Wellsy4HullFC

If you did that, one team (the cup winners) essentially has no reason to perform in the league for the rest of the season because they'll already be in the final.

Merge them. Magic Weekend every round. Give it an identity. Spread the game. You'd need a 30k combined crowd for each event to at least match what we have now. Some regularity of each round might even build it.

Pretty much my sentiments. Having our 2 biggest events back to back in October will dilute both. When we require many neutral fans to fill these grounds, putting both showcase events on back-to-back is forcing fans to choose. SL clubs joining the cup at the round of 32 rather than round of 16 is an obvious improvement (how it was about 10 or so years ago). I'd be tempted to give the SL champions a bye so they have a free weekend for the WCC. But eliminating all the other clubs below L1 is doing more to damage the ethos of the cup than any of the ideas mentioned at the end of the piece. It's our FA Cup, not our League Cup. It needs to include as many as possible within the pyramid and unite the rugby league community. The quota idea puzzles me. Why restrict our selling points? Seems a bit gimmicky (in a negative way). And as nice as the other ideas are to build an event, they're not really selling points that are going to add bums to seats.

I used to teach the Kemp twins when they were 10. You could tell even at that age they were very talented rugby players. Was really chuffed to see they both got signed up. How are they both doing?

Seriously, the bitterness has to stop.

You really need to get out of your own bubble because you're enjoying the smell of your own farts. If you don't think finishing bottom and joint bottom were failures, you've got some interesting mental gymnastics. It's all part of the journey, nothing wrong with just saying "yeah, we had a rough few years rebuilding." I know plenty of Hull KR fans that hold their hand up to those shoddy years and did so at the time also. I won't tar them all with the same brush like you try to ours because I'm not that bitter. Enjoy your progression. You should. But remember, you haven't won anything yet so maybe get down from that pedestal.

Yorkshire & The East vs Lancashire & The West. There, everyone's included. Like when they added "Ireland" to GB&I. As long as they avoid calling them the Red Rose Wests, I'm sure we'll be fine!

Well, not really. After bouncing back, you finished 3rd bottom (then 18pd away from being in another MPG), joint bottom and then bottom again. Relegation knocked you back years. Let's not rewrite history into some kind of "rising phoenix" underdog story. Had it but been for Widnes' compete collapse that year, you may have stayed down there.

Something has to change. Smith had a full season and an off-season. I get he might have not been able to recruit all the players he wanted, but he got so little out of the ones he's got that it was just unacceptable. There was no confidence he could turn anything around. Since he's gone, there's some visible changes happening. Whether they're good or bad, who knows, but the support was being lost through such inept performances that you've got to be shown to be doing something. They're the customers after all. You can't have one win in 14 games (that one win being a last minute try at home against a newly promoted team with zero wins and guaranteed relegation), with 3 out of the last 4 by more than 50+, and expect to keep your job.

Agreed. You only need to look at Wigan's demise in the mid-00s. Nearly relegated in 06. They got a new coach and signed one player (on the face of it). Seemed to make a huge difference! *I'll ignore the fact they also broke the salary cap...* And again, a few years later they changed owner, head coach and suddenly became the blue print! With the right people and investment, the change can be pretty quick. By the looks of it, we're willing to fork out some money (which we weren't sure about before) to get the right people. That's a relief at least because the feeling was we were skint and doing it all on the cheap. Turns out, we're just doing it really really really badly!

And you'd no doubt get another great coach that gets 150% out of 75% budget. The real person we should be after is the person who's finding the coaches...

Could this not just be the first round of negotiations? Offer 1 rejected...

The Robins?

Looks like they'll just have to be called North West RL and include Cumbria... (I'm being facetious obviously)

Catalans- B Saints- B Wigan- A Warrington- A Hull KR- C Huddersfield- C Salford- C Leeds- D Leigh- E Castleford- F Hull FC- F London- E