Which would make them eligble for Wales,Scotland or Ireland, therefore improving the options of the home nations, but would probably put an end to the ' residency ' loophole, which would be another good thing

Problem solved, not hard is it?

It would certainly add some ' jeapody ' ,wouldnt it?

it wouldnt make them eligible for the home nations. England yes, Wales, Scotland and Ireland no. You havent solved any problem, simply pretended it doesnt exist. Its moronic.

The championship clubs also have the home grown rule too, so hopefully there development will help even out the salary cap gaps. Though in reality it seems unlikely.

I think the thinking isn't necessarily that you can jump from one tier to the next quickly. Rather, it takes a couple of years consolidation in each group before moving on. Blowouts happen, but it will be up to clubs to respond to them and improve. If they don't, the top 8 will drift into a league of it's own, destroy the bottom 4 consistently before moving to the "real" competition. (This is my greatest concern with the system)

id say doubly unlikely in that it will also mean that the top clubs, or ambitious SL clubs hoover up all the talent. Im also not sure how clubs who dont have academies are going to get many home grown players.

its what is almost certain to happen.

What it might do ( because NOBODY knows for certain ) is force all clubs to start acting like sustainable RL clubs, to start acting like businesses, and to start looking how to get more paying customers and sponsors instead of relying soley on SKY money to fund them

Then again it might not, but those that do, will most likely be the ones to succeed

So there is no difference from the franchise system? Im sure london, huddersfield and salford would all love more supporters and everybody would love new sponsors.

And the tried and trusted method of getting them is?

Or to put it another way, blatant cheating of the salary cap.

As I said before anyone that believes that any players actually received less money as opposed to having less money reported on the books is extremely naive.

This is my worry as well.

For a club like Leeds or Wigan, this system works. For anyone else, it doesn't, no matter how much it appears to.

If you are relatively confident that you'll always be in the top eight, fantastic. The gap between you and the lower portion of the league increases every season. Whilst the top clubs have the intensity of playing each other, whilst they cream the chunk of the prize money, the commercial revenue and whilst they can retain and recruit the best players, the rest will get dragged further and further to the bottom by playing the lowest common denominator.

The Championship clubs wanted this because they want an opportunity at Super League. In five years time, we'll see the same clubs arguing that they can't break into the top eight because the likes of Wigan, Leeds, Warrington, St Helens, Huddersfield, Hull, Catalans and Salford are too far away from them and that "SL1" is effectively a closed shop.

I'm sure this thread was nothing to do with cheating the salary cap, when I last posted.

Me thinks it has become derailed slightly????

Well not really, because if it was blatantly cheating the cap there would have been a specific rule against it rather than the 'catch-all' rule the RFL needed to use.

Wigan did nothing lots of clubs didnt do, how and why and when they did it was.

Yet the majority of the top clubs voted against it, go figure.

I suspect that is because it doesn't address the core issue within the game - a cronic lack of revenue.

I'm not a fan of this system by any means, but I think it does tip the scales even further towards the elite clubs.

Maybe they wanted that split.

You are running a lesser SL club, you have very little money to play with, you can’t make that jump to challenging at the top, you consistently spend £3-400k less than the big boys. You don’t have money to invest in your infrastructure, you are getting a little left behind. Look at the alternatives, franchising means huge demands are made for you to improve and some ambitious clubs knocking on the door and a possible cut in league size means you could very soon be in the lower leagues with no real plan for getting back in. A return to P+R would mean you started every season at risk of relegation and the hugely damaging drop in revenue and visibility that causes. You don’t have a safety net and there is a good chance that should the bounce of the ball go the wrong way all your plans will be torn up you will probably struggle to get back up, and possibly go bust.

For those clubs this structure gives them a softer landing if they do get relegated and makes no demands of them ala franchising. It means lower SL club A can cut the amount it spends on players by a couple of hundred thousand and all you have to do is beat 4 lower league sides a year and you are golden. Eventually when the gap between you and the top SL clubs becomes so big you get hammered every time you play them you can blame the big bad boys and when the inevitable ring-fenced 10-12 club SL comes in you can blame the RFL.

In other words, its creating SL1.5 so that teams who need to step down from SL don’t have to admit to their fans they aren’t big enough for SL.

Most of the big clubs, who aren't distracted with survival, are reaching the pinnacle of what is achievable as a club, and recognise it takes things outside of their control (ie other clubs) for them to grow further. If no club was guaranteed a playoff place year on year, the regular season would mean a lot more, people would be more excited and therefore more likely to go - result higher crowds (so long as the quality remained/ better)

As has been said, this system will just lead to the super 8 and some also rans meaning eventually the 23 games will become the season now, aka a preseason = lower crowds.

All speculation, nobody knows

Just like we all guessed that licencing would breed boredom , and that clubs would still overspend, maybe this time you'll be right

Football has the Champions league with extra games against bigger clubs with bigger crowds. Yet it still is not a closed shop. There is always another team pressing on that door.

If you want more customers then speak to more people........

Dont be stupid, its spend more money on players, everybody knows that,

Ah....the "I've got more money than sense" method as established by David Hughes!

Established long before Mr Hughes started bankrolling the London Club, its been the primary ' business plan ' for a hundred years, you'd have thought by now somebody would have figured it doesnt work

Maybe when we have 4 leagues of 10 splitting into 5 eights then eight fives with a play offs of the top 13

That sounds f**k all like socialism to me, but you carry on.

I thought that, it's hardly we're all the same system is it?