I agree. Decent concept. Say two divs of 10. All clubs would have to meet certain core, long term criteria. Such as stadia and infrastructures. Other variables would be driven by p&r (as should be the case in competition based sport). This would alleviate the jump up to superleague, and make sl a better spectacle in two ways:
- reduce number of teams... there are not enough good players to support 12 teams, let alone 14. Superleague is getting worse as a spectacle
- (re)introduce something to play for to 16 teams. At the moment there are about 6 teams who have anything to play for. The RFL believe a franchise system will help us beat the aussies. No it will not - intense rugby will. And who says beating the aussies has to be the core principle of rfl governance? I would say the health of our game is of more importance (and seemingly licensing is doing nothing to this end either!)
A strong argument for franchising was to help blood young talent. I believed this. Though it is all relative - exposing them to mediocrity will help them to achieve mediocre greatness.