Manchester Rangers want SL eventually too

is that still being looked into? I now there was some talk about before, I wasn't sure 8f they were still looking at it .

Makes this proposal even harder. As at the moment a minimum of 2 SL clubs will be going down (if you include Toronto & Toulouse that's 4). So 4 or 6 current championship clubs would be told to go amateur (or league 1).

Now if you add in Manchester, Newcastle, Coventry (backed by Wasps) & Dublin who were all reported to be intrested in a SL Franchise. That 4 more clubs being told to go amateur (or league 1)
Then add in New York, Hamilton, Boston and others.

Your basically relegating every team that's in the Championship down. Also demoting at least 4 to 7 more current SL clubs.

And people are arguing that that's alright?

No I won't...commerce is commerce and if we aren't in then it's because we don't deserve to be in........sad as it is, sport is no longer about sport when it comes to the top level.


GOLD STAR POST!

Hughes has single-handedly saved and buggered RL in London in equal measure. What should have happened was the 10 heartland clubs in 1996 should have accepted their new found windfall with a 20% payback each to fund London and Paris......... letting someone pick up that tab doesn't work....the severe restraint on expenditure in Toronto this season points to this realisation setting in......Melbourne works because melbourne was funded by the people who bankrolled the NRL.......the NRL collectively assists troubled clubs......they work together. SL is a collective of 12 egos at present.....that's not going to end well.

And therein lays the million dollar question, what do we want from the game.
Instead of the "every minute matters" boll****, perhaps "we" could actually think long and hard on where we want to be and exactly the best way of getting there.

IF we go for the 2 x 10 SL1 & SL2, we will be doing it all again within another 3/4 years.

A 10 club top flight will not accommodate all the clubs that want and/or deserve to be in there
The main issue being that for any kind of expansion to work, those clubs need to be in SL and not plying their trade in the 2nd and 3rd tier of the game.

Although the inclusion of Toronto in The Championship may have added some "excitement", they will need to be in SL to have any long term chance of survival. Ditto New York (when they get going) and ditto Toulouse.

IF we include these clubs in a 10 club top tier, I genuinely fear for the sport in this country.

A ten club Super League won't work if you want French and north American clubs in Super League.

London needs to be funded by Sky or News Ltd. and placed in Super League. That club should be part of the maximum of 10 English clubs in Super League. Some heartlands English clubs will go down to the Championship.

But then we need French and north American clubs in Super League in order to expand the game and get more money from TV contracts.

Catalans, Toulouse, Toronto and New York are just the starting points for a more lucrative Sky contract. That is why there has to be at least 14 clubs in Super League in time for the Sky contract in 2022. But we also need the option of expanding further in 2027 with Avignon, Paris, Boston and Montreal coming up from the Championship.

Not while the north American teams are competing in the RFL's Super League. The travelling distances are too far from the west coast.

However both San Francisco and Vancouver are centres of rugby union participation. We could easily make inroads into those two great cities if the north American teams were ever in a position to start their own stand alone competition -- with Philadelphia, Jacksonville, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston the other necessary participants.

Be placed in SL????. No, they get there on merit, i.e gaining promotion.

Need French and North American clubs, or is it just your vision.

Ihave no problem with any club being in SL, as long as it is earned. Wouldnt you agree

Nope.
1. London should have been funded by SKY/the other clubs back in 1996 but wasn't.
2. That horse has bolted, as have SKY, who are now about content rather than quality and London, Toronto or Tunbridge Wells are neither here nor there....Disney simply care about eyeballs and not about "location"
3. I believe another poster that sounded like "utter facts"was derided for saying as much 15 years ago on here.......

Which clubs are in favour of a 10 team Super League? Surely it can’t be more than 1 or 2 foolish chairmen.

Perhaps it's the same ones that voted for the last reduction ?
You didn't nee the benefit of hindsight to know that reducing the numbers in the top flight, whilst trying to expand the game (albeit in France at the time) was just plain wrong.
Yes it was all wrapped up to try and show that there would be the sweetener of additional funding and a way back into the top flight but, it looks stupidly short sighted now

The idiotic thing is, every couple of years, there is panic at top that we haven't caught up with RU and something has to change and we go through an upheaval, when the thing that most annoys supporters is that the game/structure is never the same for more than a couple of years.

For my money we have, probably by complete accident, hit upon the perfect structure for generating publicity for the sport and excitement within it. The middle 8s, whether your in them or not, generates far more actual excitement that the top 8s ever could. The million pound game gets into virtually every national paper's sports pages (let's not forget this is a game between the worst of Super League and the best of the Championship) and is probably the most important game of the season in terms of what is riding on it. Football has tried play-offs for promotion/relegation and it is huge for them, do you see them giving up after three seasons because, regardless of the success or failure of the structure, it's time to try something else. Ridiculous.

Taking your post seriously for a moment,

You essentially want fewer and fewer top tier ENGLISH clubs. Because that would do absolute wonders for the game in THIS country.

Have a word with yourself.

Try as I might, I do not seem able to remove my flat cap, which remains firmly stuck to my head!

We have now had a French team in SL, for twelve seasons - fourteen if you include the ill-fated Paris club. At times Catalans have competed well, but lately seem to be losing their way a little. Toulouse are making a determined attempt to join them in 2019. I see no evidence of how French RL has improved, over those twelve years that Catalans have played at 'the top level'. The international side is still struggling, just as much as it did, 'back in the day'.

