Dominic Posted October 25, 2018 Share Posted October 25, 2018 Likely to upset a few people here... Have been thinking long and hard about developing the League to allow for expansion in the future and have come up with a conference system similar to that in the NFL. Before you give up reading on... please just read the rest... "The East" Hull FC, Hull KR, Castleford, Featherstone, Wakefield "Yorkshire" Leeds, Huddersfield, Halifax, Bradford, York "Lancashire" St Helens, Wigan, Leigh, Salford, Swinton "The West" Warrington, Widnes, Workington, Whitehaven, Barrow "Expansion" Catalans, Toulouse, Toronto, London, New York (?) This idea ensures that local derbies are contested yearly and without fail and also with a Home and Away same conference, Home only against 2 Conferences, and Away only against the other 2 Conferences ensures all teams play everyone - total 28 games. Future Expansion would be to develop French Rugby League, as well as North American Rugby League, and could look like: "France" Catalans, Toulouse, AS Carcasonne, Limoux Grizzlies, Lezignan The bottom team could face a play-off with the French Elite 1 Champions "North America" Toronto, New York, Hamilton, Boston, Chicago The bottom team could face a play-off with the Champions of a US/Canada RL "UK and Ireland" London Broncos, London Skolars, Ireland, Wales, Scotland In case you think I have forgotten about the rest... The British Rugby Championship Rochdale, Oldham, Batley, Dewsbury Hunslet, Keighley, Sheffield, Doncaster Newcastle, Coventry Hemel, Skolars, Crusaders, Raiders Please go gentle with me with your responses... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gerrumonside ref Posted October 25, 2018 Share Posted October 25, 2018 I think the splitting of the TV contract between even more clubs in the top flight makes it unfeasible. There could be conferences though for all the teams below Super League. I personally think conferences is an idea that has worked very well elsewhere in sport. And I like the inclusion of Swinton! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Number 16 Posted October 25, 2018 Share Posted October 25, 2018 For me, two things about your suggestion... First, a pie in the sky selection of clubs. Second, I'd favour a conference style SL should we ever get to the position of sufficient players of required quality. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damien Posted October 25, 2018 Share Posted October 25, 2018 How do we pay for 25 full time clubs? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
17 stone giant Posted October 25, 2018 Share Posted October 25, 2018 Great minds think alike, Dominic. From 16th October: On 10/16/2018 at 1:11 PM, 17 stone giant said: Inspired by the recent NFL thread, and the couple of pints that I've just had at lunchtime, I now have another suggestion for the league structure. Split the teams into two conferences of four divisions, NFL style. Western conference North America - Toronto, New York, Los Angeles, Vancouver Lancashire - Wigan, St Helens, Warrington, Salford Eastern conference Yorkshire - Leeds, Bradford, Hull, the other Hull South/France - London, Catalan, Toulouse, Paris I know I'm missing a few teams, so apologies if your team isn't mentioned. I either couldn't remember their name, or I couldn't find a place for them, so they've had to be omitted. All in the name of expansion though, so that makes it ok. Anyway, you play everyone in your division home and away, and then you play matches against some teams from other divisions, all determined by a formula that I haven't yet determined. This means much less travelling across the Atlantic, hopefully. After the regular season matches, there's a play offs, culminating in two conference finals, and then a Grand final. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Plow Posted October 25, 2018 Share Posted October 25, 2018 Why do some people want conferences? I just don’t get it. The NFL and MLS has conferences because the USA is so big it’s not economicaly viable to travel across the country each week. Theres nothing wrong with a simple round robin system (even if it has loop fixtures). It’s simple, tried and tested. The only way I see a conference being introduced in RL is if we have 12 North American clubs Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Shepherd Posted October 25, 2018 Share Posted October 25, 2018 Nowhere near enough money in the game to support that many pro clubs. None of your Lancashire teams are in Lancashire, indeed there are no professional, or even semi professional teams left in Lancashire. Hull, Cas, Fev and Wakey are all in Yorkshire, not "The East". York is further east than three of them too. Here's a radical plan: Let's have 3 divisions, numbers to be decided as and when required. Promotion and Relegation between all three divisions every year (without fail). Stick with this basically forever and stop messing about. Also, never ever consider imposing an alien format from foreign sports. Let's keep it simple, stick with what's familiar and concentrate on the sporting action. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Private Baldrick Posted October 25, 2018 Share Posted October 25, 2018 Now then, where is my atlas and some pins and I think I will have a go .................................... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oliver Clothesoff Posted October 25, 2018 Share Posted October 25, 2018 No longer Football or the NRL, the comparisons are now NFL centric, I see. All because a huge sport in America with a decent size fan base in the UK and Europe can fill an eighty-odd thousand seated stadium three weeks in a row. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gerrumonside ref Posted October 25, 2018 Share Posted October 25, 2018 15 minutes ago, Oliver Clothesoff said: No longer Football or the NRL, the comparisons are now NFL centric, I see. All because a huge sport in America with a decent size fan base in the UK and Europe can fill an eighty-odd thousand seated stadium three weeks in a row. Historically rugby league has experimented with West and East conferences albeit in a muddled fashion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oliver Clothesoff Posted October 25, 2018 Share Posted October 25, 2018 13 minutes ago, Gerrumonside ref said: Historically rugby league has experimented with West and East conferences albeit in a muddled fashion. Like when? I can remember as far back as the start of Super League and the only similar thing to a East and West Conference was the War of the Roses concept. Further regionalising an already regionalised sport will do nothing but kill the game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
