Re: Superleague re-structure : Wed Apr 21, 2021 9:06 am  

Noel Cleal wrote:

I think the problem is that looking at the current structure and we just don't have the structure for 1 up 1 down. Looking at the Championship we seem to have a lack of quality to come up and you would suspect the bottom three would not improve if relegated.

That being said I am not sure a licence or Super 8s league structure would do any better. Changing how teams come in out out of the league just feels like rearranging the deck chairs, we need something more than this to make Superleague and professional RL in general work.

Oh I think most sensible pundits (who can grasp that Australia take all the best players, and we have the second best players for our superleague) know that Superleague isn't elite and is the second (professional) division competition of the Rugby League world.

The Australian professional league has grown with the growth of money which is a key factor along with adequate talented players.

So as we have even less money from SKY and more regularly lose top English players to Australia, and develop less talent than say 10 years ago then inevitably we have to question 12 clubs being in Superleague. Of course I want 14 clubs and a 26 round season like most but...

10 is the glaring number wether we like it or not and that means clubs playing each other 3 times which us fans on the terraces may hate but I'm 100% sure SKY want to run third fixtures of Saints and Wigan and Hull and Leeds before they ever want bottom club fixtures.

When we were at 14 London collapsed appallingly, Bradford were in freefall and the year after Wakefield decided not to bother playing until the play offs and ended with an appalling minus 534 points difference including an 80-0 defeat at Warrington.

At that time Peacock said it was 10 for a competetive League with good standards top to bottom so the players problem drives this strongly now, even more so the massive cut in SKY money can only be mitigated, and even that only in part, by less clubs sharing the much lower TV deal.

A lack of players and money = 10 clubs...............

Re: Superleague re-structure : Wed Apr 21, 2021 9:28 am  

Donnyman wrote:

Oh I think most sensible pundits (who can grasp that Australia take all the best players, and we have the second best players for our superleague) know that Superleague isn't elite and is the second (professional) division competition of the Rugby League world.

The Australian professional league has grown with the growth of money which is a key factor along with adequate talented players.

Just think,if you had been born a few decades earlier,you could have informed anyone who would listen,how rugby league would never catch on in Australia because it is all rugby union,no player pathway etc just as you have done with French,Canadian,American clubs.

Anyway,having heard a Phil Caplan with podcast with an Australian chap,earlier this year,changing the name of the sport was discussed.
Although folk not greatly interested in sport could identify the difference between netball,basketball,and association football,there are fewer folk who can differentiate between rugby union and rugby league.

The name Leagueball may appeal to a newer,younger audience.
With society currently allowing itself to go back in time to the old slavery,colonisation,statues,et al - How about 1895 Rugby which may inspire those in this country who bang on about history,find museums interesting,the heritage of our sport may garner more interest.

Re: Superleague re-structure : Wed Apr 21, 2021 9:06 pm  

The Problem with the game is that it doesn't know what it wants.

2021: Huddersfield Giants, Salford Red Devils, Wakefield Trinity Wildcats, Hull Kingston Rovers and Leigh Centurions are battling it out to avoid the drop. Whichever one is unfortunate enough to go, will in all likelihood be replaced by Toulouse Olympique or Featherstone Rovers..

Your average British person when asked, wouldn't be able to find Huddersfield, Salford, Wakefield, Featherstone or Leigh on a map, let alone know that Hull has not 1 but 2 Rugby League teams.

That is the problem faced by Super League and the game in general. After a quarter of a Century of chopping and changing, the game doesn't know what it is, where it should be played or what it wants.

If it's happy not to expand, then keep P&R and hope that the monotony of the same teams winning is alleviated by the excitement of relegation, but the reality is that Featherstone replacing Wakefield won't garner the same headlines as Catalans winning the challenge cup.

Re: Superleague re-structure : Thu Apr 22, 2021 5:33 am  

orangeman wrote:

The Problem with the game is that it doesn't know what it wants.

2021: Huddersfield Giants, Salford Red Devils, Wakefield Trinity Wildcats, Hull Kingston Rovers and Leigh Centurions are battling it out to avoid the drop. Whichever one is unfortunate enough to go, will in all likelihood be replaced by Toulouse Olympique or Featherstone Rovers.

