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League Restructure Thread (Merged Threads)


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4 hours ago, del capo said:

Out of respect for Martyn I decided to read his vision again.

The latter parts of his plan have some merit in that fans MAY get the opportunity of seeing new opponents to those at present.

But I still can't get past the problem of a  likely total collapse of gates at SL level for the first 10 weeks of the season  St Helens get Warrington and that quite frankly is it - Will the thousands turn up at Wigan for Swinton , Oldham or Rochdale ? they've just stuck 50 on  Leigh..... if that should happen the whole of RL becomes terminal half way through the season.

Income is absolutely key to everything. The proposed funding re distribution is inequitable and will not work - and perversely it is the top clubs that need it the most to remain competitive within the general public's eye as a sport worthy of more than a casual glance

You make a serious point worthy of consideration that on the face of it looks difficult to argue against.

It's worth pointing out, before I start, that the RFL's current plan for the Challenge Cup is 35 clubs (excluding Toulouse) split into seven Conferences, with matches to be played at the start of the season before the Super League begins. So the problem you point out could also occur if that proposal is accepted.

Under my proposed structure, the first five weeks could consist of Super League clubs mainly playing away games against their lower league opponents, which would boost attendances and income for those clubs, with the return fixtures scheduled for later in the season when the bigger clubs may take the opportunity to rest some members of their squad.

In that case I don't think attendances would be affected as badly as you think, but then none of us can really be sure.

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3 hours ago, M j M said:

One good aspect of the Sadler Plan is that it makes the idea of abruptly going up to 14 teams for a year then down to 10 teams (ugh) seem like a really solid, rational proposal.

I'll remind you of that quote when we see the wreckage that comes from four teams being relegated.

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3 hours ago, Big Picture said:

Though you referenced the major North American pro leagues in your proposal, you've missed a key element of how those leagues work.  They never have the sort of mismatches we'd see if Catalans played West Wales now, because they have robust measures to create a level playing field for their member franchises: equal shares of central funding distribution, player drafts, etc.  The NFL even shares revenue from merchandise sales equally between its franchises.

What you propose is completely unworkable unless all those measures to create a level playing field for all the clubs are part of it, and as we all know there isn't nearly enough money available to do that without exacerbating the difficulties the game has in attracting and retaining players of the necessary standard.

I'm well aware of the revenue sharing in the NFL, and ideally we would try to create a level playing field over time.

But it's worth remembering that the NFL didn't have its current system right from the start.

It took a lot of work to create the financial model that it currently has.

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Just now, NW10LDN said:

Then do it politely. League is going backwards and the solution is not have 3 clubs from the same borough competing in the top level.

I did. You took offence to, well, I don’t know what it was but you did. 

Where do we stop with locality? Cas and Wakefield are split by 8.6 miles, Saints and Wigan by 9.5. Does that mile make such a significant difference? What about Saints and Warrington, they both share a postcode area and are separated by 9.2 miles. I don’t think we should get so hung up on ambiguous terms like “potential” or be too bothered about how close some teams are when you could throw a blanket over a handful of teams either side of the Pennines, which is going to make up the vast majority of any division, whether ten, twelve or fourteen teams make up the division. 

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44 minutes ago, Derwent Parker said:

I actually like Martyn's plan.

But like you said it wont work because of the mismatches.

But it would work if all the central funding was equal like you mention in NFL- because that and only that is what is causing the mismatch [£1.72million mismatch each and every year]

change it around and give Catalans [as per your example] £80k and West Wales £1.8millon a year and see how would they compare in a few year - still mismatched but reversed.

Doesn't matter what plan you come up with the SL teams dont want to lose their Millions.  Give every team around about the 600k each as someone earlier explained and go with Martyn's plan and it might work. Be far more interesting than watching the same few teams in all comps.

All the SL teams wont like it but the other 24 will.

As for academies again follow the NFL plan of levelling up. They have the rosters for their amateurs [collegiate] we could insist that amateurs should sign for their local pro team first or if an outside team wants them they should pay a transfer to the local team. This would stop the bigger teams just hoovering up all of the talent.

In critiquing my article, most posters have referenced the financial distribution.

But as I've pointed out, that is the least fixed part of the proposal.

The financial distribution is and would be a matter for the RFL.

The financial model I presented was one possible illustration, but it seems to have been interpreted as though it were an immovable obstacle.

