But will more start to turn up? , their attendances have risen this year, on the back of cheap ST s,

It's all well and good wanting to change the system, but without the cash, nothing will change.

Which 4 teams will vote for dropping huge sums of money from their income, to drop a level.
Which top flight teams will vote for less money to make sure that SL2 is not just another championship, but has actual money enough to close the gap.

As SL is currently 14 teams it would require 8 teams to want this to happen, just to get started. If you can name 6 teams willing to have less cash I'll be impressed.

:1wx8hucg :1wx8hucg
What evidence has led you to these conclusions?


P+R nor two leagues of 10 make these gaps smaller, for some clubs it would make the gap massively larger. London, Cas, Widnes, Salford etc are closer to the top teams in SL than they would be in a renamed championship. Thats the reason it wont work. That is the illogical argument, its where the two leagues of ten falls down dead, Clubs are better off in terms of quality, attendances, revenue, visibility as a bottom 4 SL side than a top four 2nd division side.

looking at what smokey said seems to make sense, but does it it still comes down to our paymaster sky if sky don't come up with more money for more games on the box, no matter what we say will not happen

It is an opinion no more or less relevant than yours, the next few years will provide the answers, personally I am not convinved with a SL 1 and 2 either, but I can see positives in it, and will argue those as I see fit

Up to now the licence system hasn't done what it said on the tin , and my opinion is it wont achieve what it was stated to ,sports fans run on emotion not ' Spock ' logic

But what is artifically propping that up?

Take away a rich benefactor and/or Sky money and they're not sustainable businesses. Bradford Salford Cas London Celtic Wakefield HKR...their accounts over the last few years are a mess.

Currently they are businesses relying upon money they're not generating through the gate or secondary spend (football is the same), it's third party income that's keeping them going. They get it largely for being there at the right time and not necesarily for how good their business practices are. Be honest, do you think that is good for the game?

Chasing a salary cap (and thus being able to compete in SL to a level we both want to see) appears, juding by the accounts of so many clubs, to be causing unsustainable financial model that isn't good for the game. If its not chasing the salary cap then they've got some expensive cleaners working for them because the vast majority of their expenditure is on salaries.

Narrowing the gaps with clubs finding their own level based upon a more sustainable model suited to their individual circumstances will naturally sort the wheat from the chaf. How that's done is another debate.

If (say) Salford then want to borrow £xmillion with very little secondary income and go for broke then so be it, let them, but thats a risk they take rather than [ihaving[/i to take it to keep up with the rest and justify their place when the franchises comes round.

Too many people on here saying 2 divisions wouldnt work because of finances.
Maybe we should look at attracting bigger name sponsors and investers.
This will never happen with games like yesterday as only 4014 were in attandance.
We are talking international rugby aired on terrestrial tv.
Northampton v Port Vale had 5061 watching in the football leagues lowest division yesterday.
Would Nigel Wood be still in a job if he worked for companys like M&S, Barclays John Lewis etc etc.
Nothing has got better in our game since he came into the job.
The rugby league need to appoint someone who can change the whole structure of our game and put it into opperation sooner rather than latter.
Everybody has there own ideas on how this could be done but there are people out there who turn businesses around for a living.
Lets pay someone to turn our game around instead of wasting money sending players and a entourage out to South Africa altitude training to play a Welsh team which would struggle to beat a top championship club.
The worst thing we ever did was when Wigan played Bath in 1996.
After the game the Bath coach said we are 10 years behind league players in fitness and if we dont get away from being amature we will fall further behind.
Look where they are now. Triple our salery cap, filling wembley for league matches (sarries v Harlequins), Heineken cup, International sellouts, great tours, six nations and still have P&R.
We have a better game so lets get it out there.
Im league through and through but im not blind and the other code has gone from strength to strength.

Even Mr woods cant pull another 3/4 competitive International opponents out of his arris, the bottom line is if the Aussies/Kiwis dont want to play ball , then we dont have a viable International game, to change that would take tens of millions and a few decades, much as I dislike him I dont see this as his fault

None have that has anything to do with P+R or franchising. P+R doesnt demand that we only have quality business practice, nor does it make it more likely, in fact we saw it encourage and entrench very poor business practices with examples too numerous to mention. Franchising isnt a silver bullet, it was never pretended to be however much the usual suspects are starting their revision of history. Franchising is the platform from which we build. Its the space so clubs can put in place 3/5/10 year plans towards success.

