You can keep repeating this as often as you like, but the fact is that the SKY money belongs to the SL clubs operating as the [iprivate[/i company SLE Ltd. and is not available for distribution by the RFL to anyone other than the current members of SL.

You're also making a fairly fundamental error by assuming that 'distributed by' automatically confers some kind of ownership. It doesn't.

I can't see a lot wrong with this. We must have P & R between the two SL levels and into and out of the two SL levels. That gives the teams in level two the chance to improve their quality so that they can compete in level one - the same goes for the league below the SL, they should have access too. Plus it will bring back the spice of relegation battles and give teams at the bottom as well as the top something to play for all season, instead of going through the motions in some games but targeting others against local rivals. Plus hopefully we'd never repeat the travesty of a team going through a whole season with nothing to play for because they already knew they were promoted.

Rugby League´s fundamental problem in this country is the governing bodies fixation with the internatinal game, decisions are made with the sole intention of closing the gap with Australia, just run the game for the benefit of the domestic competition, if that means lower caps and a restructuring so be it.

But it´s time to start making decisions for the good of the domestic game and not with a view to closing the gap with Australia.

Do some of you realise what it is like with only 10 teams and having just 9 meaningful home fixtures per season? Ask the fans of Championship 1 what they think of 10 team leagues or better still ask the fans who have stopped going to watch because of the big gaps between home games?

Challenge Cup matches would have been used to fill the gaps for SL clubs but as we have seen lately they don't particularly attract many fans?

Huddersfield Giants
Wigan Warriors
Warrington Wolves
Catalan Dragons
Hull FC
Leeds Rhinos
St. Helens
Bradford Bulls
Hull Kingston Rovers
Salford City Reds
Wakefield Wildcats
Castleford Tigers
London Broncos
Widnes Vikings
Halifax
Leigh
Barrow Raiders
Gateshead Thunder
Whitehaven
Northampton
North Wales Crusaders
South Wales Scorpions
London Skolars


Why not have this league and play everyone once and stop English players being counted on salary cap

...because you'd have mass bankruptcies and regular cricket scores? Just a thought.

Someone else who gets it.
A 10 team top flight may just increase the intensity of some of the weekly games but what does it do to the rest of the league(s).
4 teams drop out of SL and another raft of support will drift from the game at each of those 4 clubs.
Pressumably, 4 teams would also be "demoted" from the championship and yet more fans will be hacked off
and then in a few years time, once a new pecking order has been eastablished in the new Super Super League,
we can jettison the two bottom clubs for not being competetive.
Great plan, just what the fans really want.

I agree why don't we fix what we have and then look to put more teams in not less

You would have more than 9 home fixtures, thats just current RFL strategy to kill off lower leagues.

26 games (13 Home) plus Magic and then play offs.

so how are you expecting we have 26 games plus MM with 10 teams in a fair way?

Get it done

Hang on, isn't this argument usually rolled out when lower placed teams get [ihammered [/iby higher placed teams? The Fev performances show that SL could support competitive games between 16 teams, surely?? Not that that's the argument I'm making. I'd be more inclined to suggest solitary scorelines shouldn't lead to knee-jerk reactions.

Play each other 3 times?

Featherstone also got hammered the week before they playd Cas did they not.

Lower teams will always cause upsets just not on a regular basis.

I dont think its knee jerk reactions

Super League is Looking poor this year in my opinion.

No they lost to Sheffield, by 20 points - but they scored 40 themselves.

Rather than have two unequal divisions of 10, if ever the money could be found, two 10 team conference's would be the best way to go.

Each team would play each other home and away in their respective conference, then the top five of each conference would break away to form a new league and play each other once with the top five of that going on to compete in a 5 team play off to contend for the title of champions.

The bottom five of the two initial conference's would form their own league to compete for a lessor trophy, a Super League shield or something, in the exact same way as above.

Fag packet design so not considered the pit falls as of yet, but it seems a reasonable approach.

I'm in favour of something like this, but I believe most strongly that we must have relegation and promotion. From and to the new propsed leagues and from the 2nd to and from the 1st tier. How else can we spead the game? There's an article in today's Observer about London playing matches in East London to encourage development of clubs with ambitions to play at higher levels. Surely these clubs will cease to bother if it seems that no matter how long they play there'll never be access to the top flight. What we have at the moment has to go. We have to produce a broad based pyramid structure like soccer and Union.

To what end?

Just to ad something possitive,
I thought the Hull - Leeds game was a great game to watch.
More of the same please.

We should have some sort of promotion given teams in SL have their season over pretty quickly if there is no chance of the top 8 play offs and no challenge cup games left. Nothing to play for, games are becoming boring, two divisions could be a way forward.

I remember the 91 - 92 season when we had an 8 team Second Division and how the 8 teams were to sick to death of seeing each other as they met twice at home and twice away!!!!! I believe I'm right in saying that in that season Workington met Carlisle 6 times after being drawn together in the cup matches. It drove many fans away as the season wore on.

Got to agree with that. there's only so many drubbings of Widnes i could take although Leigh fans seem to enjoy that particular groundhog day.

Did they get hammered yesterday then

Not really. They only missed out on a bonus point by 36 points. That's meat and drink for the Margin Meter

Bit spooky that !
Ironically was recently looking through a Leigh v Workington Town programme from the 8 team division 2 league from 08th March 1992 and it had showed the average crowds at that point (Bearing in mind this is with 2 months still to play at the 'business end' of the season)...

The crowd is first with the bit in brackets the league position (out of eight teams) at that time.

Oldham 3,198 (3rd place)
Leigh 3,108 (1st Place)
Workington 2,210 (7th place)
Sheffield 2,136 (2nd place)
Rochdale 1,438 (5th place)
Ryedale York 1,248 (8th place)
Carlisle 875 (6th Place)
London Crusaders 683 (4th place).

Looking at Leigh's home scores thus far that season shows the games to be fairly competitive (Remember its two homes games so some teams we had completed 2 fixtures against at this point)............
V Carlisle 32-22 & 19-18
V London C 13-6
V Oldham 20-4 & 23-12
V Rochdale 24-22
V Ryedale York 26-10 & 70-0
V Sheffield 13-14 & 26-24
v Workington 10-5

I know the game has changed and we will always get one sided games / scores
in all leagues but I don't remember blowout scores as regularly as it is now , the clubs in this league played from a similar level.
Also if you look at where the clubs came from you could hardly say the attendances got boosted by derby games - I remember Sheffield Eagles being the game most Leigh fans looked forward too as it had slowly built up into a real intense set of fixtures with real rivalry ! !