How can you get relegated and lose your status mid season. We have failed to get into the Grand Final Play Offs, because that is what it technically is. We have not been relegated as yet, only if we fail to finish in the top 3 of the qualifiers and/or lose the Million pound game have we been relegated.

Start of the season there are Two leagues.

End of the season there are 3 leagues.

Are we in the top league of those three? No.

That's quite compelling when put like that.

I fully agree with your sentiment Snaggletooth, but, also with the previous poster that if some of our current opposition aren't in it, are we?

The BBC explained it with the help of Korean Billy on the Superleague show.

"The top 8 teams in superleague will become a separate competition with all their accumulated points brought forward. This is still called Super league."

"The bottom 4 teams from Super League will join the top 4 teams from the championship in a new league called the Qualifiers. all points accumulated throughout the season are put back to 0 and they will fight it out for super league status.


Though we may not have been relegated into the championship, we are still currently playing in a lower league. the Qualifiers is sort of like Limbo. It's not super league and its not Championship. its somewhere in-between the both. We can cling onto it all we want that we've never played in the championship but the fact will always remain that for 7 weeks we played outside the Super league.

And if we were to lose the million pound game, and thus be relegated, but the RFL change the rules to bring a club up instead of relegating one ?

Was we relegated?

Maybe I have my P&B glasses on but I see it this way. Regardless of two league splitting into 3, the top league is a playoff competition to win the GF. The Qualifiers is a competition to either gain or retain Superleague status. If we retain Superleague status then we do not get relegated so our record isn't broken.

If we do consider the Qualifiers as a 'lower league' then we must also class the times we have finished outside of the playoff places as playing outside of the elite competition. The Superleague after the split are, in essence, the playoffs of old. The Qualifiers after the split is just a means to decide who is relegated. If we do not get relegated then we retain our record.

Simples....

As of yet we have not been relegated. Were we to get relegated and retain SL status due to moving to 13 teams then i would certainly consider our record gone. As it is IMO our record remains in tact. Put it this way if Leeds win the GF this season then how did they manage that after getting 'relegated' last season?

Quote ="WWRLFC78" If we do consider the Qualifiers as a 'lower league' then we must also class the times we have finished outside of the playoff places as playing outside of the elite competition. The Superleague after the split are, in essence, the playoffs of old. The Qualifiers after the split is just a means to decide who is relegated. If we do not get relegated then we retain our record. Simples....'" Finishing outside of the playoff places never meant you played in a separate league against lower league teams so I don't think that is comparable. Like it or not we are in a distinct separate league called "The Qualifiers". The leagues are distinguished as separate on the official SL website here www.rugby-league.com/superleague/fixtures Superleague is sponsored by BetFred, the Qualifiers league is not.

Quote ="WWRLFC78" If we do consider the Qualifiers as a 'lower league' then we must also class the times we have finished outside of the playoff places as playing outside of the elite competition. The Superleague after the split are, in essence, the playoffs of old. The Qualifiers after the split is just a means to decide who is relegated. If we do not get relegated then we retain our record. Simples....'" Finishing outside of the playoff places never meant you played in a separate league against lower league teams so I don't think that is comparable. Like it or not we are in a distinct separate league called "The Qualifiers". The leagues are distinguished as separate on the official SL website here www.rugby-league.com/superleague/fixtures Superleague is sponsored by BetFred, the Qualifiers league is not.

What we definitely no longer have is the record of playing in every weekly round of super league since it started

Have we not been 'relegated' to a lower competition - The Qualifiers from which we can "qualify" for promotion to Super League?

I consider us qualifying for a lower competition. If we meet certain criteria such as coming in the top 3 or winning the 4/5th Million Pound game we will remain in the Super League. If we lose the million pound game or god forbid don't even qualify then we will have been relegated to the next lowest league.

interesting question....it surely has to come down to 'relegation' and how that is defined. We have yet to be relegated...so we still retain our top flight status....just as the Championship teams have not been promoted into Super League...we have not been relegated from it. A sort of limbo as someone else has already said.

More Purgatory or Perdition than Limbo

It is actually being referred to as Super League Qualifiers

Does it really matter what names they give these two 8's ? If the RFL had split us up into top and bottom 6 teams at this stage, would anybody on here be bothered ? If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then its a duck. If a Championship side this year enters SL next year, they have been promoted. If we were to play in the Championship next year we would have been relegated.

How on earth can we find this such a fascinating topic. Anybody want to see my list of car number plates that I spotted this morning ?

Yes please, never see any ED anymore except the mayors car.

Slight thread drift, but, deserving, I remember someone writing 'Now the Wire' on my dads Vauxhall Viva AED....in the sand that had accumulated on the bodywork whilst stuck on a beach car park in Cornwall 1972.

Sad, but, kind of gave us both a warm glow......350 miles from home, but, not 'alone'.

It's not as simple as you have reduced it because there are 3 leagues now created from an original 2.

Anyhow did you not know the nature of the thread by the title? If it's not for you could you not just skip over it?

We're not in it. Simple. Sack Agar and Smith.

Ah, the old ED reg, I can see you must have been a keen number plate spotter in your youth. Dad had two Morris Minor 1000's when we lived in an eastern suburb of Warry many moons ago. I am sure the first was DED and when he sold it the guy who bought it tipped a large bag of notes onto the dining room table. They were all brown 10 shilling notes and I had never seen so much money in my life. I think I must have been about 10 years old. In retrospect he was probably the equivalent of the Bulgarian mafia and moved out to Stockton Heath a few years later.

Still one or two old council special buses with ED. Well there was til fairly recent if they haven't now.

I've always thought this is a bit weird. We're playing in the same competition now, but everyone will always say that the SL team (Wire) beat the Championship team (Fax).

This isn't a whinge, but I guess the differentiation is that Wire et al are still receiving SL level funding?

Wouldn't even say it was a case of automatic relegation/promotion these days, more a case of invitation, as you could win the MPG, but if all the other boxes aren't ticked like ground, finances etc, you won't get the invite.

Here is another complication. The clubs are discussing increasing SL 2018 to 13 teams next year (and 14 the year after). It is at the stage of the accountants looking at the financial implications, because the remaining 12 obviously don't wish to see their Sky money diluted. So e.g. HKR could see themselves admitted back to the top tier without actually getting promoted. Or e.g. if Warrington lost in the MPG we might still be allowed back into SL 2018. Did HKR lose their status last year, because they have not been promoted back ? Has HKR regained their status if they didn't win promotion, but instead were allowed back in ? Would Wire have lost their status because they never got relegated to the Champ ? If half of SL split from the top half clubs and played in a 12 team comp with 6 Champ clubs, would the SL clubs have lost their top tier status ? If SL and the Champ was combined in one league, would all the SL clubs have lost their top flight status ?


When you start changing the format of a competition like the RFL have with this one, discussions about top tier status become meaningless. We have to accept that the nature of the completion has been changed. The only 'solid ground' that connects this situation to the old SL league is whether teams are playing in the Championship or SL in any given year.