The Blues Ox

Its a bit hit and miss at the moment, teams with U19's have about 6-8 games scheduled at the moment. Unfortunatley it is hitting a lot of community teams pretty hard though with the SL team been classed as the parent club and some teams restricting if their players can play for the community teams it is leaving the community teams who produced these players short of players.

"Obviously, some clubs aren’t happy. But it looks to me like it’s the right way to move forward. If you get a plan where everyone is happy then it’s not the right plan. One of the worst things you can do in life is try and please everyone so it’s good that a few are whinging. Rather than try and please everyone like we have in the past, we’ve got to create a plan that improves the game and I feel this is one is as good as any I’ve seen." If you get a plan where everyone is happy then it's not the right plan.........

I don't think it will be tough for you guys at all today. Our pack has not given us a platform in any game this season so to expect them to do it against Fev in a mud bath would be a surprise of the highest nature. Im just hoping we manage to stay in the game for longer than 15 minutes this time.

I imagine viewing figures will drop under the new proposals. I class myself as a casual viewer when it comes to SL, I watch a lot of games in the early rounds as there is a bit of uncertainty and from that point I will watch games at the top and games involving the teams that play the best rugby and then I will watch the games involving teams in a relegation battle but everything inbetween I don't usually bother with which tends to be quite a number of games later on in the season. Take away any sort of relegation battle and the number of games I will watch will drop by about 1/3 and could be up to 1/2 depending on the overall standard of the competition. I won't be the only one in this situation. My big question would be how is IMG going to market the game so that the viewing audience gets larger? Obviously the main selling point is the product on the field and Joe public really does not care if you have a 60 inch widescreen in the corner of the gound. For me the I am struggling to see how the changes go about improving the overall quality when we can already work out that the current SL clubs will stay as SL clubs and there will likely be a gap between the best Championship teams that can't be eclipsed on the field like Leigh have done and because of that the product in SL really doesn't change. Obviously I could be wrong regarding how they do the gradings and we could see a big shake up which I would really like but I can't see it. To me it makes it look like a lot could change without it actually changing. As I have said before though I am not totally against this more likely just worried about certain aspects.

The Challenge Cup, the mainstay competition of Rugby League has been notorious over the past few years for low attendances. Do you think it may have something to do with season tickets not been eligable and the same goes for the middle 8's? Again, people will stop and stare at a car crash. It created a bit of excitment and jeopardy which was good in my opinion just because the product near the top of the table has been a bit naff for a number of years now. These new gradings are not going to change that in my opinion. If RL wants to make some big changes in that regard then changes to the salary cap and where teams take their young players from would be the changes that I would look to make.

And that is where the problem was, the product at the top has become so stale and boring that something simple like a relegation battle could take away from it. I mean the only way it devalues the top is because people may be inclined to get excited by it?

You are right but just going back to the Keighley they are already behind the 8 ball because of something they literally have no control over. That to me seems ridiculous. Im pretty meh over expansion teams but I do believe if they are to gain a place then it should be on merit rather than where they are based and this system allows for a team to score more than an expansion club across the board but the expansion club sneak in because of where they are based so maybe we don't end up with the best 12 clubs in SL. At the end of the day that was probably the main reason this sytem went, because the top end of SL is stale as hell and it put focus on the bottom end of the table and created a bit of excitment around that. Did all the clubs vote against it or was it another case that the SL clubs had two votes? I genuinly do not know the answer to this. I wouldn't trust the RFL to run me a hot bath nevermind to manage pathway opportunites for young players. I'm involved in the girls/ladies game and the RFL managed pathways are abysmal and their selection process really needs looking at. They have players for a number of weeks and at the end of it can't even provide feedback on every player. Very nice post harry.

Not sure what is disgraceful about what they are saying? They seem to be stating facts. It does not seem to be fair that certain clubs are penalised by something they literally have no control over.

The middle 8's were brilliant in my opinion. They offered some jeopardy, gave Championship teams a realistic shot at promotion and created some very good games. I think part of the problem with them was that it took away a lot of focus from the mundane SL playoffs that were pretty predictable.

Thats it I could easily argue that many Championship teams are better run than some SL clubs simply because of the restraints they work under.

Id describe it as rubbernecking .

Shows how much of a one sided bore fest SL is.

Honestly I do not care, I just go to watch the rugby and like I say, to me success is winning on the pitch. The club been run succesfully won't get you that high that comes from watching your team win games/finals. I wouldn't die happy knowing that we finished 10th in SL every year but at least we were well run. That is just how I see sport.

Im not going to lie but as a fan of a championship team the second promotion and relegation is taken away I lose a little bit of interest and probably decide to watch less games because I judge overall success in sport as winning on the field. I won't be the only person who feels like this and its hard to market a competition that people are going to pay to watch where success is judged more off the field. I know my team has very little chance of gaining promotion as it stands at the moment but the hope is there that I may one day get to celebrate our success winning a grand final and gaining promotion. I'm really not even sure I would celebrate getting promoted via a points system which again circling back makes me less inclined to put my money in to a club through sponsorship or at the turnstyles.

Then why are we debating putting a basket case in to SL? The idea is to get the best 12 clubs in to an elite division not to put teams in who had 2 minutes of fame that was built on quicksand.

Lets put Swinton in there then? Where do we draw the line? Recent history suggests that Bradford are a basket case club that should not be anywhere near SL.

I bet Big Nige isn't either.

Leigh have earnt their place why shouldn't they be in? If anything I would argue they deserve that spot more than some of the teams that have been in SL for a number of years.

In all seriousness though I'd like to hear what provisions are in place for when a Cat B team is dumped out of SL as we are going to get teams who simply do not have the income to support FT rugby on relegation and we may still end up with teams running in to trouble finacially. If this ranking system came in this year and it was Wakey still in this position where their future looks bleak if they were to be dropped how would they be looked after?

Has anyone got the exact meaning for the word "big" when it comes to the big screen as me mate Dave has offered to take his 70" widescreen down the Shay each week if its going to help us grab a point.

I get where you are coming from and it was an extreme example. I do think we may see attendances dropping anyway though as I suspect most fans would rather see success on the field so I do think we should still have that in some form or another outside of getting x amount of points for winning the comp. I'd still be happy for only the top Championship team to be eligable for promotion even though the new rankings do mean that any team could earn promotion.

I agree for the overall good of the game but for that to happen to help Championship teams raise there level there has to be some money come in to the game at that level and I just do not see that happening which massively handcuffs any team in the Championship without a big backer which is probably all but London and at the moment he just soaks up debts.

At the moment the only performance on their pitch will be people building snowmen. So yeah Siddal may still put in the best performance of any Calderdale team.

I'm not sure on this either and not sure where SB's confidence comes from. I thought the new gradings might actually favor Bradford and London but my initial reaction is that both do not come off well from it at all. London will probably get a Cat C and Bradford will be a borderline B/C and certainly nowhere near a spot in SL.

My understanding is that you could have a SL team that performed poorly for a couple of years that then had a fluke season and finished top and won the final ala Leicester and then could be relegated because a Championship team outscored them. Obviously its very unlikely to happen but its a possibility. It does make the Championship pretty worthless as teams could in effect keep their money in their pockets rather than spend it on the team knowing that performance for Championship clubs makes up so little of the criteria and then that in turn lowers the quality of a product which at the moment I think is pretty good.