www.guardian.co.uk/sport/david-conn-ins ... pe=article Crowds up, debt growing at some clubs. Glass half full or half empty?

www.guardian.co.uk/sport/david-conn-ins ... pe=article Crowds up, debt growing at some clubs. Glass half full or half empty?

No irony intended in that article, I'm sure, but:

"Rugby League is totally frustrated that the only thing anyone in the press wants to talk about is the Bradford debacle. So now that's what I'm going to talk about as well ..."

Personally, I think this is just the start of Nigel Wood's counter-attack, which, not surprisingly, is too little too late.

Not surprising, but still very, very disappointing stuff from Wood, it completely fails to grasp the scale of the failure of the game's current structures and management.

Superleague and the game could be so much better if it stopped pandering to the small clubs and trying to keep everyone happy.

Changes that need to be made-

Superleague should consist of 12 clubs

The play offs should consist of 6 teams

The Challenge cup Final should be brought forward to mid June with the rounds being around 3-4 weeks apart

We should bring back a GB vs Australia Ashes series ever 4 years

Promotion and relegation brought back? That's the only one I'm unsure of. Maybe the bottom placed club should go down each year but the team that wins the championship grand final would need to meet certain criteria to come up or else the next best ranked club would get in.

Agree with all that bar the last bit.

The different salary caps between SL and Championship mean the teams who get promoted won't be able to sustain a place in SL or have time to build a team worthy of a challenge. I think all of those teams are part-time now and would have to change.

Going full-time and spending more money than they could handle trying to stay in SL would kill most Champ clubs.

Agree with the above and like you say the promoted Championship club would struggle to attract high calibre players unless they offered equivalent salaries to existing SL clubs once promoted. They would then find it hard to gel and be competitive in a single season (like Widnes are in their first season) this would lead to them being relegated after 1 season but unfortunately still have lots of players on their rosta on SL wages. It would kill the club financially. Perhaps the only way of having promotion on merit would be that the championship club that comes up (as long as they meet certain criteria) are exempt from relegation in their first season and maybe also their second. so it would still mean that the lowest placed club in the league apart from the exempt newly promoted Championship club would get relegated.

Agree with these with exception dropping it 10 teams instead.

IMO the teams should be

Catalans
Hudds
Ull FC
Leeds
London (I think a club in London is needed)
Stains
Warrington
Wigan

with two from Bradford (would have put them in if it wasn't for the recent money troubles), Salford (new ground well ran), Widnes (seems to be well run good stadium).

I'd drop Wakey, Cas and HKR.

If the number of SL teams are reduced then the number of teams in the playoffs should also be reduced. I am tired of our playoff systems rewarding mediocrity, even if the overall quality of the league is better by omitting the poorer teams. For a 10-14 team league I think the maximum number of playoff spots should be 5.

Personally I like the idea of having an upper and lower Superleague (SL1 and SL2) whereby franchise licences will be awarded to 22-24 sides who are then allocated in to the appropriate division (say 10-12 in SL1, 12-14 in SL2). You would then have promotion and relegation between the two SLs only.

Agree with that. Given that Leeds proved last year that form during the first part of the season is a meaningless predictor of GF success, it would be great to see the CC being the focus of the first 4 months of the season.

The play-off system really does need to be changed.

I wan't to see all clubs going all out, all season.

There's a sense of holding back during the SL regular rounds, bar when the top sides play each other.

Lets have good people in the right positions at the RFL, I am like most people when they say it is vital to pay the correct salaries to people with the correct skills.

Mcmanus and now the Hull FC Chairman has eluded to the missed marketing opportunities for the game and it is high time this is rectified amongst the many other issues

Yeah that's the issue and is the reason I'm unsure on trying to bring back a promotion/relegation system.

It would add a lot to the game and both leagues but you only need to look at Widnes to see that even with time to plan it's still a very tough ask to get a really competitive side together.

It's time to sort the problem out.

The Championships are dying in my opinion.

I can only think of two ways to sort them.