It would be fantastic, for RL to get a foothold, across the Atlantic - indeed it would be incredible, given the popularity of sports like American football, ice hockey, and basketball. However, just how will it benefit the British game? In the short term (say ten years?) 20 or so British players would 'defect' the UK, for each North American club. There is already a powerful lobby that says we haven't got enough talent in the UK game now. Surely, an exodus of British talent to North America, will simply further dilute our talent pool?

Whilst the arrival of North American sides, in the major cities, may well afford gains in sponsorship and tv fees, would it not be the North American clubs who would most likely benefit from those revenue streams?

A ten team league of say five UK clubs, plus a couple of French teams and three North American teams, may initially generate a lot of interest, but who would those UK clubs be? London would probably be a necessity, plus say Wigan, Leeds, Saints and Hull. The remaining current UK SL clubs would then drop down (yes, DOWN) to SL2, along with five other clubs, be they Championship clubs, or French/North American clubs. The rest of UK professional clubs would presumably just be left to wither and die.

So, moving forward say five years from the start of this pipedream, and the North American venture is successful - i.e. the Sport is taken to the hearts of North Americans and there are say a dozen thriving clubs - what happens to the UK clubs in the 'big league'? Would the Americans prefer to watch say New York v Boston, or New York v St Helens, once the novelty of seeing the Brits play, has worn off? And, if they form their own Conference, what becomes of British RL, with say five teams returning to form a league, with what is left of SL2?

Maybe it would be better for the North Americans to join the NRL? Your average American/Canadian sports fan is more likely to have heard of Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne or Auckland, than Saints, Wigan etc. The North American clubs would definitely learn more from competing with the Australian clubs, and the Australian player pool would be weakened, thus raising the chances of England, in international competition!

I know that this is only a proposal. And that for it to be voted as the new structure SL chairmen would have to be greedy, short sighted idiots (so it's got a chance then).

So this is a purely hypothetical question/point.

If it was voted in. Would it lead to RL splitting, and having 2 entirely different competitions?
like the Australians had for a couple of years (it think it was a couple of years).

If it does happen. Someone really needs to get hold of the guy who negotiated the 6 nations tv contract.
The only game that doesn't involve any home nations, on at 7.30 pm on a Friday night on a main TV channel. That's impressive negotiations.

Yet only 50,000 tuned in to watch it.

We don't need a 10 team Super League. We need a 14 or 16 team Super League with 10 English clubs maximum (including London) and at least 2 French teams and 2-4 north American teams.

And why do we need that?

Why can't they have their own domestic leagues that are of the same level as Super League?

Because there aren't the players or the financiers to create a full domestic professional league in France or north America. That is why France only has a semi-pro league and the north Americans only one club so far.

So rather than concentrate on increasing the playing pool, you want to plonk teams at random north American Cities and build from the top down? Yeah....that's gonna work

Apart from the fact that most Canadians would happily string you up for calling them "North American", you've sort of in a cack-handed way hit the nail on the head. There aren't enough players or financiers to sustain a strong RL structure in the UK (right down to grass roots) and that's where the problem lies. Success across the Atlantic or the English Channel won't help UK clubs.

Fax are engaging with local amateur RL clubs, with the home games so far this season seeing two of them as guests for the day. Are all SL clubs doing the same? I'm sure that some are, but I doubt they all engage with the local community for the better good of the game.

The direction of your posts I feel would actually suggest that maybe ditching non-UK clubs from SL would perhaps (contentious!) be the best option. The two French clubs are a struggling SL outfit and one that may make the Middle 8's but has no chance of progressing further. The odds of both being in the Championship next year, although probably unlikely, is far greater than them both being in SL.

My own team doesn't come in to this. Fax aren't ready for SL either on or off the pitch, but the RFL and SL should focus on how best to make the game better in the UK, end of.

London playing at home would pull in less than 1000

As much as you are trolling.........
1,205 were there for the Wolfpack in the 2nd tier with no marketing........a successful London averaged 5k before the current owner took over, ignored marketing and dragged us to the 2nd tier. A successful London, marketed well should be attracting 10k in a heartbeat, but as is the case at most RL clubs, marketing is an afterthought and therefore the top 40% of our clubs deliver 75% of our audience......

What's been said before (a while ago) by a Broncos fan is that one of the big problems that London have had is not having a permanent home for the club. That, combined with the nature of public transport in London (which is largely designed to either go into the city or out, and not round it) means that attracting and then retaining a fan base has proved difficult. London played for a decent number of years at the Stoop, but they've been North, East, South and West of the city over the 30-odd years of their existence (including their time as Fulham).

I've always been impressed with the passion and loyalty demonstrated by the London fans regularly making the trip up the M6/M1 but it's tough to build support year on year without a permanent home.

It's not just the moving (The Stoop was only 3 miles from Brentford which is only 3 miles from Trailfinders), but also the utter diabolical mismanagement and awful appointments of people into key positions. Blanchard & MacKay were both appointed CEO with no formal interview process, the latter reducing us from 3,400 average to 1,200 and blaming first the name and then the ground before leaving, spending 18 months out of work and then reducing Worcester RU's average attendance by 10% in his first year there.......Powell was appointed coach 73% loss rate) against all advice and left us teetering, whilst Joe Grima was appointed on the advice of Jamie Soward........nobody else, just a player he got on with. Grima lasted 19 games with 2 wins (90% loss rate) and left us mid table in the Championship......God love David Hughes because without him we'd have folded years ago, but jesus wept he's appointed some absolute stinkers.