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Champions League structure for Cup


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Be far better to have four teams to qualify to join the 12  super league teams  . Then have four groups of four playing each other home and away for six group games . Have top two in each group qualify for quarters with group winners receiving a home tie .

Chief Crazy Eagle

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8 minutes ago, superten said:

Be far better to have four teams to qualify to join the 12  super league teams  . Then have four groups of four playing each other home and away for six group games . Have top two in each group qualify for quarters with group winners receiving a home tie .



Is that on top of a 16 team championship and 1895 cup season?

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Or, how about you put say, 32 teams into a hat and draw them out, with the first team drawn out playing at home and the second team drawn out being their opponent. Repeat this until you have 16 ties.

Then after those ties have been played you do the whole process again, this time with the 16 victorious teams. Keep repeating this until there are only 2 left and hey presto, those 2 are your finalists.

Complicated I know, but it may catch on. 

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2 minutes ago, Private Baldrick said:

Or, how about you put say, 32 teams into a hat and draw them out, with the first team drawn out playing at home and the second team drawn out being their opponent. Repeat this until you have 16 ties.

Then after those ties have been played you do the whole process again, this time with the 16 victorious teams. Keep repeating this until there are only 2 left and hey presto, those 2 are your finalists.

Complicated I know, but it may catch on. 

This is my preferred route. 

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5 minutes ago, HarrogateKnights said:

Is that on top of a 16 team championship and 1895 cup season?

If we do get a 16 team championship and 1895 then no . But RFL have stated league structure to remain same next season and no one is sure if the 1895 will be retained . I hope it will be . If Challenge cup format is to be changed surely we need to look at the whole league structure . 

Chief Crazy Eagle

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28 minutes ago, superten said:

If we do get a 16 team championship and 1895 then no . But RFL have stated league structure to remain same next season and no one is sure if the 1895 will be retained . I hope it will be . If Challenge cup format is to be changed surely we need to look at the whole league structure . 

The rumours were there with a 16 team championship but for me personally they would need to drop the 1895 cup if this would be the case. Its a difficult one but totally agreed the league structure would need to review and probably will be if any sense. They could easily move to a conference system in the league. Like the idea of the new challenge cup and giving it a refresh Although the new "proposed" format goes against the tradition of knockout football and could also cause a conflict with the European Challenge cup in Rugby Union at the moment we have an Unique 1st Grade domestic competition format in both codes of Rugby. With the proposed Format you will get people saying you have copied that from Union etc

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19 hours ago, Rupert Prince said:

Dave Woods has a BBC podcast on his radical suggestion to reform the Challenge Cup.

I suggested this a while back. He obviously reads these boards and has taken my idea. Hopefully it happens, the Challenge Cup attendances are terrible, the early rounds need to be included in season tickets. Having groups with a fixed number of home games is ideal for this. 

The only thing I’d change is have 4 groups with each winner straight through to the semi finals, that would make every group game vital.

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Just now, scotchy1 said:

Youd think after 123years it wouldnt have such awful attendencea and be one of the few programmes to underperform in their tv slot

And you think Super League teams playing Championship teams in dead rubber group games is going to increase attendances and suddenly create a surge of interest amongst TV viewers?

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2 minutes ago, scotchy1 said:

Youd think after 123years it wouldnt have such awful attendencea and be one of the few programmes to underperform in their tv slot

There is no way you can say it currently underperforms until it moves to the new final date and you can compare what it currently gets versus whatever replaces it on that Bank Holiday weekend.

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3 minutes ago, scotchy1 said:

We can say that it underperforms, the comparison isn't between what it gets now and what it gets then, but what it gets in comparison to what it would be expected to get. 

We have been told by the BBC it underperforms to what it would be expected to get. 

We can't and actually the BBC said the August Bank Holiday weekend was the worst performing for viewing figures for the whole year. You are being completelty disingenuous. We don't know what the Challenge Cup should be expected to get or if it underperforms because there is nothing to compare it against. When the Final moves then we can certainly compare. What we do know for certain is that the entire weekend is the worst weekend for the BBC regardless of what is actually shown.

