Re: Fewer clubs in SL - what is the rationale? : Thu Feb 23, 2012 6:48 pm  

wrencat1873 wrote:

Lets just hopo that some warning is given to any proposed change and that the teams can play for their place in the top flight ?
Or will we have a cull after the end of the season "because the TV deal was too good to miss".
De ja vu anybody ?
Its like Uncle Maurice is back in charge !

Someone just jumped up and down on my grave when i read that

Re: Fewer clubs in SL - what is the rationale? : Thu Feb 23, 2012 7:02 pm  

Wheels wrote:

I'd love to see a truly elite 10 team superleague, with a very strong division 1, and national leagues 2 and 3. All with a top 4 play off, with the grand final winners getting promotion.

Sky could pay the same as they do now for exclusive coverage of the top two divisions (Salford v Leigh or Fev v Wakey should get good ratings), with Premier Sports getting the rights for the National Leagues.

There are a number of ways the extra games could be created if needed...


League = 18 games

And what about 2 NRC type cup competitions (one for div 1+2 and one for div 3+4) ensuring 4 more home games per team, then last 8 knock outs?

That gives 26 games, 13 at home.

Plus Challenge Cup and Top 4 play-offs of course.

They could, but they wouldnt want to. Sky are all about elite sport. Even the coverage they give to the lower leagues in football is pretty poor, they show 75 matches across the 3 leagues compared to 70 Super League matches a year.

SL should grow not shrink, with the move to conferences combating the rise in games.

Re: Fewer clubs in SL - what is the rationale? : Thu Feb 23, 2012 8:45 pm  

SmokeyTA wrote:

They could, but they wouldnt want to. Sky are all about elite sport. Even the coverage they give to the lower leagues in football is pretty poor, they show 75 matches across the 3 leagues compared to 70 Super League matches a year.

SL should grow not shrink, with the move to conferences combating the rise in games.

Surely you mean TV is all about elite sport, so why have the Championships on?

Re: Fewer clubs in SL - what is the rationale? : Thu Feb 23, 2012 9:42 pm  

Starbug wrote:

Surely you mean TV is all about elite sport, so why have the Championships on?

No I mean Sky is about elite sport, TV outside of Sky/ESPN arent interested in pretty much anything regular. Bar the champions league and FA cup there is no club sport really shown on terrestrial TV regularly throughout the year. There are the international competitions but outside that. Not a lot. Outside Sky and ESPN TV isnt about club sport.

The championships are a second tier competition on a second tier channel. A channel which picks up more niche sports/competitions and caters for those fans who are prepared to pay a little bit extra, whereas Sky look to pick up as many people as possible to as bigger package as possible. Its how they make their money. They arent going to make more money by bringing down the upper echelons of SL to bring up the lower echelons of the Championship, just so they have 2 leagues instead of one.

Re: Fewer clubs in SL - what is the rationale? : Thu Feb 23, 2012 9:55 pm  

I think Super League should grow not shrink. I would love to see a 16 team league, maybe 18 in the future.

The RFL should get some advice from the NRL, their expansion system seems much better than ours, read up on a lot of it the other day, interesting stuff. The RFL need to do away with their approach to unrealistic expansion (Build it and they will come, even if they have no money) and concentrate on growing Super League.

Re: Fewer clubs in SL - what is the rationale? : Thu Feb 23, 2012 10:19 pm  

SmokeyTA wrote:

No I mean Sky is about elite sport, TV outside of Sky/ESPN arent interested in pretty much anything regular. Bar the champions league and FA cup there is no club sport really shown on terrestrial TV regularly throughout the year. There are the international competitions but outside that. Not a lot. Outside Sky and ESPN TV isnt about club sport.

The championships are a second tier competition on a second tier channel. A channel which picks up more niche sports/competitions and caters for those fans who are prepared to pay a little bit extra, whereas Sky look to pick up as many people as possible to as bigger package as possible. Its how they make their money. They arent going to make more money by bringing down the upper echelons of SL to bring up the lower echelons of the Championship, just so they have 2 leagues instead of one.

Not disagree, as I put the 10 team league idea is just another making the best of what we have rather than trying harder to get what we want

Re: Fewer clubs in SL - what is the rationale? : Thu Feb 23, 2012 11:03 pm  

Hopefully, one day we'll have enough quality to expand the division rather than make it smaller

Re: Fewer clubs in SL - what is the rationale? : Thu Feb 23, 2012 11:35 pm  

14 clubs to me has the right sort of feel for number of games, although I'd definitely get rid of the extra fixture.

Am I alone in thinking that standards seem to be slowly improving? IMO we have Sts, Leeds, Wigan and Warrington who are very good teams, plus a number of other teams not that far off the pace and certainly capable of causing an upset. Even as recently as 2009 neither Wigan or Wire would have been considered real contenders.

The problem is the inconsistency of the mid tier teams, the really poor quality of the bottom couple of sides (suggesting we simply don't have enough quality players full stop), and the fact that SL sides seem to throw in the towel defensively far too easily leading to blowout scores. It's certainly bizarre when you have a coach like Tony Smith complaining about too many easy wins. Those areas are where the work is required IMO.

Re: Fewer clubs in SL - what is the rationale? : Fri Feb 24, 2012 4:40 am  

The cap should match the SL grant, what is the difference at the moment?

Clubs should have 9 home SL games plus Mill magic. Create two conferences to help with away travel and generate more rivalary games. 7 teams in each conference. You play your conference home and away (12 games) and 7 games against the other conference + MM derby game givng a 20 game SL regular season.

Re: Fewer clubs in SL - what is the rationale? : Fri Feb 24, 2012 7:37 am  

Heres my plan, there should be 13 teams with 26 rounds (magic weekend included with teams alternating each season so the same team isn't losing a home fixture every year). Keep the international V's exiles 2 games during the season. The challenge cup final will be the first game at the end of the regular season. Then the playoffs start, the playoffs are straight forward with no second bite if you lose your out. 1st play 8th (game 1), 2nd play 7th (game 2), 3rd play 6th (game 3), 4th play 5th (game 4). Winner of game 1 plays winner of game 3, winner of game 2 plays winner of game 4. Going off this seasons fixtures the final would be played on the 22nd of september. After the SL playoffs a world club challenge with the top 4 teams (the 4 teams left at semi final stage of play offs) from SL and NRL. It would start on the 13th october so both sets of teams have a few weeks prep. There would be one round on each weekend with the final being played on the 27th october, Gf winner of SL plays 4th in NRL playoffs (game 1), SL runner up plays 3rd place in NRL playoffs (game2), SL 3rd place plays NRL runner up (game 3) and SL 4th place plays NRL GF winner (game4). winner of game 1 plays winner of game 3, winner of game 2 plays winner of game 4. there is a chance of a all SL or NRL final but i think it will be a good knockout comp. the reason i said a playoff system is because a league will take too long.