Its working well, Celtic Crusaders, Crusaders,Wakefield,Bradford,London and now Salford and Cas are showing us its working, all these clubs are building and growing

In what way was franchising responsible for, or exacerbated the problems at those club? Because if it wasnt, then you are just pointing out a correlation no more relevant than the fact that during the period of time we have had franchising we also saw Felix Baumgartner jump out of a specially designed hot air balloon.

It seems odd that you commented so readily when it looked like Salford and Cas were about to go pop, when it became apparent that they werent you have gone quite quiet on the subject.

Where do I state it is responsible for those problems ? , or exacerbated the problems?

Is it providing the enviroment for those clubs to prosper?

IMO it is causing stagnation at the bottom of SL as well as in the Championship, if you think that is good for the sport then fine

I dont recall being overly active on here about Cas or Salford when their problems became public, although I predicted Salfords as soon as their stadium situation became apparent, it will cripple them

You've totally ignored the point I made and the question I asked though. How many players from the bottom 4 teams in SL do you think would be redistributed across the 10 remaining teams in SL1? It seems to me that to drastically raise the competitiveness of SL/SL1 you would need to drastically increase the pool of talent, and siphoning off the best players from the worst 4 clubs won't achieve that. Not in the slightest.

I would say not many as most of them are semi pro's masquerading as pro players

I agree with TheElectricGlidingWarrior (never thought that would happen)

Plus even if the bottom 4 clubs had fantastic players and the bigger clubs are already spending at cap how do they fit them in?

In the Mail today, (I know), the RFU are selling naming rights for Twickers to fund improvements in the second tier of rugby.

Just saying

Warrington's boss is certainly all for it :- www.loverugbyleague.com/news_105 ... eague.html

Warrington's boss is certainly all for it :- www.loverugbyleague.com/news_105 ... eague.html

Quote ="Tigerade"Warrington's boss is certainly all for it :- www.loverugbyleague.com/news_105 ... eague.html'" [i"Because the supply change would be there for clubs and [umaybe[/u it would increase revenues."[/i I see he's really thought this through.

Quote ="Tigerade"Warrington's boss is certainly all for it :- www.loverugbyleague.com/news_105 ... eague.html'" [i"Because the supply change would be there for clubs and [umaybe[/u it would increase revenues."[/i I see he's really thought this through.

Its disappointing that the two reports in to this have managed to get the quite important, and quite basic fact of when the TV deal ends wrong.

Our TV deal runs until the end of the 2016 season, not 2014.

I might be wrong, but for some reason seem to recall that we can renegotiate after three years.

There are a lot of very good players in the bottom four clubs that would benefit the other clubs, and have intact been signed up by many of them already. The gap between the top and bottom would not only be smaller, but the team in 10th would be stronger in a 10 team league than a 14 team league.

The increase in the (quality) talent pool would also not need to be so large with less teams.

So we are clear the issues at the clubs you mentioned weren’t caused by, or exacerbated by franchising and as such those clubs would have had those problems, under P+R aswell

Well we know you don’t think that those clubs found it harder because of franchising, are you trying to say that they didn’t find it easier to deal with those problems because of franchising? Are you saying the lack of relegation and the lack of threat of relegation didn’t make it easier for those clubs to solve those issues?

You need to learn the difference between a demonstrable fact and an opinion. You keep trying to give us facts, then when they are proved wrong, you pretend its ok, its an opinion and all are as valid as each other. Well they aren’t. You could say in your opinion LSV is the biggest stadium in the world. It would be an opinion, but it would clearly and provably wrong.

So even knowing you will avoid the question, because your answer will expose the fact your opinion is based on the fact it fits your narrative and not because of a logical conclusion, I will ask, What evidence led you to the conclusion that the bottom of SL is stagnating?

You hope it cripples them. Because a strong and growing Salford would prove the value of franchising and expose your nonsense.

That’s not Sky’s view, or Barney Francis’ and I have no idea what benefit that would bring. If only we can re-negotiate why would sky agree to that? If both can re-negotiate then we don’t have a 5 year deal we have a 3 year deal.

Hmmm. Off the top of my head I can think of:
Hanbury
Cahill
Shenton
Chase
Howell
Robertson
Gower
Dixon
Broughton
Moon

Who would improve the top 10 clubs. I've probably missed a couple but I really don't think there are all that many, certainly not to warrant getting shut of 4 clubs in the belief that simply getting rid of the less intense games would somehow suddenly make the rest of the games more intense and competitive.
As EGW said, the way to improve the league and the intensity of games is to improve the quality of the young players that we produce, and you don't do that by reducing pathways to the top level.
Plus no-one has effectively answered the questions on finances.