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Championship clubs consider structure changes


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2 hours ago, Smudger06 said:

I think the days of sustaining 25 Clubs in 2 separate League competitions are numbered. 

To that end a 16 Club Championship would be the way forward.

Coventry Bears, Newcastle Thunder, London Skolars, Doncaster & Hunslet able to rebrand as Leeds Hawks (Est. Hunslet 1883) would be included in the Championship along with Manchester Lions (Est. Swinton 1866) rebrand going through, Bradford Bulls, Leigh Centurions, Halifax, Featherstone Rovers, Sheffield Eagles, Widnes Vikings, York City Knights, Cumbria RL (3 Club Barrow, Workington, Whitehaven amalgamation) Club XIII Wales (2 Club NW Crusaders / WW Raiders Amalgamation) Eastern Suburbs RL (2 Club Oldham / Rochdale Amalgamation)

Job done......

Not sure where you've been but Manchester Lions (Est. Swinton 1866) rebrand going through? And as for the three Cumbrian clubs.....look on a map and check distance and particularly travel times between Barrow and the 2 Ws. 

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3 hours ago, Smudger06 said:

I think the days of sustaining 25 Clubs in 2 separate League competitions are numbered. 

To that end a 16 Club Championship would be the way forward.

Coventry Bears, Newcastle Thunder, London Skolars, Doncaster & Hunslet able to rebrand as Leeds Hawks (Est. Hunslet 1883) would be included in the Championship along with Manchester Lions (Est. Swinton 1866) rebrand going through, Bradford Bulls, Leigh Centurions, Halifax, Featherstone Rovers, Sheffield Eagles, Widnes Vikings, York City Knights, Cumbria RL (3 Club Barrow, Workington, Whitehaven amalgamation) Club XIII Wales (2 Club NW Crusaders / WW Raiders Amalgamation) Eastern Suburbs RL (2 Club Oldham / Rochdale Amalgamation)

Job done......

Is this genius fantasy league playing 30 games?

Presumably there will also be a mid season 9s, a pre season 9s, a ninth day of the month 9s, and the 1895 Cup?

Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life. (Terry Pratchett)

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1 hour ago, Smudger06 said:

18 Team Championship, Calder Rams (Dewsbury & Batley) + Keighley Cougars. 

Toulouse to join SL or fold into TO Broncos in french elite 1

London Broncos to join SL or fold. 

You forgot about them didn't you ? ?

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1 hour ago, doc said:

I like it! ?

Kick off 9am or 9pm?

Prize money £99?

 

This is rugby league.

The prize money is a flake 99.

Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life. (Terry Pratchett)

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3 hours ago, gingerjon said:

Is this genius fantasy league playing 30 games?

Presumably there will also be a mid season 9s, a pre season 9s, a ninth day of the month 9s, and the 1895 Cup?

As it goes the chairman are interested in a shortened season and less matches so probably 25 Rounds (1 per weekend) with 12 home games & 12 away games + 1 bye each) no nines, no 1895 cup

It's not a genius fantasy league really though is it? They had 16 Team leagues for many a year 80s early 90s and what have you. 

Be a real worry for the SL Clubs a league like that, main reason why SL dare not split fully. 

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4 hours ago, Les Tonks Sidestep said:

Not sure where you've been but Manchester Lions (Est. Swinton 1866) rebrand going through? And as for the three Cumbrian clubs.....look on a map and check distance and particularly travel times between Barrow and the 2 Ws. 

The other chairmen will have to convince the Club, for its own survival and for the good of the sport below SL. 

Yeah I'm well aware of geography. Blooming heck, look on a map and check distances between St. George & Wollongong!

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12 hours ago, Smudger06 said:

The other chairmen will have to convince the Club, for its own survival and for the good of the sport below SL. 

Yeah I'm well aware of geography. Blooming heck, look on a map and check distances between St. George & Wollongong!

It's about 2/3rds the distance and half the travelling time. But what you fail to take into account is that you would be asking PT players to travel 2hrs each way for training after a days work 2 or 3 times a week. Also are you wanting to have 3 clubs without 'a pot to' to merge into one, also likely without 'a pot to', and keep 2 grounds?

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12 minutes ago, Les Tonks Sidestep said:

It's about 2/3rds the distance and half the travelling time. But what you fail to take into account is that you would be asking PT players to travel 2hrs each way for training after a days work 2 or 3 times a week. Also are you wanting to have 3 clubs without 'a pot to' to merge into one, also likely without 'a pot to', and keep 2 grounds?

Not exactly neighbours though, is the point.

It's not my idea, it's been mooted many times since Murdoch wanted Club mergers when he bought the game. 

