Barring a miracle Bradford will not be promoted and so will be set back years.



So whoever championed promotion & relegation well done on killing one of our most well supported club. Just to serve some small club chairmen and a section of our support who don't want to have to drive longer than 45 mins to get to an away game

Basically, I agree. .



1. There was a much higher chance of a new club entering and remaining in SL under the licensing system than there is under this contrived new system. It's just ridiculous to believe that even the best of the championship's semi-pros would beat the worst of the SL's full-time pros in an on-field competition.



2. We've also lost the ability to plan to improve or bring fresh blood into the league, and this thread gives a really good example of that : Toulouse (or indeed anyone) may come to us with a multi-million-pound backer, a top stadium and an average crowd offering in the top half of SL, plus the various spin-offs of a second French club in terms of attractiveness to sponsors, advertisers, media etc. And we can do nothing except say "Here you go lads, spend three years losing hundreds of thousands of pounds playing Hemel Hempstead and Batley on muddy fields in front of a few dozen hardy souls, with no interest, glamour or selling points for your domestic audience. Then, when you've firmly established yourself in the minds of potential supporters as a mediocre mostly-amateur club playing in second-rate competitions, we might give you one shot at beating a full-time pro team which is impossibly better than you could be given the restrictions we'll place on you, and when you lose, we'll shrug and say at least it's fair."



3. Because the only criteria for staying in SL is now to be able to beat a bunch of semi-pros at the end of the year, then I think we can safely kiss goodbye to much of the work which went into stadium improvement, youth development, and many of the other key off-field activities which licensing forced clubs to - albeit reluctantly in many cases - pay attention to. Wakefield and Castleford will still be announcing the "plans" for their new stadia when I'm long in my grave, and Saints, Wigan and Leeds will still be providing a hugely disproportionate number of the professional players from their youth set-ups because half the clubs will divert cash from theirs into ensuring that they have sufficient also-ran well-travelled pros to ensure there's really no chance of a shock when they beat the championship guys at the end of the year.



Yet there are still people connected to championship sides out there who think this is "bringing back promotion and relegation". No it isn't. We've dumped a system which genuinely allowed clubs to aspire to and achieve membership of the SL, in favour of a system which effectively establishes a closed shop of the current clubs, the price of which is a few hoped-for larger gates against the least attractive super league sides at the back end of the season. See how well those gates hold up when the inevitable one-sided hammerings of the semi-pros by the pros begin.

If you think new league structure was brought in because a few of the Championship clubs and their chairmen were upset, you are sadly mistaken. The championship clubs had been largely ignored by Super League and the RFL for a number of years, any moaning and groaning from the chairmen fell on deaf ears. The change was brought in by the RFL with the majority support of the SL clubs, probably because the franchise format and the way it was implemented was failing to do what it had set out, mainly providing a safe environment in which the SL clubs could grow without worrying about relegation. The blame lies with poorly implemented franchise system and the poorly run SL clubs that couldn't thrive despite the closed shop. They brought it on themselves!

Agree with that in general though I do think the yearning for P&R to return was at least part of the reason for the change. Otherwise they'd have just changed the licensing format.



I definitely agree that the licence system was poorly implemented. The whole reason for licensing was to provide an environment in which clubs could invest longer term rather than just avoiding relegation and to raise standards at all clubs.

I'd argue it was relatively successful in the 1st point but failed in the 2nd.



It needed to be a longer term licence (5 years or ideally, in my opinion, 10) and have far, far more in-depth analysis and assessments of clubs in their entirety, along with concrete, measurable targets in several key areas for all clubs. The clubs that don't meet their targets, including on-field performance, would be at-risk of losing their licence and would go into a decision process that involved applications for a licence from Championship clubs for the next licence period.

Missing the point, I think. While we may disagree about whether the championship clubs were happy with this change, (it was also very controversial amongst the SL clubs and certainly didn't have unanimous unqualified support. Some of the top clubs are pretty frustrated at the failure of some other SL clubs to do anything other than effectively sponge off the top table without ever contributing any challenge), what's happened here is that we've moved from a system where it was possible to add clubs, and where there was at least some pressure on existing clubs to sort their act out, to a situation where there is no pressure on the current SL clubs at all now, and no way of adding clubs - no matter how well financed, or how attractive for other reasons.



I'm not blaming the championship. This is just another example of short-term reactive thinking from the RFL. No plan at all to develop the game. Just shift the deckchairs around and hope the same clubs playing in the same fixtures in the same stadiums with the same catchment area, will somehow produce a different result this time.

the Bulls still aren't a big club, getting slightly better attendances than the worst SL clubs doesn't make you a big club. It makes you a medium sized club. Only getting 10k crowds when you're dominating the comps doesn't make you a big club. Playing in a big city doesn't make you a big club (London/Salford anyone?). They're a good, valuable club but I don't see why they should be considered more valuable to SL than any other middle ranking pro club.