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4 hours ago, RP London said:

not a massive fan of a few of these ideas of revamping the cup as I like the fact it goes from amateur through to SL and i like the fact its a one off game and so 1 bad day and Halifax beat you etc.. however, looking at the above as an example. you could end up with a pots that are:

1. Huddersfield, Leeds, York 

2. St Helens, Featherstone, Barrow

3. Wakefield, London, Bradford

4. Wigan, Salford, Sheffield

5. Cas, Widnes, Dewsbury

6. Hull, Hull KR, Batley

7. Warrington, Leigh, Rochdale, 

8. Catalans, Halifax, Swinton

If all of those had been played early in the season (as they probably would have been) then:

1... could go anywhere, even now if that got played I wouldnt know quite where to put my money.

2.. ok Saints all the way but you'll get that with straight knock out tournaments too.

3.. could go anywhere..

4... early season form again pretty open, could be results against Sheffield that swing it.

5.. probably Cas

6... Batley to be power brokers like in group 4 but a tastey couple of match ups

7... youd say Warrington

8.. Probably Cats but Halifax have gone well in the cup.. 

probably has as much jeopardy as the straight knockouts to be honest.

The selections of the pots the number of them and who is in them are entirely yours. There are other ways it can be done.

The Cup is a draw and as such is down to luck.  The current system is "seeded " already... probably too heavily seeded.

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4 minutes ago, scotchy1 said:

Im not being disingenuous at all. This is literally what they said “Domestic rugby league on the channel is declining with all audiences for live games below the timeslot average,” reported McIntyre, a St Helens fanatic. “For context, the 8.5 million people who view rugby league on the BBC this year is the same as the number who tuned in to watch the NFL last season.”

Stop being disingenuous, that is referring to the Challenge Cup as a whole. No one knows what the timeslot average for the Challenge Cup final is until we move because we have played in that timeslot for years. That really shouldn't be too difficult to comprehend. When we move we can compare. Also if you quoted the next paragraph for context it would help:

Saturdays and BBC1 coverage guarantee the biggest audiences and yet that combination for the final drew just 1.3 million on the one Saturday of the year when half the population has gone away or out for one last bite of summer. McIntyre told MPs and Lords that the Beeb had been requesting to move the Challenge Cup final back into early summer for the last five years, especially away from August Bank Holiday which is the worst for viewing figures in the whole year! The RFL have finally listened.

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1 hour ago, Sir Kevin Sinfield said:

I suggested this a while back. He obviously reads these boards and has taken my idea. Hopefully it happens, the Challenge Cup attendances are terrible, the early rounds need to be included in season tickets. Having groups with a fixed number of home games is ideal for this. 

The only thing I’d change is have 4 groups with each winner straight through to the semi finals, that would make every group game vital.

No it wouldn't. 

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4 minutes ago, scotchy1 said:

Why are you specifically talking about the challenge cup final and not the challenge cup as a whole? Nobody else mentioned the challenge cup final only. In fact the post I quoted was specifically about the challenge cup as a whole. That really shouldn't be too difficult to comprehend. 

What I said is pretty clear, the challenge cup as a whole underperforms. That is backed up by the statements from the BBC. When we move it we wont learn anything about this fact. 

I specifically said that you can't compare until the Challenge Cup final moves. You quoted me and argued against that. If you didn't understand what you quoted then you shouldn't have bothered and saved us both time. I guess that's just your default position though. Anyway I'm out as these discussions only go one way and I have better things to do.

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1 hour ago, scotchy1 said:

As part of a raft of changes and a review of what the challenge cup is, whe  it was played and what it was trying to achieve and how...certainly

You live in a dreamland. 

There’s limited appetite for games against lower league sides, with probably the exception of about two or three clubs and a couple of those don’t even compete in the Challenge Cup. 

Crowds will nosedive. Including it in a season ticket isn’t going to bring in a waive of fans. 

Group stages will be a dull formality, on the whole. 50% of the groups proposed above would see Super League sides playing two lower league sides. With little attraction from fans, barring probably the ones who get Bradford in their group, there’s going to be very little appetite from broadcasters to show Hull FC v Batley or Wigan v Dewsbury, let’s be honest. Nice nostalgic names Batley and Dewsbury are but they’re not going to make a load of people switch on and those that do are likely to witness blowouts, absolute no contests and what good will that bring the game? 

If we’re proposing the Challenge Cup as some sort of group stage as some kind of saviour (its not), you may as well close the trap door and have 4x3’s made up of the current twelve Super League sides. 

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10 minutes ago, scotchy1 said:

Knockout games are largely a dull formality. The idea that there are tonnes of people who are attending CC games because it is a knockout game is just silly. Its also demonstrably nonsense and proven so by the fact that fewer people attend knockout games in the CC and play-offs compared to the league games. 

