It’s not just over age players that benefit from reserve team Rugby but the first team players too. How many times do we see a player return from a few weeks injured and look off the pace for one/two matches. And as we saw this year one or two matches is the differences between making top 4.
Also it gives lads a chance to showcase there abilities if they aren’t in the first 17 and push for a starting place increasing competition for places and thereby raising performance levels.

All true but it doesn't mean they can't try harder to make it work more cheaply. I do think the RFL lacks imagination when it comes to players and leagues below SL. After all that is their job also.

It should have been easy. Ringfence a certain amount of money from the t.v deal for clubs who run a reserve team, those who don't then lose that part of the funding
Reduce the overseas players to three, job done. I think Hull had seven on their books last season.

I'm not sure this one can be pinned on the RFL - wasn't it SL clubs who voted to scrap A teams, I suspect for financial reasons?

All the RFL did wrong was allow the vote in the first place; it should be a compulsory requirement for a SL club to run an A team, and if that means less money for the main squad, so be it. I take my hat off to those clubs still doing it, but it's a bit pointless when the opposition and fixtures are so haphazard.

Surely it can to a degree, they are the governing body are they not. Some of them are paid a lot of money to govern and in this case it's about time they did.

As I said - governance for the good of the sport, and with a longer view, would have made them realise that allowing SL clubs to vote to save themselves the expense of an A team was a terrible idea; so they are certainly culpable for that part.

But as far as I understand it, a majority of SL clubs, including ours, voted no - and that's on them.