17 stone giant Posted October 25, 2018 Share Posted October 25, 2018 I agree that it's a bad idea. I don't know what Dominic was thinking. Embarrassing stuff, really. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gerrumonside ref Posted October 25, 2018 Share Posted October 25, 2018 2 minutes ago, Oliver Clothesoff said: Like when? I can remember as far back as the start of Super League and the only similar thing to a East and West Conference was the War of the Roses concept. Further regionalising an already regionalised sport will do nothing but kill the game. Prior to Super League during the history of the evolution of the game in this country. Although I don’t think the financial conditions exist at the moment for conferences for top flight rugby league, it might be a good solution for the lower leagues. It depends what your understanding is of how it is used elsewhere in sport. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dominic Posted October 25, 2018 Author Share Posted October 25, 2018 7 minutes ago, 17 stone giant said: I agree that it's a bad idea. I don't know what Dominic was thinking. Embarrassing stuff, really. I actually agree with you! I like British sports "1 up, 1 down", "promotion/relegation battles" and deep down think that we should just stick to a simple league of 10 or 12, followed by other equally sized leagues. We brits love our promotion/relegation battles and take pleasure from saying we stuck with our team even when they got relegated or supported our team when no one knew them and now they're the best. If Rugby league is going to grow and expand then other teams are welcome to join Super League but with the intention that when enough teams and interest from across their country have been established then Super League can support them as a separate entity alongside them but with the only "expansion" being a new competition format such as a European Championships, or Inter-Continental end of season Play-offs. I like the Toronto adventure, and hopefully one day a serbian or irish adventure but this must end up with a fully fledged and self funded canadian league, serbian league or irish league in its own right. I also like the fact that Catalans Dragons have done so well this year, and with Toulouse close to making the milion pound game this can only be good for french rugby... however, surely, the end product must be a fully fledged, fully professional, self funded Elite Championship One that can run parallel to Super League with teams from each league qualifying for a Club European Championships or other such "expansion" tournament. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oliver Clothesoff Posted October 25, 2018 Share Posted October 25, 2018 4 minutes ago, Gerrumonside ref said: Prior to Super League during the history of the evolution of the game in this country. Although I don’t think the financial conditions exist at the moment for conferences for top flight rugby league, it might be a good solution for the lower leagues. It depends what your understanding is of how it is used elsewhere in sport. I don’t envisage how it would make the top flight any better or more attractive to watch. For the lower leagues, it could well be worth it. We have two leagues at present and nobody is quite sure what the purpose of the ‘bottom’ league is. We may as well merge the two leagues into a East and West Conference. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rupert Prince Posted October 25, 2018 Share Posted October 25, 2018 16 minutes ago, Oliver Clothesoff said: Like when? I can remember as far back as the start of Super League and the only similar thing to a East and West Conference was the War of the Roses concept. Further regionalising an already regionalised sport will do nothing but kill the game. For the greater time since the inception of RL we had a Lancs league and a Yorks league. There were some cross league matches and one league table merged together. But all this was before professional RU. There are a finite number of pro RL and indeed RU teams. There may be enough teams to run a NFL conference, but they only started with about 12 teams, which then grew to rival conferences and 24 teams. But the whole point of this, no matter how many clubs, was to have just 16 rounds of games. So there is no point to us to have a conference system, we are looking to increase the number of games. And of course the NFL (along with the NRL, AFL, NHL) do not have promotion and relegation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gnidir Posted October 25, 2018 Share Posted October 25, 2018 I love the NFL system. Its the best business model in sports. The NRL copy them, we try to copy the NRL, so in some ways it makes sense to go to source. The problem though, is that the market is too small for those teams. Essentially the NFL grants a monopoly over an area with no other team allowed to promote within 60 miles (There are historical exceptions), but the model is built around getting the most possible people to spend money on NFL products, tickets, merchandise, media. The problem with UK clubs is that everyone wants their team to be in the top league without seeing the business case. For the sport to be bigger, it needs to reach more people, not the same people more times. Because clubs are fighting for the same piece of pie, they miss so much opportunity by not working together. The NFL is a trade body, all of the clubs work together to grow the business. They only compete on the field. Fundamentally, I think this is the problem in the UK. If there were a heartlands league in the same way that the NFL uses college football, then you could sustain interest in the smaller clubs I imagine, but to do that, there needs to be common agreement amongst the clubs, and that doesn't exist. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gerrumonside ref Posted October 25, 2018 Share Posted October 25, 2018 3 minutes ago, Oliver Clothesoff said: I don’t envisage how it would make the top flight any better or more attractive to watch. For the lower leagues, it could well be worth it. We have two leagues at present and nobody is quite sure what the purpose of the ‘bottom’ league is. We may as well merge the two leagues into a East and West Conference. Yes, I think so too on the lower leagues and would like to see it happen. Conferences in the top flight? Well as Damien has pointed the bottom line now is there isn’t the money in the game to support a large increase in top flight clubs. How could conferences make the top flight better or more attractive in the future? It could, if the game ever receives more money, be a way of introducing more teams into the top flight without necessarily meaning that everyone plays too many fixtures against each other. However I take the point of David S. that it is a bit of a foreign concept for domestic sports fans. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gerrumonside ref Posted October 25, 2018 Share Posted October 25, 2018 3 minutes ago, gnidir said: I love the NFL system. Its the best business model in sports. The NRL copy them, we try to copy the NRL, so in some ways it makes sense to go to source. The problem though, is that the market is too small for those teams. Essentially the NFL grants a monopoly over an area with no other team allowed to promote within 60 miles (There are historical exceptions), but the model is built around getting the most possible people to spend money on NFL products, tickets, merchandise, media. The problem with UK clubs is that everyone wants their team to be in the top league without seeing the business case. For the sport to be bigger, it needs to reach more people, not the same people more times. Because clubs are fighting for the same piece of pie, they miss so much opportunity by not working together. The NFL is a trade body, all of the clubs work together to grow the business. They only compete on the field. Fundamentally, I think this is the problem in the UK. If there were a heartlands league in the same way that the NFL uses college football, then you could sustain interest in the smaller clubs I imagine, but to do that, there needs to be common agreement amongst the clubs, and that doesn't exist. I think this is a great post highlighting the positives and negatives. I think it’s particularly key the point about how the NFL owners work together to grow the business and how in the UK there is great disunity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevevalerugby Posted October 26, 2018 Share Posted October 26, 2018 18 hours ago, 17 stone giant said: Great minds think alike, Dominic. From 16th October: Why 2 x Hull teams again why is Hull so special they get 2 teams and other super league teams are left out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
17 stone giant Posted October 26, 2018 Share Posted October 26, 2018 8 minutes ago, stevevalerugby said: Why 2 x Hull teams again why is Hull so special they get 2 teams and other super league teams are left out. Oh, that's because I only put about 2 minutes thought into the idea. Plus they've got two teams in SL right now, so I just put two in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colliwobble Posted October 26, 2018 Share Posted October 26, 2018 18 hours ago, David Shepherd said: Nowhere near enough money in the game to support that many pro clubs. None of your Lancashire teams are in Lancashire, indeed there are no professional, or even semi professional teams left in Lancashire. Hull, Cas, Fev and Wakey are all in Yorkshire, not "The East". York is further east than three of them too. Here's a radical plan: Let's have 3 divisions, numbers to be decided as and when required. Promotion and Relegation between all three divisions every year (without fail). Stick with this basically forever and stop messing about. Also, never ever consider imposing an alien format from foreign sports. Let's keep it simple, stick with what's familiar and concentrate on the sporting action. Not enough money in the game to support your 3 divisions or haven't you seen League 1 left with 11 teams, which is not enough to make competition viable. In any case, there isn't the money to really make promotion and relegation work properly. See the examples of Leigh and Bradford Bulls in recent years. An alien concept is not a bad thing if it's marketed properly and supports the product on the field. Seems like your idea is the same old flat cap approach to pretend it's still 1980! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Copa Posted October 26, 2018 Share Posted October 26, 2018 The old conference thread... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheReaper Posted October 26, 2018 Share Posted October 26, 2018 I think if you go to NFL style conferences, then you also need to go for NFL style schedule, around 16 games. CFL is 18. Maybe go up to 20. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
super major Posted October 26, 2018 Share Posted October 26, 2018 22 hours ago, Dominic said: Likely to upset a few people here... Have been thinking long and hard about developing the League to allow for expansion in the future and have come up with a conference system similar to that in the NFL. Before you give up reading on... please just read the rest... "The East" Hull FC, Hull KR, Castleford, Featherstone, Wakefield "Yorkshire" Leeds, Huddersfield, Halifax, Bradford, York "Lancashire" St Helens, Wigan, Leigh, Salford, Swinton "The West" Warrington, Widnes, Workington, Whitehaven, Barrow "Expansion" Catalans, Toulouse, Toronto, London, New York (?) This idea ensures that local derbies are contested yearly and without fail and also with a Home and Away same conference, Home only against 2 Conferences, and Away only against the other 2 Conferences ensures all teams play everyone - total 28 games. I would not be happy if my team had to play all the expansion teams away Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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