They're not. But we don't have many clubs capable of being a middle-ranking SL club.

Too harsh on the Bulls by far. Essentially, the realistic position for us in terms of clubs is that the big clubs are those who in the last twenty years have drawn 10k regularly, produced competitive teams, generated decent numbers of young players for the pro game, and attracted significant sponsorship. That's a short list :



Wigan

Saints

Leeds

Warrington

Hull FC

Bradford



Then you have a group of clubs who produce solid gates (7500+), can occasionally hit a purple patch and take games off the big clubs (or even put together a good season like Huddersfield), but usually fall short in several areas and are thus never quite serious contenders, although they have clearly shown potential that they might, one day, with sufficient effort, make it to "big club" territory.



Huddersfield

Hull KR

Catalans



Then you've got the also-rans. The clubs who exist to give Sky commentators something to get excited about in occasional underdog upsets, but otherwise just make up the numbers, and nobody seriously expects them to either start drawing large crowds, or to seriously challenge the big clubs.



Widnes

Salford

Cas

Wakefield



Uncomfortable reading for them. Some of their fans will deny this. But the bottom line is that even when Cas managed to put together a good run which lasted nearly a whole season, they not only rolled over and died at the end, but they also couldn't keep that team together for more than a year, and their average crowd in their best ever professional era season was less than 200 greater than Bradford, in their worst ever super league season.



Yet those four also-rans, who in twenty years of full-time professionalism have shown no sign at all of truly troubling the big clubs, are still infinitely stronger on and off the field than anything in the championship (except maybe Bradford). London Broncos circa 1996 may well have been a genuine and exciting contender to become a big club, but the current incarnation is an embarrassing slow-motion car-crash. The rest are not so much semi-pro clubs as amateur clubs who pay their players beer money. There isn't one of them who, if they entered SL, would stand the remotest chance of challenging the big clubs in the next half-century, and the game probably won't last that long if we carry on as we are. Below that, you're looking at essentially amateur rugby played at a decent national level.



That's it. That's rugby league in the entire northern hemisphere at this point. 6 big clubs, one of whom we're currently in the process of killing off. 3 clubs who might make it at some point to be big clubs. And a whole bunch of clubs who will never be able to challenge the current big 5 on or off the field. This is why Sky think our entire sport is worth a couple of premiership games, and why we'll be moaning until the cows come home about the lack of media coverage. Because even those who know about our game think there's only 6 places in the whole country where it's practised with serious and significant intent : three Lancashire towns and three Yorkshire cities, one of which may be about to disappear. Maybe Catalans will pull it together this year and shake it up a bit - I think they've got a real chance of doing so if they keep Carney and Tonga fit. That'd raise a few sleepy eyebrows in the media and amongst sponsors. But otherwise, this year will be business as usual. The 8-8-8 thing is just some bizarre and pointless ritual which won't change a damn thing.



Sorry. I know I'm ranting. But I find it so incredibly frustrating that in a sport so desperately short of serious clubs with serious support and serious potential, we're quite happy to watch one of our half-dozen assets die, while at the same time, the knee-jerk response to a potential addition to that middle or top group of clubs, is met with a wall of negativity, and the firm thudding of the drawbridge being pulled up as we tell them all the reasons why we can't possibly do anything which might in some way harm the chances of an existing also-ran club to sponge more cash from the diminishing number of decent clubs we have left.

Whilst I have a lot of respect for Roy Haggarty. On this point I feel he too is guilty of what he accuses others of doing.



Which is wishing for things to be different to what they actually are.



Lets take the Bradford Myth to start with. Relegation did not kill Bradford. Bradford owners killed Bradford Bulls. As anyone can see the Bradford Bulls Club as was ended many seasons ago with the end of the owning company. This was in the promised land days of no promotion and no relegation. In fact the lack of P&R seemed to do very little to stop clubs dicing with financial ruin.



Then some how London got thrown into the mix, stating it was short sighted to get rid of London. Once again missing the point that London was not bought into long long long before P&R came back on the scene. London had been in the top flight for decades and blaming heartland clubs for the demise of London is in my opinion completely mis-placed.



Now lets go with the assumption of a new French club to expand the league. This is wishful thinking too. If we take out a heartland club and get rid of P&R and drop in a French club. There is absolutely zero evidence to say that the heartland club will continue pull in the crowds as they would in SL or in the Championship with the hope of promotion.



