Agree with you Dave O.
They could even be a popular as Challenge Cup games between SL and Championship clubs. Also agree that this is an unknown, it shouldn't be though.
SL clubs should know by now what their plans are re a top 1-4 place, 5-8 and 9-12. To vote for this they should know what the revenue consequencies are and have it all worked out.

Me too.

There will be an advert some time this season for all clubs.

"PR position at X R.L. Club"
Degree in bull a primary requirement, you'll need it.

The SL playoffs, that should be the biggest games of the season, are currently poorly attended compared to the league fixtures. So it wouldn't just be because fans didn't want to pay to watch "championship games" why there would be a drop in attendances. RL fans are notoriously bad for not attending games that don't count on their ST, which is why I think the clubs will have to sell the tickets to count for all games before the POs. Otherwise all teams will see a drop in attendances from the ST-valid games, not just the bottom 4 of the top division. It's not like these clubs are generating staggering attendances anyway, and will have one or 2 extra fixtures compared to now.

What happened to your attendances in 2006 ?

They went up, oddly! Every game mattered and could go either way and the atmosphere was the best it's ever been at the JJB/DW.

if you finish 9-12 then it is more likely that the team in 9th and 10th will get 2 more home games against the other super league clubs and those in 11th and 12th get 1 more home game against SL clubs (after all there will still be 6 all SL ties in the middle 8 after the split)

All of this is predicated on the fact(!) that the playoffs will be much shorter. Have Sky agreed to this?

It seems to me that Sky make a big deal about the current play off format. As has been noted above, the 8/8/8 split will have a lot of dead rubber games, then you go straight into a shortened playoff series. Do Sky really want this?

I'm not an advocate of the current playoff systrem by the way, but that's immaterial. Is this the best way to sell the game to Sky? Without Sky's money the game would be dead. The BBC may deliver greater audience figures but have no money, and we don't know if BT are interested, though there is no indication that they are.

How are there more dead rubber games? And there is no drop in number of games despite a shorter PO series. The top 8 division is effectively a mini-league qualifier for the POs. Then there is the actual play offs with a much more sensible number and format than there are currently. The teams that finish 5-8 have 7 games to force their way in to the top 4, these games should be better attended and just as fiercely contested as current PO games are but without allowing teams to put the cue on the rack early, finish lower down the table and make a late push for the GF.

All the teams in the middle 8 will be playing for 5 spots for a chance to be in the following season's top division. The only games that won't have a lot of interest will be the teams in the 3rd tier that aren't fighting relegation or involved in the mickey mouse shield or whatever it is going to be called.

The more league games you have the more points at stake the more likelihood that by games 28/29/30 the top 4 are sorted. It's basic maths. The more points that are at stake the more the league becomes stretched. Why do we need a pre-qualifier for the playoffs - that's what the regular season should be for. And you haven't attempted to answer my query about whether Sky are interested in a reduced playoff series?

You are happy that there will be more intensity in the season all the way to the playoffs. But has anyone considered what the players union think about all this? By the time they get to the GF each team will be knackerred! - NRL players have played 22 league games plus playoffs. SL players will have played 30 league games plus Challenge Cup plus playoffs.

I just don't see how anyone will be interested in the second teir games. Effectively full time pros playing against part timers. I'd put money on it now that Super League will start with the same 12 the following season.

What does bother me is that the bottom clubs in SL have voted to ditch two fixtures against SL opposition for three matches versus Championship clubs.
Have they done their crowd projections and likely revenue consequencies?
If they haven't then they could find themselves in all sorts of money troubles.

It may well be the case that the top 4 are sorted early, but there is a very good chance that at least the 4th spot will be up for grabs towards the latter part of the weekly rounds. For it to be sorted early, it would mean that the top 4 teams will have had to play at or near their best for the majority of the season. Holding back for the playoffs, finishing 5th and getting an easier 1st PO game is no longer an option. Surely this is a bonus?

With regards to the 2nd point, it has already been pointed out that the maximum number of games for the top teams would increase by 1 compared to now, however it has been stated that the top 12 teams will enter the CC a round later than currently, so the players won't have to play anymore games than they do now. They'll just have to play more against the better teams. This has been the criticism of SL for some time now, not enough games played at a high enough intensity and too many blow-out scores. The NRL play 24 games plus POs not 22, and a lot of the top players also play 3 SoO games.

It may well be the case that the 4 teams that drop down in to the middle tier end up being the 4 that go back up the following season. But it gives the Championship clubs an opportunity to prove, on the field at least, that they can compete. They will have a higher salary cap than now so if the clubs cans afford to spend it the gap will not be as wide as it currently is, some may even be able to operate on a mostly FT basis. The interest will be from the fans of Leigh, Sheffield, Featherstone etc. who want to see their team compete at the highest level. It's much better than simple one-up one-down P+R between a FT professional league and a PT semi-pro league anyway.

