Work it out fellah, bejesus it aint rocket science!

Two levels idea is not a bad thing.....but I'm not sure some are understanding the effects

The days of promotion and relegation were not so great.
Relegation usually damaged a club. Probably with the exception of Cas it takes a long time to recover and come back.
You lose money straight away because of crowds and sponsorship slipping away. The players mostly just join the team coming up or become fringe players elsewhere.

What a big league does is let the likes of Wakefield and Salford get the big days against the top clubs to make it entertaining for people to watch the big games and gets them a higher profile.
Of course the regulars will still watch but the numbers will be much smaller unless you are playing the top teams.

There will always be a gap between the two tiers. Creating a 10 strong league will make that league stronger but will not help the level below............especially if it still a franchise. P&R would have to be in place which would then hurt the top tier.

I think we are better making the current league stronger and supporting the next tier we have now by helping them build to a franchise.

But lets have a look at the detail.

you suggest that we play 9 teams 3 times to give us a league of 27 weekly rounds. We already have 27 games so there's no extra game to balance the income. Plus a 10 team league won't have a top 8 play-off so there will in all likelihood be no extra games for anyone, and less for some.

The 10 teams will get money cut from their income. Daft.

Now let's look at the division 2. the four teams from the old SL will have their budgets cut by just over half, and I'me guessing their attendance, sponsorship & sales will suffer similarly. Daft.

The 6 teams who stay in the second tier will get an additional £350k. Great for them. The teams relegated to the third division (Championship if you like) will have their money halved also. Daft.

So out of all the 26 teams that will be affected by this 6 will be better off whilst the rest are considerably worse off. Not what this game needs at all.

In July ? 2011 a team was to be told that it would lose its licence for 2012, now that could have been multiple teams as I understand it. So put simply a FT SL club was going to be given a few months notice that it was being dumped without a parachute into a PT league for at least the next 3 years - and people knock the alternative.
Like it or not SL is 3 divisions in 1, the bottom third are no bigger/better than some Championship clubs who are dieing without promotion. Two divisions brings these together, provides an opportunity for expansion, provides a realistic platform to move between divisions, increase intensity at the top and starts to eliminate the laughable system we have in place.

How do you build a brand when the team keeps losing? When you are at the bottom constantly the fans stop going, see Hudds three years at the bottom, relegation provides the opportunity to go on a winning run and build again. Winning is a habit.

People base the difference between the divisions on what it was not what it could and should be. The move has been made harder by expanding the top division too much and there were disadvantages to being promoted, some teams over came them and some did not, that is sport!

Id be 100% for having P & R back as ive never been a fan of the franchise system we have now but even I think that it has nothing to do with Bradford's plight. Its an unpaid tax bill, nothing to do with how the RFL runs the game as a whole

The 10 teams will get the same if not more money as more games will be closer, attendances higher with more regular derbies between these top teams. Each team would have more TV exposure (as fewer teams into the same match covered games) so sponsorship money could potentially increase.
Now, lets look at the Div 2, you see you're looking at it from a direct money in from sky POV, that isn't the be all & end all. The 4 teams to drop have to run with a much more limited budget than before so you learn to be more efficient, this holds you in good standing for any potential return to the top echelon and reduces risk of financial losses comparative to before. not having enough money in the pot for a full time competetive squad with the better teams leaves you to rot almost every year, going bust because you've overextended yourself & had bad managment is the ultimate price to pay.
Teams going down with limited finances then have to look at developing their local talent even more so instead of lucrative hand outs to over the hill Antipodeans.
There's no reason these 4 clubs wouldn't remain competitive if not near the top of the tree so fans despite the fact you're in 'div2' will turn out, sure not in the same numbers when facing some of the big teams

You're not looking at the potential bigger picture.
I'd also like to know how you reckon the 350K increase for the 6 remaining teams in 2nd echelon & the halving of income for tier 3 teams?

they have p and r in every other sport i can think of and it works.its the 1 thing about rugby league i hate with a passion.thats what makes football more exciting. knowing that teams like swindon town or bury can get promoted to the premiership by what they do on the pitch. not how big there fan base is or any of other of the daft rules that have been brought up.

