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They've not been playing and haven't played any games since last April. Still no plans for a league going forward.

To echo DoubleD's words, it is nice to see that common sense has broken out.

I agree with what you say. Valencia has enough teams to have a league tomorrow, I just don't know what's taking so long.

Heard nothing about Galicia or the north of Spain at all. A number of the Valencian teams are posting training pics and they seem to be gearing up for something. What that something is, nobody has said.

Sorry to bump the thread but I was wondering if anybody here has any insight into just what the hell is going on? The international team has played this season but the club game has ground to a halt. Daz Fisher was quoted in a recent article as saying that they're trying to revamp and regionalise the domestic competition. However, this is a process that has been essentially going on for 18 months, when the Andalusian clubs announced they were going it alone. Does anybody have any insight?

Tell that to the critics. I honestly don't care, I'm just saying what I was reading on this board. However, let's not start with the false equivalencies.

That is actually one of the persistent criticisms of the expansion of the NCL. For all the criticism levelled at this league and the attempt to create some sort of unified pyramid, the NCL is a bloated mess that has weakened regional leagues and hasn't created a formal pyramid at all.

I think you have a good grip of the situation. However, you know full well that even with the best of intentions, a lot of those criteria you've laid out aren't possible. Even teams in the NCL dip on games and you don't have to go to far on this board to see criticism of that structure. I've said repeatedly - and nobody will listen - that the only way we can move forward in the south of England is to get an eight-month season. Nobody is going to get better playing 3 1/2 months per year. You can't develop a club or a facility playing 3 1/2 months per year. However, it requires any number of conditions to be met for all clubs as well as a collective leap of faith from several parties who don't trust each other and have no reason to trust each other. In saying that, there are teams with seconds and juniors (and masters). However, with no unified season, no facilities and weak sponsor/institutional support, I think it's difficult to come as far as they have.

I honestly wouldn't wipe my backside after a curry with these designations. If anything, they just draw bores to conversations like this like flies on horse dung. It's a tier 4 league because it's a tier 4 league. It's meaningless nonsense and anybody whinging about that because of the NCL or the leagues in the north needs to get a meaningful hobby, I would suggest knitting.

This is what I originally said. Without these teams, the only areas without viability issues are the places where no or few teams have been taken. Midlands is unchanged, South West is unchanged, West of England needs a change of format. I would've thought that you of all people would understand that will never happen and why it will never happen. Well, it will never happen if things stay as they are.

Not with a straight face, no. However, what should a Tier 4 competition look like? This has already been explained above. They put the idea out there and the RFL are determined to get this on the field no matter what. The biggest clubs in the Midlands either decided to move North or have collapsed. There is no central anything right now. So you have a West league where it's the same Welsh teams, who are always up for a wider geographic league, and whoever the flavour of the month is in the West of England league. In the East, the only way they could get a league was to go for loads of teams and see what swims. Nobody wants cross-regional games, it's simply not practical.

Hey Jasper. Unless something has changed and they haven't informed the RFL, it will be a 9 team league and they are aiming for 14 rounds. Whether or not that generates 14 fixtures per team is quite another matter because there's a debate over how to generate a fixture list. If it was just eight teams double round robin, it would be easy and wonderful. However, it's 9 teams and there needs to be an element of fixture-related jiggery pokery. Do you have a split-season type situation, do you pre-seed teams and have loop fixtures based on that? Geographic loop fixtures. I don't know, no decision has been made as yet. Essentially there are three points here. Unless something has changed since last night and nobody has told the RFL, the story of one London Prem club wanting to stay in the London region isn't true. In saying that, I can't say what is going on behind closed doors. All I can discuss is what has been openly discussed or I have verified. The current official line is that there is no plan about what to do going forward, beyond organising a London Merit League format for 2019 and the East sorting themselves out. They're trying to sort out the Southern Premier level and then work down from there. Let's break it down though. The two teams "left over" from this season's London Championship are Medway and Newham, neither of whom are particularly happy with this state of affairs. Newham could make a go of being in an extended East Premier, Medway perhaps not. There are entry league teams and perhaps a Skolars community setup, that would make an 8 game season, same as this year. The East seems a bit more organised, due to the Bedford chairman taking on the role of league chairman. You have the three Premier teams (Brentwood, St Albans, St Ives) and apparently the two Div 1 sides are back for 2019 (Southend and Luton) and (hopefully) the return of Kings Lynn. That's a league, a very open league, with a massive footprint. The issue is the A grades. Some teams just want to play double headers against other A grades, some might want to play in a local league, some want some combination of the two. Clubs and Competions have repeatedly said there would be some help but it hasn't been nailed down. This isn't rumours, Jasper.

Partial merger I suppose. Look, the attitude of everybody involved is that something needs to be done. Get it on the field and work out the kinks from there. Then extend/reorganise the league in 2020, where hopefully a few more teams get their act together and meet the criteria in the meantime. The game has hidden behind the sofa for a few years, cut the number of games getting played. Unfortunately, due to the way things have been going over the past few years, there is little stability. In the past, you would've fancied Oxford or Devon to be involved but one finished last in the WoE Super 5s (and Oxford RL have disappeared, their wagons were tethered together somewhat) and the other hasn't played a competitive game for some time. Similarly Bath RL haven't achieved sufficiently on the field and I don't think anybody wants to see teams get a leg up because they have "shown ambition". There has to be a balance of having facilities, of having desire to move up and on-field achievements. No, it's not better but they're trying to get to something better and this is the process they've decided to take. I offer no opinion on the matter.

That will be it for 2019 apparently. Five teams, triple round robin, teams that have been rejected have been encouraged to get their acts together and try again next year.

The one I remember quite profoundly was Essex Eels. Had a chat with a friend and he vaguely remembers them doing a similar astroturfing experiment in Northampton. He thinks that perhaps Bristol Sonics came to be in a similar way but locals came along and took it on. At junior level, most of the South London junior clubs at a certain point seemed to be created this way. The ones that survived brought in local admins/parents who took it on. Some of them seemed to exist in name only.