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13 minutes ago, Martyn Sadler said:

...the RFL's current plan for the Challenge Cup is 35 clubs (excluding Toulouse) split into seven Conferences, with matches to be played at the start of the season before the Super League begins...

Community clubs obviously couldn't enter the Challenge Cup this year because of COVID regulations. But are they really planning on ending their participation permanently?

That doesn't strike me as being "the very best for their clubs, players, fans and the whole game", as Ralph Rimmer put it after Friday's meeting.

NB - by permanently, I mean until the next restructuring!

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15 minutes ago, Martyn Sadler said:

The problem we have at the moment is that not only can we apparently not create more big clubs, but several of the clubs that already exist in Super League are getting gradually smaller.

Ultimately it's unsustainable and moving to ten Super League clubs will only exacerbate that problem.

But also diluting the model never ends well - ever! There are only probably 150 players at the moment capable of playing at elite level week to week. The rest are making up the numbers and are not SL standard. More dilution will only lead to more top class players earning what they are worth else where (and that won't always be the NRL).

The M62 can't produce any more players than it does with the decline in clubs. So we need them from the NE, France, London, Wales or if the game is rich enough - the NRL. Moving the same chess pieces around is not the answer. We have to identify what will get the game out of this spiral of less income and less quality.

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Having read the suggested plan a couple of time and had a ponder, I quite like the basic idea behind it. What I'd like to see is for people here to take it as a starting point for discussion about how we progress, although I'm probably whistling in the wind here! Another approach on the N. American model would be to have a sort of major league/minor league setup where the minor league clubs are affiliated to major league sides although I suspect that that suggestion will get me burnt at the stake even before Martyn S.

 

 

 

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I really like the idea of conferences as it allows the 'bigger' clubs to play the 'smaller' clubs. Id almost split the game into 2 with SL conferences for 24 or so clubs with the rest in a development competition. 

Crucial elements would be equal funding, clubs can spend x% of revenue above that and critically a path into the SL conferencing.. 

Copy the NFL as much as possible basically  

Running the Rob Burrow marathon to raise money for the My Name'5 Doddie foundation:

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/ben-dyas

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14 minutes ago, Scubby said:

So we have to move on and earn cash at the top to feed the game underneath. Spreading the distribution across 20-30 teams like chips at a casino is absolute bonkers thinking

Madness, isn't it.

Imagine if football abandoned P&R and divisions, and split clubs and funding into local conferences, perhaps with a Manchester conference of Manchester United, Manchester City, Salford, Oldham, Rochdale, Wigan, Bolton, Stockport and Macclesfield. 

We'd quickly see attendances, ratings and TV money drop off a cliff. You could hardly design a better way to ruin it.

As you suggest, the top of the game needs to grow its cake to fund (in part) the game beneath - as the Premier League does with the EFL - not Sadler's completely wrong-headed approach that would see the bottom feed off the top and shrink the cake overall.

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3 minutes ago, Chronicler of Chiswick said:

Having read the suggested plan a couple of time and had a ponder, I quite like the basic idea behind it. What I'd like to see is for people here to take it as a starting point for discussion about how we progress, although I'm probably whistling in the wind here! Another approach on the N. American model would be to have a sort of major league/minor league setup where the minor league clubs are affiliated to major league sides although I suspect that that suggestion will get me burnt at the stake even before Martyn S.

 

 

 

That would make some more sense than Sadler’s established professional sides in the same conference as clubs who would get beat by NCL sides. 

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2 minutes ago, Man of Kent said:

Madness, isn't it.

Imagine if football abandoned P&R and divisions, and split clubs and funding into local conferences, perhaps with a Manchester conference of Manchester United, Manchester City, Salford, Oldham, Rochdale, Wigan, Bolton, Stockport and Macclesfield. 

We'd quickly see attendances, ratings and TV money drop off a cliff. You could hardly design a better way to ruin it.

As you suggest, the top of the game needs to grow its cake to fund (in part) the game beneath - as the Premier League does with the EFL - not Sadler's completely wrong-headed approach that would see the bottom feed off the top and shrink the cake overall.

I agree.

The reason our biggest clubs are getting smaller is because the competition as a whole is getting small time and the good momentum built up over the previous 15 years has slowed significantly over the past decade.