Choose which way you look at it, there's always going to be a bottom 5, they can't really have a top 4 play off with 12 teams in it, granted the 5 you mention are the main suspects but not always, and as the 2 championship sides mentioned they are really the only 2 worthwhile contenders, so I'm not sure what point your trying to make, apart from stating the obvious.

orangeman wrote:

Your average British person when asked, wouldn't be able to find Huddersfield, Salford, Wakefield, Featherstone or Leigh on a map, let alone know that Hull has not 1 but 2 Rugby League teams.

I'm absolutely certain that your average British person would have even less of a clue as to where to find a lot of football clubs, especially all those in London, and as for rugby union ask your average British person who Wasps and Saracens are for example, and ask them to find them on a map, once again,what's your point?

orangeman wrote:

That is the problem faced by Super League and the game in general. After a quarter of a Century of chopping and changing, the game doesn't know what it is, where it should be played or what it wants.

Not surprising really when the game is run by two different bodies, one being super duper league filled with greedy owners, and the other filled with part time chairman with no crowds very little money who rely on player loans to top up they're squads while at the same time the top clubs take advantage of this by keeping the fringe players fit

orangeman wrote:

If it's happy not to expand, then keep P&R and hope that the monotony of the same teams winning is alleviated by the excitement of relegation, but the reality is that Featherstone replacing Wakefield won't garner the same headlines as Catalans winning the challenge cup.

I don't think you could argue that the RFL hasn't tried to expand with all the teams that have failed and gone out of business, if you don't know them or can't remember them look them all up there are plenty of them, this particular sport has enjoyed success for well over a 100 years, maybe it's time some folk realised that maybe it's generally a northern game enjoyed by northern people who understand and enjoy the game, and that's all it's ever going to be.

Re: Superleague re-structure : Thu Apr 22, 2021 6:37 am  

happyjack wrote:

I don't think you could argue that the RFL hasn't tried to expand with all the teams that have failed and gone out of business, if you don't know them or can't remember them look them all up there are plenty of them, this particular sport has enjoyed success for well over a 100 years, maybe it's time some folk realised that maybe it's generally a northern game enjoyed by northern people who understand and enjoy the game, and that's all it's ever going to be.

Very good post. I looked all the defunct "expansion" clubs up from the failed South Shields in Victorian times to the mega-failed Toronto Wolfpack in modern times.........

There's about 50..... that's FIVE ZERO Yes attempt after attempt to "expand" all down the years of the games history, but nothing worked.

It's not hard to work out why. It was Northern English people specifically in west and east Yorkshire and south Lancashire who broke from Rugby Union and hoped for the rest of the country and wales to follow them. But they simply didn't. Instead many people turned to soccer that grew and grew or they stayed loyal to Rugby Union.

One of the oldest Expansion clubs is Doncaster. It's a short journey from the RL hotbed of Cas/Ponte/Fev and Wakey yet in nearly 70 years the club hasn't grown anything, just survived on a bit of private money, and a few fans through the turnstyles to buy in players from west Yorkshire. Don't Hull use them as a reserve side? Then there's Sheffield. That's going on 40 years. In these close by places the issue is if people are going to watch Football they watch Soccer, that's the dominant game. If people are going to play Rugby they play Union that's the dominant game.

If anyone wants Rugby League to survive in England you keep the Rugby League tradition alive.

You don't shut it down by blindly giving Superleague places to Toulouse, Ottawa, Toronto, Perpignan and New York thinking that that is actually expansion because these places are a long long way away, then wondering why the clubs you've relegated lose fans by the thousands and less people bother playing the game.

It's about survival and that means the obvious clubs in the obvious places need to make up Superleague and the division below. Outside that nobody is much interested as they have their Soccer and Union.........But hey let's put Valencia in Superleague

Re: Superleague re-structure : Thu Apr 22, 2021 6:47 am  

orangeman wrote:

The Problem with the game is that it doesn't know what it wants.

Your average British person when asked, wouldn't be able to find Huddersfield, Salford, Wakefield, Featherstone or Leigh on a map, let alone know that Hull has not 1 but 2 Rugby League teams. That is the problem faced by Super League and the game in general.

If it's happy not to expand, then keep P&R and hope that the monotony of the same teams winning is alleviated by the excitement of relegation, but the reality is that Featherstone replacing Wakefield won't garner the same headlines as Catalans winning the challenge cup.