There are definite issues with this system and it's by no means perfect. We still don't know the full details of a lot of it. However, on the face of it anyway, it's a much better system than we have currently.

Isn't it more like ditching 1 fixture against SL opposition and gaining 4 against Championship clubs? As it stands they play 27 v SL, under the new system it would be 23 v SL -Split- another 3 v SL and 4 v Championship

Some of these teams have an average of less than 5,000, there's not much of hit to be had. Maybe they think that promotion clashes will attract more fans than the dead rubbers they've had at that stage of the season for the last 5 years?

In 2011 and 2012 Wigan's home PO fixtures against Saints, Catalans (x2) and Leeds attracted around 50% of the attendance of the corresponding weekly round fixture. There are similar stories with the other top team's PO games. Surely addressing this is more important than worrying about whether Widnes v Featherstone would attract more or less than the 5,405 who watched Widnes v Wakefield in 2013, for example?

Fair comment. You make some good points about the NRL, I hadn't included SoO.

What do you think the players representatives will think about it?

Does anyone think this will be good preparation for the end of season internationals?

Does anyone have a link confirming that SL teams will only enter the cup in round 5? I hope it's not the case as playing against teams you wouldn't normally come up against is a big part of the fun of the cup for me. Having said that I do understand that many of these games are uncompetitive and poorly attended

edit: never mind, found it in the Watkins report

Holding back for the playoffs = short changing the supporters but it doesn't and won't happen anyway. There will be squad rotation as we saw this season but all teams will go out to win every game they play. If they don't it will be obvious and you can kiss any creditability to the league competition goodbye.

If my memory serves me correctly we have already seen top 4 spots secured a number of weeks before then end of the regular season and it's not because teams have done anything other than approach each game as something they want to win.

I don't see why this would change but if it did because this format lends itself to that sort of thing then that is a good reason not to adopt it. I don't think it does myself so the issue remains how significant and interesting will the fixtures after the split be.




Most NRL players do not take part in SoO and so no you cam't argue there is little difference because of the SoO.




I don't see how it is. It has not solved the issue of what happens to a current SL side if they drop out of the top 12 in terms of salary cap and players wages. Are they always going to be considered a SL side from a salary point of view so can maintain a £1.8m salary cap? Or at some point are they going to have to adopt a reduced cap level a and so rip players contacts up? If it is the latter all this does is kick the issue of moving between pro and semi pro down the road.

There is also the issue of the play offs themselves. Though it has not been announced a lot of people seem to think it will be a simple semi-final/final set up between the top 4. If so that isn't a play off but a simple knock out competition with even less of a link to the regular season than any play off format we have had previously.

For me the new format is a case of the tail wagging the dog. Yes P&R between a pro and semi pro league doesn't work but this new system is little different in reality. It gives some championship clubs a potential path into the top flight but instead of being based on criteria besides where you finish in the league you can progress regardless.

Licensing was a far better approach but was just badly administered and I can't see why any of those clubs that went into administration under licencing would not have done so under this new system either.

The current system DOES lend itself to that sort of thing, because you can finish less than half way down the league table and still have a chance of being champions. I'm sorry but reducing the number of teams who qualify for the playoffs will definitely change the mentality of the weekly rounds. In the last few seasons Leeds have won the POs from 5th position in the league, and we rested a lot of our star players and lost the majority of our games from July-Sep to let a big lead in the table slip, eventually finishing 4th but still won the GF. If there's a genuine advantage for finishing higher in the table then tactics like this become obsolete.




I wasn't trying to claim we don't play significantly more games than the NRL do, I was saying that there won't be more games for the SL teams than there are now. The poster I quoted incorrectly stated that the NRL has 22 weekly rounds, when it's 24, and the players who will be playing in the end of season internationals will more than likely feature in Origin, so it is relevant. Nobody ever said the aim of this new system was to reduce the number of domestic games in the SL season to make our players play a similar number of games to the NRL players.



Difficult to comment on stuff that hasn't been announced yet. I agree that the SC stuff is one of the major points that needs sorting though. Isn't the 2nd tier SC going to be £900K?



The link is the positions you have qualified in. The higher you finish in the league, the better you're chance of reaching the GF. The POs don't need to be 3 weeks long and include 8 teams, a lot of the 7 games after the split should be played at PO intensity to either qualify or cement the highest possible finishing position. The current system has killed the incentive to try and win the league, see Danny Brough's recent comments.



I think it is the opposite. I was all for licensing at the beginning, as I thought it would make the lower teams get their act together. Two license periods down the line and the promise stadia of Wakefield and Castleford are nowhere to be seen, Bradford and Salford have nearly gone bust, Crusaders have gone and London are nothing short of a complete shambles. It's clear that something needs changing. The top flight is being reduced from 14 to 12, and then a further 4 could drop out if they don't perform on the field. Licensing didn't force the lower end SL clubs to buck their ideas up, but this might. Meanwhile fans of the top teams get to watch their team play in more intense games against better opposition instead of seeing them put 50 or 60 on teams without breaking sweat.