There is also nothing to suggest that the new French club would not be another PSG, Wrexham, South Wales, Gateshead. No evidence they will attract more fans, or will do anything other than be a roll of the dice whilst in the mean time cutting off those who are already loyal customers.



It's similar to banks who offer deals to new customers only. Except in this case there will not be an inertia from the old customers to stay but an active push to force them away.



If there is good evidence to parachute a club in, fine parachute them in give them a 3- 5 year dispensation. But in the end they need to be competitive, which means competing which includes the heights of winning and the lows of losing.



No one goes to watch sport just to have a predetermined result. A lack of P&R is a predetermined result on a systematic basis. There is no point looking at the NRL and NFL and saying they can do it. It's comparing different sporting cultures again wishing for something to be what it is not (which is exactly the same as wishing for a pro french league).



I don't think we will ever convince each other of the merits of each others point of view, but I know for sure, if Saints were relegated with no hope of promotion then the club would be as good as dead, they would not go to Wigan to watch RL. They would just leave the game.



The question is are we running a sport, where on the field performance matters or just a cartel where what ever you do on or off the field will make little to no difference?

Great post Roy, enraptures my views entirely. I just don't get why people can't get it!



Killing Bradford for the sake of P&R, and to totally abandon expansion is ridiculous.

The problem would, in my view, be identical whether 3, 5 or 10 year licences were issued: half a dozen clubs opting for safety in numbers by all failing to meet numerous criteria.

I think we're possibly talking at cross purposes here. I actually did say that it was rank bad management which killed Bradford (and London), not P&R. My point is simply that we do not have sufficient assets as a sport to take a laissez-faire attitude to who rises and who falls. Because those who fall - through incompetence - may well be our crown jewels, while those who rise, temporarily, may well be bottom feeders coming up for a brief gulp of air. The sport is increasingly looking too small to sustain full-time professionalism. We are entirely dependent upon Sky funding, and we are offering them now just 5 big clubs (all of whom are equivalent in support, but not budget, to top of League 1/bottom of championship in soccer). That's not a huge offer.



I accept your point about the risks of new clubs. However, in a sense, I think the fate of those expansion clubs underlines my point about how we can no longer afford this c'est la vie attitude to the game as a whole. None of those clubs involved the RFL saying : "we want a club there, and we'll invest the time and money and expertise to make damn sure it works". Instead, we simply found some likely lad (and some of them - in Wales - came into the "did you actually meet these guys before you signed the cheque?" category) willing to start up an operation, and then told them that although they had lots of problems and issues and challenges which exceeded anything faced by existing clubs, they weren't getting any more cash, any more assistance, any more central commitment. Here's your share of the sky money (or not, memorably), now do your best. If it goes toes up, then such is life. Contrast that with the approach the NRL has taken (and is about to take again), and you start to see why Catalans are a blooming miracle, while Crusaders, Gateshead and London were predictable.



The situation is, however, that we are now officially stagnant. Our entire strategy for growth is that the same clubs in the same places might somehow be able to attract a few more hundred species each from the same towns to watch them. That's it. That's what we're offering Sky. It's also what we're offering future potential participants. Other than that - nothing. There are only four fully professional team sports in this country : soccer, rugby union, rugby league and cricket. Three of those have establishment backing to one extent or another - large participation, plenty of assets in terms of grounds, a slavishly attentive media, good connections with business, and the sort of sponsorship deals which make you think the finance director must have been bladdered when he signed the deal. We have none of that. We've traded on the fact that we offer pretty consistently good entertainment value on the field, but also a decent amount of hype, experimentation, and not a small amount of smoke and mirrors about how widespread our support is (London played such an important role in helping us disguise the reality of where we are, and I suspect we will suffer for their absence off the field). We promised international teams in the same league, expansion into new frontiers, spreading the gospel and a bright future for the greatest game. Much of that may have been guff, but sport is entertainment, and we were selling a positive, confident, expansionist message. But now we're shutting up shop. This is your lot : three Lancashire towns, two Yorkshire cities now, and a bunch of also-rans. Toulouse ? Don't call us, we'll call you.



You're right that any expansion might be a risk. But the alternative now stares us in the face. The same teams, playing the same matches, getting the same results. Until someone at Sky decides that there just isn't enough interest in selling to that audience, and pulls the plug. We don't have the advantages our competitor sports have. We have to fight for our right to even exist, and we always have had to. That's meant taking knocks and bumps and getting back up - that's our game on and off the field. This season, I feel like for the first time since super league started, we've given up that fight. We've circled the wagons, sat down, and are just hoping something turns up. I don't think it will.