The change to a group stage wont really affect the attractiveness of the game in and of themselves in pretty much anyway. How they are sold, what they are sold as, how they are planned, how a tv product created etc etc etc can all change because of a group stage and changes there could be of a significant difference. 

Nobody attends Super League games because of the format. In exactly the same way people don’t stay away from the Challenge Cup because of its format. It’s nonsense to suggest they do. 

The changes will be negative when less people watch Warrington stick 70+ on a part-time team on the box than they do when Warrington draw Wigan in a knockout game. 

The big whole in everyone who’s for such a change is when the nasty, dreaded knockout rounds of the make-believe-group stages are the saviour of the sport Challenge Cup get underway. What then? 

The big thing from this whole thing is people not watching games. It has nothing to do with the format of the competition or any other make believe nonsense. 

Fans are asked to pay for Challenge Cup games. This is on top of season tickets, play-off games if you’re lucky, a Grand Final appearance if you’re even luckier, Magic Weekend, Away Games, any other events added to a calendar like World Club Challenge games or the Barcelona Weekender, new kits for themselves/their kids/both, additional subscriptions (stuff like WiganTV) and other associated costs of following Rugby League like food, drink, parking, hotels, Coach/train/air fare, petrol etc. 

While £20 (not that many actually charge this, it’s usually higher) is not deemed expensive in this country for elite level sport, on top of many other costs associated with Rugby League, it’s a lot and there then becomes a pecking order and a Challenge Cup game often falls down the pecking order. 

No amount of daft ideas or games against part-time teams as some form of shake up is going to change this. 

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20 minutes ago, Oliver Clothesoff said:

Nobody attends Super League games because of the format. In exactly the same way people don’t stay away from the Challenge Cup because of its format. It’s nonsense to suggest they do. 

The changes will be negative when less people watch Warrington stick 70+ on a part-time team on the box than they do when Warrington draw Wigan in a knockout game. 

The big whole in everyone who’s for such a change is when the nasty, dreaded knockout rounds of the make-believe-group stages are the saviour of the sport Challenge Cup get underway. What then? 

The big thing from this whole thing is people not watching games. It has nothing to do with the format of the competition or any other make believe nonsense. 

Fans are asked to pay for Challenge Cup games. This is on top of season tickets, play-off games if you’re lucky, a Grand Final appearance if you’re even luckier, Magic Weekend, Away Games, any other events added to a calendar like World Club Challenge games or the Barcelona Weekender, new kits for themselves/their kids/both, additional subscriptions (stuff like WiganTV) and other associated costs of following Rugby League like food, drink, parking, hotels, Coach/train/air fare, petrol etc. 

While £20 (not that many actually charge this, it’s usually higher) is not deemed expensive in this country for elite level sport, on top of many other costs associated with Rugby League, it’s a lot and there then becomes a pecking order and a Challenge Cup game often falls down the pecking order. 

No amount of daft ideas or games against part-time teams as some form of shake up is going to change this. 

In one 

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17 minutes ago, scotchy1 said:

The only person suggesting that the format is what will attract fans (or wont) in and of itself is you.

Of course, because blow outs never happen in the knock-out rounds. 

I really don't know what you intended to say with these two sentences. 

Yeah, you've completely missed the point.

No my friend ,you have , everything he's put there is spot on ,it's the Challenge cup ,it's a knockout competition , change it , and it's not the Challenge Cup , the difference to 30/40 years ago is there were more clubs capable of winning it ,now there aren't ,the fans of those clubs no longer in any sort of position to win it have lost interest in it , and the fans of the 5/6 clubs who are capable of winning it are bored and complacent with winning it 

Let's make it a 9s ,it'll be maooooosive 

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For me it’s a simple diagnosis: the Cup has been superseded by the Grand Final as the blue riband and there’s other (cheaper, easier) big days out like Magic Weekend.

Football has had a similar problem with the FA Cup but the frequent shocks keep it interesting. Rugby league doesn’t have anywhere near that frequency. 

Can’t profess to have the solution but whatever it is it’s not a group stage. 

There’s not a lot wrong wth the format per se but the massive gap between the QF and SF does tend to kill the momentum. When it does finally swing around it then rather interferes somewhat with the pointy end of the Super League season.

Hopefully things will improve from next year when it is brought forward.

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