mrfranco

For me it's that combination of the brutal, gladiatorial physicality of the sport (that crunch! that you hear at a live game when a big tackle happens) with the sublime skills of those jaw-dropping try-creating moments. Simple really.

Anyone know if you can still get a free trial for Premier Sports? And if so, how? Certainly can't see it from their website

I think that non-vaxed players ban will be gone in a month or two, so that advantage for Toulouse will disappear over the summer (although of course it appears it has also cost them their two best players, and not just for the summer). Wouldn't be surprised if the ban came back in the autumn though, but perhaps more likely to be after the season finishes.

No reason you can't do either or both of those and still give the team a year's grace - but I don't think either of those ideas would be as effective. To me, it's the best remedy I've come across, which makes it not a gimmick but a genuine attempt to fix this problem.

Oh and I'm very much not in favour of 2 x 10.

Each to their own, of course, but it's really not a gimmick. We need a solution to the problem of the team that goes up being totally unprepared and coming straight back down (in recent years see Leigh, Toronto's 6 actual games and Toulouse so far...). This is an idea of how to do that.

Obviously you would have to make rules for that in advance. There are various alternatives, but for me I'd view it as there's two promotion spots, and the first one is decided at the end of Y1, and everyone knows who it is. There's no relegation in Y1, and everybody knows that. So if the Y1 Championship winners win again in Y2, I'd have an MPG-style play-off between that season's runner-up and the second-bottom in that year's SL. In a sense it's a bonus for either club, because they would expect that by finishing where they did, they would not have a place in SL. The important thing here though would be - as I said at the beginning - to make the rule for this clear in advance. A rugby league admin speciality as we know... As for the points over the two seasons thing... I did consider that kind of thing, of course, but it works against the main point of this scheme, which is to give the newly promoted team a year of safety without relegating someone who potentially finishes above them. It also works against another positive feature of the scheme: i.e. I like the fact that if you are able to get your shirt together and win the Champ in Y1, you get a whole extra year to prepare.

How do you solve the problem of sides that win promotion being unready and ill-equipped to survive in SL? The obvious answer is to not allow them to be relegated in year 1. But how do you do that? It's patently not very fair on a team finishing 2nd bottom to have them relegated while a team below them survive. So, one idea is this: only have relegation every 2nd season. That means relegating two clubs, and therefore promoting two clubs, and it might be that it's the same 2 clubs that were promoted two years before, but I think it may be worth a try. Because what it does is allow promoted clubs a season to get used to SL and build for that vital second season. It allows them to offer longer than 1-year contracts and not necessarily only get the dregs of who's left because they've found out they are getting promoted only after all the existing SL clubs have sorted out recruitment. Although there is no relegation "jeopardy" in Y1 of every two-year cycle, everybody knows that there certainly is in Y2, and that - along with the fact that those clubs who are busy contesting silverware carry on with the usual cut and thrust of the battle at the top of the table - should help guard against the kind of staleness that we had under licencing. Finally, while relegation is 2 teams every second year, promotion carries on being earnt every season. The two promoted teams would be the two champions of the Championship over the two years, and for the team that wins that league in Y1 of any two-year cycle, they have a whole year to prepare for entering SL safe in the knowledge that they will be promoted at the end of Y2, whatever they do in that Y2 season. And with the no-relegation season the following year, by the time they face a potential relegation battle in their second year in SL, they've had two full years to prepare. It should at least make it a much fairer fight than we see at the moment.

Didn't know C4 would be showing GF highlights. Think that's good news!

So... sounds like we should host it in Toronto?/

According to that colour chart there's loads of space on the pitch... let's hope it's mostly in the Leeds defence

Nope.

So does that mean the "European 9s" is actually open to teams from all the countries that the "European" federation actually covers too? Or just ones from Europe?

Yes! Seemed an obvious move to me, too!

This is the opportunity to work on that - let's hope they are!!