So Catalans winning the cup will somehow excite Europe into following Rugby league.

There's far better wind ups on this forum than that

As for monotony Man U, Man City, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea seem monotonous to me with their ultra decade by decade dominance?

Could your "Average British Person" actually find Catalans on a map

[Wanderer]

Re: Superleague re-structure : Thu Apr 22, 2021 8:44 am  

Donnyman wrote:

One of the oldest Expansion clubs is Doncaster. It's a short journey from the RL hotbed of Cas/Ponte/Fev and Wakey yet in nearly 70 years the club hasn't grown anything, just survived on a bit of private money, and a few fans through the turnstyles to buy in players from west Yorkshire. Don't Hull use them as a reserve side?

No.

[Pumpetypump]

Re: Superleague re-structure : Thu Apr 22, 2021 9:03 am  

The RFL needs a pair of balls and stop being the passive patsy to a handful of clubs. The top flight of any competition is rightly perceived as a very important thing to get right, but in British RL we fixate on the top flight to the detriment of the wider game. We have to have a unified vision for the RL pyramid led not by the owners of the top flight clubs but by the RFL. I suspect that two thirds of clubs in the professional and semi-professional RL will feel shafted by a handful of SL owners. They understandably wish to protect their own clubs, but have demonstrated that this aim is incompatible with setting a strategic direction for the whole game. Some might say say that this is the tail wagging the dog, but the SL dog is withered and has rabies, but it's tail is long, pleasant and wants a stroke.

I also think that shrinking SL due to lack of available players and funding is such a self-fulfilling prophecy. The less clubs you put in your top flight, the less money you'll get to broadcast it and the less reach it has. I don't think dropping to 12 clubs was a cracking idea, and dropping to 10 would just be absurd.

Re: Superleague re-structure : Thu Apr 22, 2021 9:10 am  

Pumpetypump wrote:

The RFL needs a pair of balls and stop being the passive patsy to a handful of clubs .The top flight of any competition is rightly perceived as a very important thing to get right, but in British RL we fixate on the top flight to the detriment of the wider game. We have to have a unified vision for the RL pyramid led not by the owners of the top flight clubs but by the RFL. I suspect that two thirds of clubs in the professional and semi-professional RL will feel shafted by a handful of SL owners. They understandably wish to protect their own clubs, but have demonstrated that this aim is incompatible with setting a strategic direction for the whole game. Some might say say that this is the tail wagging the dog, but the SL dog is withered and has rabies, but it's tail is long, pleasant and wants a stroke.

.I also think that shrinking SL due to lack of available players and funding is such a self-fulfilling prophecy. The less clubs you put in your top flight, the less money you'll get to broadcast it and the less reach it has. I don't think dropping to 12 clubs was a cracking idea, and dropping to 10 would just be absurd.

Very well said, sir.

Re: Superleague re-structure : Thu Apr 22, 2021 10:12 am  

Pumpetypump wrote:

The RFL needs a pair of balls and stop being the passive patsy to a handful of clubs. The top flight of any competition is rightly perceived as a very important thing to get right, but in British RL we fixate on the top flight to the detriment of the wider game. We have to have a unified vision for the RL pyramid led not by the owners of the top flight clubs but by the RFL. I suspect that two thirds of clubs in the professional and semi-professional RL will feel shafted by a handful of SL owners. They understandably wish to protect their own clubs, but have demonstrated that this aim is incompatible with setting a strategic direction for the whole game. Some might say say that this is the tail wagging the dog, but the SL dog is withered and has rabies, but it's tail is long, pleasant and wants a stroke.

I also think that shrinking SL due to lack of available players and funding is such a self-fulfilling prophecy. The less clubs you put in your top flight, the less money you'll get to broadcast it and the less reach it has. I don't think dropping to 12 clubs was a cracking idea, and dropping to 10 would just be absurd.

I think we've had this conversation before and its only until you've seen the other side of the coin that it obvious now what you wrote stands true,
it is shameful that clubs like ours don't meet to modern standards and the top clubs seem to want us to stay there at the bottom, could you imagine the tables turning and these rich clubs would fade very quickly, as your club has done.
As fans we can see it but the owners of the top clubs will always want to look after their own interests
like you say the pyramid base is declining and that is where the concentration needs to be put for it to feed upwards