Clearly they'd arrange centralised training facilities and only travel down to Barrow on home match days, although, yes a lot of players may find it difficult and leave but they have 3 squads to merge so many whose contracts are up would be out anyway. 

Stick artificial turf in at both home grounds and hire out to leisure leagues etc to sustain them.

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On 26/02/2020 at 15:52, Les Tonks Sidestep said:

Not sure where you've been but Manchester Lions (Est. Swinton 1866) rebrand going through? And as for the three Cumbrian clubs.....look on a map and check distance and particularly travel times between Barrow and the 2 Ws. 

The proposed rebrand of Swinton Lions to Manchester Lions was rejected by the fans.

Whether or not that happens any time in the future,we don’t know.

Time will tell.

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On 26/02/2020 at 13:33, Smudger06 said:

I think the days of sustaining 25 Clubs in 2 separate League competitions are numbered. 

To that end a 16 Club Championship would be the way forward.

Coventry Bears, Newcastle Thunder, London Skolars, Doncaster & Hunslet able to rebrand as Leeds Hawks (Est. Hunslet 1883) would be included in the Championship along with Manchester Lions (Est. Swinton 1866) rebrand going through, Bradford Bulls, Leigh Centurions, Halifax, Featherstone Rovers, Sheffield Eagles, Widnes Vikings, York City Knights, Cumbria RL (3 Club Barrow, Workington, Whitehaven amalgamation) Club XIII Wales (2 Club NW Crusaders / WW Raiders Amalgamation) Eastern Suburbs RL (2 Club Oldham / Rochdale Amalgamation)

Job done......

You may well be right in what you say and that line up.

Or you might not be far off.

Time will tell.But my feeling is that something similar to what you predict will happen.

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On 26/02/2020 at 15:41, Smudger06 said:

18 Team Championship, Calder Rams (Dewsbury & Batley) + Keighley Cougars. 

Toulouse to join SL or fold into TO Broncos in french elite 1

London Broncos to join SL or fold. 

I think if it was an 18 team Championship,I would predict that there would be all teams would play each other once.

And I think the division would then divide so top half play each other once and the bottom half play each other.

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I dont think its a good idea personally but you could easily expand the Super league to 14 teams and franchising it with no P or R and the clubs below not included in Franchise become feeder clubs to the Super League. Similar to the NRL system, which would give chance for the younger players to play higher grade of rugby than reserve level, the better younger players could have an opportunity of Super League experience. It would be a huge restructure and take big moves and upset a few but then you could define you dates. E.g. Super League to be played Thurs/Fri evening, Saturday for Community and Sunday for Championship/Feeder clubs

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3 minutes ago, HarrogateKnights said:

I dont think its a good idea personally but you could easily expand the Super league to 14 teams and franchising it with no P or R and the clubs below not included in Franchise become feeder clubs to the Super League. Similar to the NRL system, which would give chance for the younger players to play higher grade of rugby than reserve level, the better younger players could have an opportunity of Super League experience. It would be a huge restructure and take big moves and upset a few but then you could define you dates. E.g. Super League to be played Thurs/Fri evening, Saturday for Community and Sunday for Championship/Feeder clubs

I think you could be on to something with the Super League being expanded to 14 teams or maybe even 16 teams.

And like the NRL I think there would end up being no P+R or to use another phrase a closed shop.

And one will assume if the Super League was made into a 16 team league then I would expect that we on current form etc would see Featherstone,possibly Toulouse,Leigh and possibly London in it as I am sure they would want a London team in it.

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6 minutes ago, Robthegasman said:

I think you could be on to something with the Super League being expanded to 14 teams or maybe even 16 teams.

And like the NRL I think there would end up being no P+R or to use another phrase a closed shop.

And one will assume if the Super League was made into a 16 team league then I would expect that we on current form etc would see Featherstone,possibly Toulouse,Leigh and possibly London in it as I am sure they would want a London team in it.

Agreed with even up to 16 teams, I think you have to look at teams that are able to survive on their own merit, the set-ups at Leigh, Toulouse and London are definitely a clear cut above the rest, not including Bradford at the moment due to not running out of their own stadium. London Broncos naturally have the Skolars as a feeder club which makes sense to have them in there. 

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1 minute ago, HarrogateKnights said:

Agreed with even up to 16 teams, I think you have to look at teams that are able to survive on their own merit, the set-ups at Leigh, Toulouse and London are definitely a clear cut above the rest, not including Bradford at the moment due to not running out of their own stadium. London Broncos naturally have the Skolars as a feeder club which makes sense to have them in there. 