The whole idea of franchising was to give clubs a chance to build themselves and ultimatly make the game stronger, rather than making short term decisions just to survive in the top league.

I don't think this has changed.

You are incorrect with many of your thoughts. There are rules in place which can stop teams being promoted to the Premier League, such as ground capacity, club ownership rules and numerous other daft rules. There are plenty of other sports that a franchised within the UK such as RaboDirect PRO12(Rugby Union),British Basketball League, Elite Ice Hockey League and Women's Super League(football)

Licencing has been around for four years! If it was forty, then maybe I could see the problem.

Regardless of whether P and R or franchising was in place, the majority of clubs would still need financial backers to stay in business, whether through a sugar daddy or RFL assistance. Thus, the assumption that some fans are under that promotion and relegation would be more likely to keep clubs afloat is irrelevant, since in almost all professional sports in this country, not just rugby league, it is very difficult to operate for a profit. Crusaders, Wakefield and Bradford were really the victims of poor management; their financial downfall wasn't caused by the system itself, although in fairness, the RFL should have been stricter when inspecting them.

What the franchising system does demand and encourage is the development and maintenance of young talent in the LONG TERM (which seems to be an alien concept to many posters), and we are already seeing the fruits of that. Such an incentive just didn't exist before franchising, as survival was the only goal.

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So England are going to win the rugby league world cup cos franchising is working?

Why would you think that?

I think that the game is in a worse state now than before franchising and that anyone who disagrees needs their head examining.

The lack of buzz surrounding the game is very evident this season, interest levels are dropping by the year

I think the game is in a better state now than before franchising and anyone who thinks different needs their head examining.


The buzz around games is getting better and better, and spectator levels are growing both at the games and on TV.

Interesting how few Championship club fans are for franchising.

They cant see the benefits for the whole of RL, all they can see is how it impacts their own club.
they would rather live in the boom and bust that nearly devastated the game than a slow, steady growth.

Clubs making massive losses and the lowest sponsor incomes for years, the game needs something to boost it. If it rains heavily next November the game in this country could be in real trouble.

Lowest sponsor incomes coinciding with one of the worst recessions in memory? Funny that. Not at all surprising that marginal sports such as RL suffer out of proportion in bad times either.

Meanwhile, crowds seem to be holding up pretty well, and there are far more talented young British players in the game than there were even five years ago. I'm sure Huddersfield would have held their nerve and backed the likes of Cudjoe et al if they were threatened by relegation. One bad season and they wouldn't have reverted to type and signed a few more Aussies to bolster their side. No, really.

Exactly, as soon as the Giants were safe from relegation they began to bring more and more young players through, and now have a back line the could grace any club in te comp.

Leeds have had that luxury for years and so have brought through the brightest and best, same for Wigan and Saints - all able to mix the very best internationals with the brightest youngsters.

None of which is thinkable if you languish in the lower half of the table fighting off relegation.

Given that attendances yet again are on the increase this year and the buzz has been pretty phenomenal this season I'm surprised you can even suggest that.

Franchises are hopefully here to stay. We need to be a sport that allows its premier teams to develop talent. There's a debate to be had about the number of teams in the competition (twelve appears to be the optimum amount) and a few other things but not on franchising as a concept. Tinker with how it works maybe but going back to P&R will just turn the tail end of Super League into football where teams invest in players, not to develop talent, but to avoid relegation with no care whatsoever about individual player development.

Wakefield, Salford and London dont seem to be showing the same progress despite languishing in the bottom half of the table year on year without the threat of relegation hanging over them.

That's because they still have the threat of relegation over them.

Hth.

Oh, were you thinking P&R was gone?

Given their location, London are doing better at producing players than most SL sides. Wakefield have emerged from near oblivion, and have a fair number of homegrown players elsewhere in the comp - some as a direct result of their financial issues. Perhaps Salford have focused more on stadium development - the only club apart from Sts that has actually delivered one - and can now start to look more at player development?

Personally I can't stand franchising, it just has too bia a whiff of artifice around it.

But linking Bradford's current plight to franchising is tenuous at best.