More than half the teams in SL enter the last round of games with something to play for. So says Sporting Life. Who do they think they are kidding. Half the teams have had nothing to play for for 3/4 of the season. There's only 4 teams in the SL going to win the 2 trophies on offer. It's just round after round of friendlies without P&R but I suppose it keeps the RFL spin doctors happy.

Last year, were the fifth placed team in that group of four teams?

Are rugby league fans ever happy? Jeez

You're a positive fella ain't ye.

Mental note to myself – 4 team league.

Big clubs supporters ecstatic, along with Jamie Peacock.

Imagine how weird his face would look 'ecstatic'

Graham ( WYSIWYG ) has these occaisional bursts of frustration, and while sometimes he does get a little carried away, I can understand where he is coming from to a certain degree

You are Victor Meldrew and I claim my £5

I despair sometimes I really do. Sadly the biggest problem RL has is it's "fans".

I'd suggest it is its ' lack ' of fans

I'm sure the ' residents ' of Headingley will be happy with their possible upcoming promotion

I'd say the lack of fans is often due to it's current fans.

The kind of 'fan' in the OP is the kind of 'fan' we could do without. A negativity spreader for no apparent reason. Most of the Premier League clubs have nothing to play for. Doesn't stop them going in their tens of thousands each and every week.

Hyperbolic negativity is the RL cancer that needs cutting out. The "RL has no credibility" thread was an embarrassment. When we're left with a group of fans that actually "like" the game, we might actually go forward!

The IYO ' type of fan we could do without ' has sponsored his club to the tune of many thousands of pounds over the years, he is frustrated with the sport much like me, unlike me he still attends games and contributes where he can

I dont see how venting his frustration on here would put new or old fans from supporting the game, maybe you'd like to explain it in more detail?

You don't see how someone unfairly massively talking down and ridiculing the competition would put people off from watching it...? Surely you don't need that explaining to you?

and there lies the problem. Bottom of SL and the Championship have nothing to play for.

In the Premiership, Chelsea/Arsenal/Man u/Man C/Liverpool target Champions League, the next scrap over a UEFA place or to avoid relegation. I would say most have something to play for and something to look forward to with the big teams coming to town for the smaller clubs.

The Championship and the rest know what they must do to go up or drop down.

Now compare that to the farce of a sport we have left, and understand soccer will always drive the nations sporting culture.

The problem with this theory is that before the advent of SL and playoff RL many clubs seasons were also finished by March (old season running from Sept to May). The "middle" clubs. One's that were never going to win the title and not near the drop zone. There'll always be some clubs waiting for next season . . .

20 year ago Wakefield fans would be out shopping for Davy Lamps this weekend instead of biting their fingernails so whilst I would prefer a return to P&R i don't accept that the "nothing to play for" argument is one that has been caused by the Licensing system - as much as I detest it.

If you're using the PL as an indicator, a third of the league has nothing to play for other than pride and prize money from Christmas onwards. Unlikely to make the top five, too good to get relegated and stuck in mid-table limbo.

Exhibit B.

So a few places at the top playing for European spots (less spots than the playoffs), 3 relegation spots. What are the rest doing? It's a bigger league than the SL. And longer. There are more teams with nothing to play for for a longer period of time.

Again, we don't need this unfair negativity from our own fans. You'd think that all of the so-called problems with rugby league are exclusive to our sport and don't happen anywhere else (and commonly). It's gotten to the point that the same old bullsh*t has been repeated for so long that people are beginning to believe it. So yeah, that's why we don't need these people in our sport.

I'm gutted we've missed the playoffs even though we had little hope of progressing very far.

I'm struggling to work out how to politely express just what a stupid non sequitur this is.

Perhaps I can put it simply: Association Football is NOT so popular in the UK because of a recent change of system in RL. And to even pretend that the changes in RL have somehow stopped RL challenging the popularity of Association Football (because it was on the cusp of so doing until those changes) is just delusional idiocy.

And, as has been pointed out, plenty of Association Football teams have spent chunks of a season with little to play for. But don't let facts get in the way.

i don't think that was the point he was really making, more that the pyramid structure of association football is a factor in its huge success(not the only one obviously), the fact that the little clubs have a clear path to the top and something to aim for keeps people turning up week in week out because as clubs like wigan athletic proved, with the right ambition and a bit of luck you can make it all the way from bottom to top. Put it this way, if when the premier league was formed they'd said 'we're shutting up shop' and took away promotion, do you think the game would be just as strong now?
Its not that what RL does affects football, rather that football has shown the way in how to be really successful and we should be looking at this if we have any ambition to really, properly grow the game here. Its no use pointing to leagues such as the NFL and NRL because its a different culture here and the benchmark has been set for what people want, it really couldn't be any more clear.
And yes there are massive gaps in on/off field level between some of the leagues but part of this is self inflicted and rather than just saying 'X club will never be able to compete with the likes of Y and Z so they have to stay where they are forever', how about the people think about how we can help and improve the game at ALL levels and bring clubs up in standard so that one day we could implement a full pyramid structure to our game and not have a true sport rather than a handful of artificial leagues

That is part of footballs strength, it's other being its easy to play and understand. But that pyramid structure can only exist when there is a good amount of comparable quality clubs to make up a league, and not a monstrous gap in quality between the leagues.
Football has the Premier League, Championship, League One & League Two, with a decent Conference underneath. Every single club in the football league is full time, That's 90 full time clubs. Plus a 24 team Conference Premier. Of course there should be a pyramid structure with P&R in between those leagues. In RL we have 14 full time clubs. Some of whom can barely function as full time clubs. There is a huge gap between the first and second tier. The sport simply isn't strong enough to support a full pyramid structure like that of football. The Wigan Athletic example is a poor one, as it wasn't ambition that got them in the PL, it was Dave Whelan's money. The same way Steve O'Connor's money got Widnes into SL.
If there were enough full time clubs to support it I'd happily have P&R, but at the moment we can barely fill one league, nevermind 2 or 3.
But having a full pyramid structure in RL at the moment is like football having direct P&R between League One and Northern Premier League Division One North with no steps in between.

So the answer to the problem is?

Attempt to expand the number of "real" full time clubs. Which is monumentally difficult in a sport with little money and limited nationwide appeal. The expansion of grass roots teams and leagues is a good start to what needs to be a long term project.

Talk up and promote the game. Be positive and enthusiastic, and get people to matches. And there we are, back to the beginning of the thread