equal? The top 4 of the second tier would be better than the other 8, the bottom 4 of the upper tier would be worse than the other 8. These are the clubs that would play each other again. The key is how much of an overlap there is.
Based on the current league table the 8 would be Bradford, Wakefield, Widnes, Castleford, Salford, London, Featherstone and Sheffield. Is the disparity of playing standards wider than the current top 14? Will those standards be closer when Featherstone and Sheffield have a significant increase in funding? On current form could you guarantee which 4 would return to the top 12 after playing each other once?

If Wakefield were in the top 12 why would we miss out on playing Leeds, Cas and Hull at home? The first part (not half) of the season would be a full 22 game league playing everyone home and away (plus MM).

The losers in this are likely to be the 2 teams relegated at the end of next season. They will play all their games against lower/less well supported teams, but at least, if they can keep most of their squad together, they have a chance of making the higher tier the following year.

I'm not against franchising or straight P&R per se, but the proposed system is the best fit for our current situation to help the growth and development of a greater number of clubs, both established and new, to a higher standard.

Franchising could also have done this, in theory, but it was completely messed up in its implementation by the RFL. Perhaps they were dealt a weak hand as there were only a handful of clubs who could meet the minimum standards required to break even in such a system. It would have worked if there were at least 14 clubs with 10k crowds capable of spending the full cap. Franchise standards need to be fixed, not aspirational. KFC & McDonalds wouldn't stand for it.






Of course they are all ifs & maybes as it doesn't exist yet, so how can we know for sure how it will work. Those top 2 championship clubs will receive significantly increased funding to strengthen their squad in the new system. I suspect investors and fans will be more likely to turn up if they know they have a real chance of promotion. I think it is unlikely that the top 12 will change in the first season, but the clubs outside can build and try again the next year. It's about improving standards over a number of seasons, not just one. The bottom tier club would, realistically, only have to win 4 out of 7 games, which would be a tough call, but why would losing their first one be so catastrophic?