I don't think that is unconnected to how the other clubs have not grown to come close to matching them in ambition and size and that we have had maybe 3 clubs capable of short term getting more than 6/7k crowds in Super League be involved in the Championship in that time. (Only one of whom, Toronto, have actually played in Super League and they didn't get the chance to play at home in that time).

Saying the solution to Wigan and Leeds struggling to enthuse crowds in the numbers they did a decade ago is to say "here! Play Swinton, Batley and Coventry Bears!" does seem as though it rather misunderstands the problem quite fundamentally.

People want to be part of something getting bigger, not shrinking. Likewise, I'm sure fans of Batley, Leigh, Doncaster, West Wales etc want to play the big clubs because they deserve to be there playing them, not because of some misplaced (and lop-sided) charity.

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Classy Cas propose ...

Lightning Rugby is an eight-a-side game, with 12 men in each club's squad for every game. A minimum of four of those players must be under 21, which enables youngsters to get much-needed development and game-time. By using reserve, academy and first-team players, that would eliminate the risk of clubs going into the community game to fill squads.

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/lightning-rugby-castleford-tigers-hundred-21228033

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1 hour ago, Harry Stottle said:

Hi Griff, I was just answering the suggestion that the cap should be raised nothing to do with player performance, there has been loads of threads on these pages that say for the job they do our players do not get paid enough and quite right to, so if the cap is raised the clubs who employ player's will have to raise their salary or they move to someone who will offer more. 

Raising the cap would also encourage more lads to stay in the game, ie those that could then earn more playing than working on a building site. And it might also attract players who might otherwise go to Union, it wouldn’t necessarily just mean the same players get paid more (not that I have an issue with that). 

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5 minutes ago, Lowdesert said:

Classy Cas propose ...

Lightning Rugby is an eight-a-side game, with 12 men in each club's squad for every game. A minimum of four of those players must be under 21, which enables youngsters to get much-needed development and game-time. By using reserve, academy and first-team players, that would eliminate the risk of clubs going into the community game to fill squads.

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/lightning-rugby-castleford-tigers-hundred-21228033

Is it April Fools Day?

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22 minutes ago, Chronicler of Chiswick said:

Having read the suggested plan a couple of time and had a ponder, I quite like the basic idea behind it. What I'd like to see is for people here to take it as a starting point for discussion about how we progress, although I'm probably whistling in the wind here! Another approach on the N. American model would be to have a sort of major league/minor league setup where the minor league clubs are affiliated to major league sides although I suspect that that suggestion will get me burnt at the stake even before Martyn S.

I don't it needs to be called a minor league explicitly.

We already define the amateur leagues as a distinct entity, I don't see why we shouldn't do the same for the Semi-Professional and Full time game? 

Right now the single biggest risk a club can take is going from Semi-Pro to Full Time (the same is true in all sports).

It is this transition which aspiring clubs should be protected from the most, as it is quite likely to have a worse full time team than a semi pro team in the initial transition. Top semi pro players are likely to be better than poor full timers.

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5 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

The reason our biggest clubs are getting smaller is because the competition as a whole is getting small time and the good momentum built up over the previous 15 years has slowed significantly over the past decade.

I don't think that is unconnected to how the other clubs have not grown to come close to matching them in ambition and size and that we have had maybe 3 clubs capable of short term getting more than 6/7k crowds in Super League be involved in the Championship in that time. (Only one of whom, Toronto, have actually played in Super League and they didn't get the chance to play at home in that time).

Agree, and that's why I'm sympathetic to the RFL's proposals because we currently don't have 12 'Super' clubs, let alone 14.

Going to 10, I believe, would spur some Darwinian evolution that creates a highly competitive elite comp with no deadweight.

Sometimes you need to take a step backwards to move forwards.

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47 minutes ago, Martyn Sadler said:

You make a serious point worthy of consideration that on the face of it looks difficult to argue against.

It's worth pointing out, before I start, that the RFL's current plan for the Challenge Cup is 35 clubs (excluding Toulouse) split into seven Conferences, with matches to be played at the start of the season before the Super League begins. So the problem you point out could also occur if that proposal is accepted.

Under my proposed structure, the first five weeks could consist of Super League clubs mainly playing away games against their lower league opponents, which would boost attendances and income for those clubs, with the return fixtures scheduled for later in the season when the bigger clubs may take the opportunity to rest some members of their squad.

In that case I don't think attendances would be affected as badly as you think, but then none of us can really be sure.

