Nor can the entire midlands be abandoned for the sake of 1 team (not club, their juniors won't be affected) going through a rough patch on the field.
Difficult one though but the RFL appear to be going ahead with it as long as at least 7 teams join, and sometimes the long term good of the game has to be looked at, South London's good junior setup probably won't be harmed by what league their first team is in in the short term but long term when they get lots of players coming through from them they'll want to be in the best league practical I'd have thought. Though of course hard to say for certain from up here and the travel is hard.
Every sport that splits north, midlands and south ends up with the midlands as insignificant because of the lower population base than the north and south.
There are quite a few dilemmas facing the RFL and the affected clubs, but travel is surely one of the most significant for those clubs in the London/South East conurbation, and not just because of the cost. RL is in a market place along with other sports and, in effect, they are all competing with one another for the athletic talent available. If a young bloke (and we are talking men in this instance) can compete to a very good standard in soccer, union, athletics, etc and yet stay within the broad south east region then the rugby league option, where you not only have to escape/travel through London but then continue up to the midlands, might start to seem less attractive.
It is a problem that the FA struggled with for years when continuing to build their pyramid. The north bit was easy but they could never get a unified southern half of the country, that bit being split between the Southern League (midlands, south-west - basically everywhere north and west of the M25 circle) and the Isthmian League (London and the south-east corner). The London clubs and players were perfectly happy with their lot and just wouldn't countenance travelling out of their geographical zone; they could get just as good a standard of footy so why spend the time and money travelling half the length of England to get just the same. And these are clubs that, in terms of infrastructure, finance and support dwarf even the best of RL's southern and midlands clubs.
see this map for details of how soccer deals with the reality without abandoning the midlands. Now your previous suggestion of splitting the fixtures - playing the clubs in your geographical half twice, the others once, would go some way to offering a similar solution.
The problem with all this is that the 'pyramid' is being constructed probably before the game south of the established counties is really ready for it. Having double or treble the number of clubs at all levels of strength would help, but you perhaps have to grasp the opportunity when it presents itself - increased funding is there at the moment and the national pyramid is being used as a selling point of the switch to summer. And, you never know, having the structure there might cause a few clubs to re-examine their ambitions (their have been many clubs in both soccer and union, for example, that have been inspired to climb up their respective pyramids.
I just hope the RFL have done a risk assessment!