I think we all know that the money currently available from Sky will be cut and very drastically.And I think we all know that Super League(and their clubs) seeing as they now run the sport as per that big meeting at the AJ Bell back in 2018 will take every single penny of that money and keep it amongst themselves.And depending on how much the money is will determine the number of clubs in the Super League.They could even decide to have a 2 tier Super League of 8 teams in each division ie Super League Elite 8 and a Super League One.Who knows what they will do.P+R between them both.

But one thing I think is certain and that is the Championship and Championship 1 will be the ones who get nothing from central funding.And it will be that,that will determine how the future will look for the clubs outside the Super League.

And I think that in the end we will see mergers,rebrands and maybe even the odd new regional club in a future post 2021 Championship format.I do think change will happen one way or another and yes a lot of it will be very controversial.

 

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1 hour ago, Robthegasman said:

I think if it was an 18 team Championship,I would predict that there would be all teams would play each other once.

And I think the division would then divide so top half play each other once and the bottom half play each other.

Didn’t lower league fans think the 8’s format was rubbish too though?

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29 minutes ago, Robthegasman said:

I think we all know that the money currently available from Sky will be cut and very drastically.And I think we all know that Super League(and their clubs) seeing as they now run the sport as per that big meeting at the AJ Bell back in 2018 will take every single penny of that money and keep it amongst themselves.And depending on how much the money is will determine the number of clubs in the Super League.They could even decide to have a 2 tier Super League of 8 teams in each division ie Super League Elite 8 and a Super League One.Who knows what they will do.P+R between them both.

But one thing I think is certain and that is the Championship and Championship 1 will be the ones who get nothing from central funding.And it will be that,that will determine how the future will look for the clubs outside the Super League.

And I think that in the end we will see mergers,rebrands and maybe even the odd new regional club in a future post 2021 Championship format.I do think change will happen one way or another and yes a lot of it will be very controversial.

 

Except that  would mean changing the agreement hammered out not that long ago.

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In theory you could scrap the reserves have a super league made up of non brackets teams with their feeder clubs in Brackets creating a feeder championship no promotion or relegation

Bradford (Dewsbury)
Castleford (Fev)
Catalans (Toulouse)
Huddersfield (Halifax)
Hull FC (Newcastle)
Hull KR (York)
Leeds (Hunslet)
Leigh (Oldham)
London Broncos (London Skolars)
Salford (Swinton)
St Helens (Rochdale)
Toronto (Ottawa)
Wakefield (Sheffield)
Warrington (Whitehaven)
Widnes (North Wales)
Wigan (Barrow)

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18 minutes ago, HarrogateKnights said:

In theory you could scrap the reserves have a super league made up of non brackets teams with their feeder clubs in Brackets creating a feeder championship no promotion or relegation

Bradford (Dewsbury)
Castleford (Fev)
Catalans (Toulouse)
Huddersfield (Halifax)
Hull FC (Newcastle)
Hull KR (York)
Leeds (Hunslet)
Leigh (Oldham)
London Broncos (London Skolars)
Salford (Swinton)
St Helens (Rochdale)
Toronto (Ottawa)
Wakefield (Sheffield)
Warrington (Whitehaven)
Widnes (North Wales)
Wigan (Barrow)

If people are so against DR, what makes you think they’d be up for this? 

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9 minutes ago, Hela Wigmen said:

If people are so against DR, what makes you think they’d be up for this? 

It depends how desperate the game gets, if worst case scenario the championship/league 1 doesn't get any central funding and they don't get a TV deal to cover the gap. There will be 3 options 1) A system similar to above 2) Scale back/have a genius light-bulb moment 3) Go bust. Personally as a York fan I wouldn't want the above but if it was this or no local rugby league would rather have a local team linked to a Super League team that I could follow

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33 minutes ago, HarrogateKnights said:

It depends how desperate the game gets, if worst case scenario the championship/league 1 doesn't get any central funding and they don't get a TV deal to cover the gap. There will be 3 options 1) A system similar to above 2) Scale back/have a genius light-bulb moment 3) Go bust. Personally as a York fan I wouldn't want the above but if it was this or no local rugby league would rather have a local team linked to a Super League team that I could follow

Effectively someone’s reserves playing in a completely random town? Now, I don’t think it will get to that anyway but that seems totally daft. 

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2 minutes ago, Hela Wigmen said:

Effectively someone’s reserves playing in a completely random town? Now, I don’t think it will get to that anyway but that seems totally daft. 

It would be a mixture of reserves from super league and players from feeder club. If you look at the championship there are several teams that couldnt operate without DR/Loans. For me I would prefer a TV deal but you never know

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