1. Controversial, but they become feeder clubs like in Australia. Those clubs had history also.

2. Plough money into the league, get clubs in a position to spend money and grow. Both unlikely, but they can't just leave it as it is.

Noble tried to do it with us and was massively unsuccesful. I cant see why we cant keep it at 8 teams with the teams that are in 1st and 8th place play each other, 2nd vs 7th, 3rd vs 6th and 4th vs 5th in a straight knock out format. No silly rest weeks or club/coaches call business.

The playoffs at the moment are a rubbish set up imo.
If we had a 5 or 6 team system, then there's a very real chance that good teams that suffer a blip (Leeds last season and Saints this, for instance) will fail to qualify. Meaning whoever qualifies will deserve it, rather than the 8 least sh*t teams qaulifying.

Can't really argue with that. Leaving the 14 SL clubs as they are, I'd set the feeder clubs up like this:

S.Wales -> Wigan
Leigh -> Saints
Cumbria (W'ton, Barrow, Haven) -> Wire
Hunslet -> Leeds
Keighley -> Bradford
Dewsbury -> Wakey
Batley -> Cas
Fev -> Hull FC
Sheffield -> Hull KR
Fax -> Hudds
N.Wales -> Widnes
Toulouse -> Catalan
Skolars -> Broncos
Manchester (Swinton, Oldham, Rochdale) -> Salford

That leaves the likes of York, Doncaster, Gateshead and the expansions in Northampton and Hemel to either join up with any of the teams listed above or to form a secondary championship. They could then join up with the other teams as and when needed.

I go along with Scouse Pie 2 still with the 14 teams. Scrap the Magic weekend. The exiles games will bring in more money, plus it can never be a fair reflection whichever way it is done, such as Wolves V Widnes . Certain points for Wolves which could make all the difference at the end of the season. No team should have an advantage over any other. Top 5 play off only, the top of the league club to get the advantage as reward for finishing top. There would be a couple of games less to play without getting rid of anyone, our game should grow with our own teams not throwing them out.

So who is to be booted out then?
Why dont we start with the clubs that dont have a ground

Well share the bloody money out more evenly then, then there wouldnt be such a gap,

Yawn.

I would get rid of Salford (no fans, ground is very far from the town centre, been unsuccessful for as long as I've been watching, the academy tend to feed off Wire, Saints and Wigan rejects too) and Wakefield (rubbish ground, unsuccessful for as long as I've been watching apart from one year when they made the play offs, not many fans, went into administration not long ago, Castleford and Leeds both nearby)

Go back to having 12 teams (23 games inc magic weekend) with a 6 team play off structure (same method we used to employ). Reducing the number of games makes each league game more important, I don't like meaningless games. With the extra weeks gained by reducing the amount of games I would extend the World Club Challenge to a 6 or 8 team competition between our best and their best, maybe extend the exiles series to three games too. We need to market close games between quality sides.

Internationally I would bring back the NZ and Aus tours. Maybe go:
2013 World Cup
2014 Ashes tour
2015 Four nations
2016 Kiwi tour
Rinse and repeat every four years, being sure to alternate the location so each hemisphere has either the extended WCC competition or an international event

Which clubs don't have a ground?



This doesn't seem the most useful contribution to the debate.

The issue with tours is who does the 3rd team of Eng, Aus and NZ play when the other tour are playing in a 3 game series? The lack of any further quality opposition within the international game is obviously the reason we have moved towards the tri/4 nations. In theory I agree with a cycle, I just don't see any of AUS, NZ and Eng/GB being willing to have effectively a year off while the other 2 teams play each other. The current 4 nations series' are getting pretty stale imo.

What did the odd team out do in the past when we had tours? Aren't the NRL coaches complaining about too many games anyway? The reason I want to bring back tours is because they seemed to get people's attention more than the four nations do now.

People should stop perpetuating the myth that Leeds last year 'proved' end of year positions are meaningless. Apart from last year hasn't the title been won by the club finishing 1st/2nd? All Leeds proved is that it is POSSIBLE to win from as low as 5th - its not likely, and certainly not something any club should aim to do.