The game is dying, albeit slowly. The RFL want to be mindful of Sky's long-term future now that BT are a major player in the pay TV market. Sky will be desperate to keep hold of their football rights - and that may come at the expense of other sports. Key partners in sport go where the most influence and biggest engagement is - that's why the RFL and individual clubs have struggled to attract blue chip sponsorship investment.



How many clubs are self-sufficient? Even when we won three trophies in 2003 we didn't make any profit. Full time professionalism is not sustainable without a league of sugar daddies.



Promotion and relegation should be a one up, one down affair every year and nothing more. This breaking away into a mini league is a load of crap.

The point is, the RFL don't want promotion and relegation. But they get so many people whining about bringing it back that they've brought in a phantom P&R setup. How many times in recent memory have a championship club beaten a SL team? There's a huge gulf between the leagues and this mini-league nonsense is just going to massive highlight it with a number of one sided contests every year

I do find it more than a little strange that we will be in a league at some point next year where teams will be operating under different salary cap restraints. You'd think if teams like Fax, Featherstone, Leigh could demonstrate that they can afford to spend closer to that of lower end SL clubs then they should be allowed to do so.



Let's be honest, whether it is us or more likely Wakefield who stay up, they will spend the first 23 games next year getting a walloping. I expect they will have to 'manage' their squad so they have their best players fit for the mini league split at the end. I can't imagine their squad will be significantly improved next year if they continue with recent levels of attendance.



I suspect our best chance of bouncing back up again is convincing enough of our current players to stick around for a season. The heart of the squad in BK, Gale and possibly Disko is unlikely to still be here I would of thought. How will we fare with new playmakers against teams who have been building for this for several seasons now?

That is exactly what I have been thinking since Nigel Wood brought about it's conception. What we really need is dynamic new thinking from the RFL and for Super League to be run expertly by a good executive management group.

Is that a forum record for the most oxymorons in a single sentence...?

It might very well be full of oxymorons.... but it still makes sense.

The earlier post contrasting the capabilities and achievements of Lewis and Wood explains why the game is in such a mess.

So talking about next year, if we are in the championship how many games do we play.



I assume we play 22 games in the first group of twelve.



If we finish in the top four we go into a group of eight teams(four from super league and four from the championship) do we play all these teams home and away. That makes another 14 games.



From this group the top 3 go into super league and 4th and 5th play off for the last super league position.



That makes a 36 game season plus 1 if we finish 4th or 5th.

Second phase is 7 games, with the championship teams getting 4 home fixtures; a small advantage perhaps on the field, but definitely on the income stream.

As far as I understand it all???



Two by 12s comprise SL or tier 1.... Championship or tier 2...each will play 22 home and away plus a magic weekend event ie 23 games in the league.

After the 23 games the league will split into three 8s with the second or middle 8 comprising the bottom 4 super league teams and the top 4 championship teams.



This middle 8 will be for qualifying for the P&R only and the play off games will be 7 games with the 4 championship teams initially,having home advantage, the teams finishing 1 to 3 are re admitted to SL. the 4th and 5th teams will play a one off P&R game to decide who goes up or back into SL and who is relegated or goes back to championship? So 30 in total.



But it could have changed, because it's from the policy review doc. completed in SEPT>2013, and assumed by Nigel as being in tablets of stone?







The third 8 hopefully we wont need to know!

TBH I wouldn't be at all surprised if we are in third eight next year. We're going to have to assemble virtually a complete new team from scratch and most of better championship players will already have deals sorted for next year already. By time we start recruiting we'll be signing the scraps. Won't be til next season that we can recruit when better players are available for 2016 season. Think people are kidding themselves thinking we'll bounce straight back up.

I would seriousley hope that we have been at least been preparing for life in the Championship well at least since the points deduction. To leave it till we are relagated would be up there in the top teir of incomptrance of recent years.

Maybe not. There'll be 50 less SL playing contracts available. That's a lot of excess players causing a glut in the market. We should be able to offer one of the better packages outside of SL. Not just wage.