If anyone is bothered about what the players think I thought I'd just add this - www.leaguethirteen.co.uk/news/2013/10/13/21 In particular - "We opposed the preferred restructure option in our formal written submission to the RFL dated the 5 September 2013. We repeat our comment that the option favoured by the RFL, which includes the three x 8 league split, is an option which has clear, identifiable barriers to success and is an option whose basis was rejected by the Scottish FA and experimented with by the Swiss FA and ultimately rejected. The proposed changes give us severe concerns with regard to player safety and welfare given that the preferred option contains a requirement for players to play more games; this coming not long after a mantra from on high about players should play fewer games to give the national team a better chance to beat the Aussies. We have asked the RFL to undertake a thorough piece of research on the impact of increased workload on players" Unless minds have been changed recently of Damascene proportions, I think that puts the case against the new system pretty clearly.

If anyone is bothered about what the players think I thought I'd just add this - www.leaguethirteen.co.uk/news/2013/10/13/21 In particular - "We opposed the preferred restructure option in our formal written submission to the RFL dated the 5 September 2013. We repeat our comment that the option favoured by the RFL, which includes the three x 8 league split, is an option which has clear, identifiable barriers to success and is an option whose basis was rejected by the Scottish FA and experimented with by the Swiss FA and ultimately rejected. The proposed changes give us severe concerns with regard to player safety and welfare given that the preferred option contains a requirement for players to play more games; this coming not long after a mantra from on high about players should play fewer games to give the national team a better chance to beat the Aussies. We have asked the RFL to undertake a thorough piece of research on the impact of increased workload on players" Unless minds have been changed recently of Damascene proportions, I think that puts the case against the new system pretty clearly.

Fair enough but you'd get exactly the same result by going to a top five system in a normal league structure. You don't need this idiotic split to reduce the number of teams involved in the playoffs and thus make the league more important.

The new system means it is almost certain to be a simple knock out between the top four and IMO that isn't a play off. It is much more of a cup competition and doesn't offer sufficient reward for winning the league or finishing higher. Look how the old top 5 system worked and see how it was biased toward the higher finishing teams. If you are going to decide the competition by a playoff after 30 league games you need to have something that offer more than a knock out game to win the thing.

I see McManus has said about the current system that it:

"....produced a season where the league has become somewhat of a protracted precursor only to the playoffs."

Well sorry but 12x12, 8x8x8 is an even more protracted precursor only to the playoffs IMO.




According to Martin Sadler it has not been agreed and if no agreement is reached it will mean SL clubs keep £1.2m and the championship sides get £90K.

Apparently SL clubs voted 7-6 in favour of the new structure (Les Cat's abstained, God knows why). The dissenters were Hudds, Hull FC, Hull KR, Salford, Warrington and Wigan.

Interestingly both Betts and Cummins, coaches of clubs who voted for the proposals have come out against them with Cummins saying all this will do is get clubs back again to the dark days of buying players to ensure they don't drop down the pecking order.



It does not follow that licensing is to blame for that. The fact the RFL failed to spot problem clubs and awarded them a license anyway points squarely at the RFL's incompetence. Similar system work elsewhere.



Why? As Cummins has said bucking their idea up may well result in spending on players they can't afford to avoid dropping down the pecking order. The idea this new system does away with all the old problems associated with P&R such as that is far fetched IMO.



It was voted 13-0 to reduce the SL to 12 teams. That and a top five play off would deliver everything you want.

By the way a big reason why this system failed in Switzerland was due to attendances falling and the focus seemingly making the relegation game more important than the championship deciders.

If you think about it you can see why because the middle 8 is an 8 team P&R competition! So much for doing away with the problems of P&R as well.

It was also felt too complicated by sponsors and fans so the only time it has every been tried, it failed.

On the BBC web page yesterday Mathew Cummins of Bradford said that the proposed promotion and relegation was rubbish, on the same web page today S Wane says he himself has reservations. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/25842657

On the BBC web page yesterday Mathew Cummins of Bradford said that the proposed promotion and relegation was rubbish, on the same web page today S Wane says he himself has reservations. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/25842657

The vote for a 12 team league didn't have an opposing vote.
Why clubs like Wakey, London and Widnes voted for relegation is staggering. Especially Widnes. They voted for 2 down in 2005 then finished 2nd bottom and were relegated. To vote again for getting your club to be vulnerable for relegation is just daft!
If they survive then are in the bottom four in 2015 they will take a massive cash hit when they have three home games against Championship opposition rather than two games v SL clubs.
You do have to wonder what is going on at some of these clubs.

I give up...They're making this up as they go along
[urlhttp://www.loverugbyleague.com/news_14072-the-million-pound-match-to-decide-final-super-league-spot-from-2015.html[/url
Is anyone in charge over there?

This is nothing new, it was in the proposal all along.

Must've missed it - lost the will to live after the first couple of paragraphs

Fair one!