How does that plan progress from 7 conferences into a number of teams (presumably 16 or 8 teams) qualifying from that phase to facilitate a knockout phase leading up to a final? Is it the top two of each conference plus the two best third placed teams?; the top team in each plus the best runner up?; or do teams progress to a further group stage from which 2 or 4 teams emerge as in some of the past FIFA World Cups?

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14 minutes ago, Lowdesert said:

Classy Cas propose ...

Lightning Rugby is an eight-a-side game, with 12 men in each club's squad for every game. A minimum of four of those players must be under 21, which enables youngsters to get much-needed development and game-time. By using reserve, academy and first-team players, that would eliminate the risk of clubs going into the community game to fill squads.

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/lightning-rugby-castleford-tigers-hundred-21228033

8 a side is different for differents sake.

Having a 9s league as the reserve league, or rather the reserve league as a 9s comp, however isn't a bad idea imo

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3 minutes ago, Mumby Magic said:

Anyone else see our sport deteriorate before our eyes. Changing structure for the X amount of times won't work. Messing about with academies won't work. Clubs should be monitored particularly at SL where the money is going. 

I agree with all of that except the last bit, unless you want a centralised American competition (I don’t). I’d rather see the salary cap scrapped to encourage investment. 

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4 hours ago, Dave T said:

What does that actually mean? 

A five team league? 

his mate as I read it says why not concentrate on creating more of those 5 clubs... so not a five team league.

Anyway just using it as a Segue way into the conversation in comparing how our sport limits the financial strong with salary cap and its long term consequences.

For me premiership football over the last couple of decades has had x4 clubs, then x5 now x6 and starting to increase maybe to 8 big clubs... it is those x4, then x5, etc that has created the money windfall that all other clubs benefit from. 

They kept an elitist system that has eventually trickled down monies to all and sundry. Such that all Premiership teams are full of internationals and many championship clubs also. The number of big clubs increasing all-be-it slowly as their financial opportunities increase through the success of the league through those clubs.

We on the other hand curtail the possibility of the more elite as in financially strong clubs capitalising on their clubs finances. In order to have a laughable salary cap to suit the weakest.  Look what that has achieved in comparison.

OK I know football is far different in what opportunities they have but its worth looking at some aspects. They for sure don't worry that its the same side winning the premiership... In last 2o years only 6 teams have won it... and of that 6 two only once... so x4 clubs have dominated winning the title.

Yep lots aspects to consider from salary cap, pathways, internationals, etc etc but the difference in ideology  hasn't helped our sport.

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1 minute ago, Man of Kent said:

Agree, and that's why I'm sympathetic to the RFL's proposals because we currently don't have 12 'Super' clubs, let alone 14.

Going to 10, I believe, would spur some Darwinian evolution that creates a highly competitive elite comp with no deadweight.

Sometimes you need to take a step backwards to move forwards.

Going from 14 to 12 didn't cause that though. Why?

Well for starters, a third of the league were threatened with relegation each year, and half threatened with being in the middle 8s. A 10 team league with relegation would be pointless. The only way new teams should get in is by the league getting larger.

Secondly, the middle 8s games were lopsided with interest. The only people it mattered to in a positive sense were the Championship clubs with a sniff of going up. For the Super League sides it said "you're a second division club for a third of the season", which nobody was very interested in. If a third of your season is utterly pointless by definition, then what are you asking crowds to come and watch?

Thirdly, there still remain clubs who cannot pay the Salary Cap. There are plenty of players out there, in the NRL and RU too, but we still have at least 2 clubs unable to pay near to the cap and so cannot raise high quality squads. The Salary Cap increasing is good for the sport at the top end, but in terms of intensity and quality, we are still without a minimum spend/wage.

So naturally I expect none of this to be learned by the RFL and we get a second restructure of the past 7 years focused on the bottom of Super League and the Top of the Championship rather than the clubs that can drive the game forwards.

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Just now, Tommygilf said:

Thirdly, there still remain clubs who cannot pay the Salary Cap. There are plenty of players out there, in the NRL and RU too, but we still have at least 2 clubs unable to pay near to the cap and so cannot raise high quality squads. The Salary Cap increasing is good for the sport at the top end, but in terms of intensity and quality, we are still without a minimum spend/wage.

Exactly. That's why I like the 10 idea.

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