The Gap

[Tommygilf]

4 minutes ago, sam4731 said:

It's possible to be champions from 6th so why not make it possible to go down from 8th? It's all arbitrary. 

Because we can't afford the vulnerability and short termism to severely impact a third or half of the top flight. The sport isn't big enough.

There is a massive difference in impact between winning the league vs relegation.

[Tommygilf]

5 minutes ago, Wellsy4HullFC said:

Personally, I'd have had top of Championship promoted, and bottom 2 SL clubs enter into the Championship playoffs. One guaranteed relegation, with potential for two.

I think 2 teams in a drop would be the absolute max for a 12 team league.

[Archie Gordon]

2 minutes ago, Damien said:

...

They also made SL worse by diverting more money away to prop up full time professional clubs in the Championship in an attempt to make them competitive. Lowering SL standards to enable Championship clubs to compete will never be a good thing for the SL competition or its appeal.

...

Money wasn't diverted *during* the S8s. Money has actually been lost from the game *since*. London and Toronto put in substantial resource to navigate the S8s. One of those teams now invests nothing in the game; the other, nearly nothing.

I would think you'd be hard pressed to say that the Hull, Cas and London squads of 2024 are better than the equivalent bottom 3 in any S8 year. Frankly, the game has shrunk before our eyes.

[sam4731]

4 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

Because we can't afford the vulnerability and short termism to severely impact a third or half of the top flight. The sport isn't big enough.

There is a massive difference in impact between winning the league vs relegation.

To be fair, I do say have a middle 8 competition but I would be happy having inter divisional play offs. Ideally bottom 2 of SL in with top 3 of Championship. 

[Damien]

16 minutes ago, Archie Gordon said:

Money wasn't diverted *during* the S8s. Money has actually been lost from the game *since*. London and Toronto put in substantial resource to navigate the S8s. One of those teams now invests nothing in the game; the other, nearly nothing.

I would think you'd be hard pressed to say that the Hull, Cas and London squads of 2024 are better than the equivalent bottom 3 in any S8 year. Frankly, the game has shrunk before our eyes.

TV money was given to prop up select full time Championship clubs. The discussion had been TV/central funding, not private investment.

Anyhow what you say isnt even true. London certainly did not put in substantial resources when promoted for the 2019 season, they have done nothing like that for many years certainly well over a decade. When they were promoted that year they spent next to nothing akin to this year. Toronto didn't even exist when the super 8s started and any money spent was outside investment, they weren't even promoted under the super 8s model.

Edited April 7 by Damien

[Harry Stottle]

20 minutes ago, Damien said:

This is pretty much it.

They also made SL worse by diverting more money away to prop up full time professional clubs in the Championship in an attempt to make them competitive. Lowering SL standards to enable Championship clubs to compete will never be a good thing for the SL competition or its appeal.

Indeed this whole diminishing of SL subsequently led to drop in the TV deal, SL clubs breaking away and a pretty poor few years with the game then looking to IMG to boost it again.

I honestly believe that supporters of clubs like yours who never got threatened with the 8's were really miffed that the bottom of the league was attracting a good deal of attention away from those contesting the play-offs.

So it is 8's years since the 8's were abandoned, why has the TV deals continued to drop to such a level that SL clubs are now deficient of 800,000 in funding as they were then?

You really think that IMG are boosting the game, it is 7 rounds in of their methods when relegation does not matter, and it shows.

[Damien]

16 minutes ago, Harry Stottle said:

I honestly believe that supporters of clubs like yours who never got threatened with the 8's were really miffed that the bottom of the league was attracting a good deal of attention away from those contesting the play-offs.

So it is 8's years since the 8's were abandoned, why has the TV deals continued to drop to such a level that SL clubs are now deficient of 800,000 in funding as they were then?

You really think that IMG are boosting the game, it is 7 rounds in of their methods when relegation does not matter, and it shows.

The first paragraph is in your head.

The vast majority of the drop in the TV deal took place on the back of the middle 8s and the poor administration of that time. Any drops since then have been relatively small on the back of the ensuing fall out and mess the game was in. Ignoring Sky's warnings to sort itself out after failing to improve itself on the back of that bumper TV deal was disastrous.

I never said anything of the sort. I said the game was looking to IMG to boost it again, which they are.

Edited April 7 by Damien

[Damien]

@Harry Stottle for someone that constantly moans about people doing emojis on your deluded posts you ain't half fond of doing them yourself when your nonsense is disproved.

[Harry Stottle]

3 minutes ago, Damien said:

The first paragraph is in your head.

The vast majority of the drop in the TV deal took place on the back of the middle 8s and the poor administration of that time. Any drops since then have been relatively small on the back of the ensuing fall out and mess the game was in.

I never said anything of the sort. I said the game was looking to IMG to boost it again, which they are.

Are you saying that there was not many posts on here decrying that the 8's were diverting attention away from the play-offs?

You said "They also made SL worse by diverting more money away to prop up full time professional clubs in the Championship in an attempt to make them competitive" but clubs still got 2.1M in funding at that time!

OK I will reverse the question, do you believe that IMG's methods are improving SL overall?

 

 

[Rugbyleaguesupporter]

Have we considered that value of RL deal is much more about whether Sky and BT are battling for broadband subscribers rather than quality on pitch? 

As for gap- in 2004 ish we had numerous 70 plus beatings- I think standards fairly comparable? The game has changed though- more structured 

[Harry Stottle]

5 minutes ago, Damien said:

@Harry Stottle for someone that constantly moans about people doing emojis on your deluded posts you ain't half fond of doing them yourself when your nonsense is disproved.

Do I ever say you are talking nonsense, you do it quite a lot not just to je but others who disagree with you.

Edited April 7 by Harry Stottle

[Damien]

6 minutes ago, Harry Stottle said:

Are you saying that there was not many posts on here decrying that the 8's were diverting attention away from the play-offs?

You said "They also made SL worse by diverting more money away to prop up full time professional clubs in the Championship in an attempt to make them competitive" but clubs still got 2.1M in funding at that time!

OK I will reverse the question, do you believe that IMG's methods are improving SL overall?

Everyone has different opinions and no opinion is universal. I think it would be rare that people want to get rid of it for just that reason, more like one of many. I have said what the reasons are for me, you can either choose to believe that or not.

Clubs have never got £2.1 million in funding.

IMG has nothing to do with this discussion and there are plenty of threads on that. No need to repeat them yet again.

[Damien]

15 minutes ago, Rugbyleaguesupporter said:

Have we considered that value of RL deal is much more about whether Sky and BT are battling for broadband subscribers rather than quality on pitch? 

As for gap- in 2004 ish we had numerous 70 plus beatings- I think standards fairly comparable? The game has changed though- more structured 

Yes, well not on this thread but plenty of others. There is certainly an element of RL having to accept what is offered based on the market and level of competition at that time. Unfortunately there always seems to be a lack of bidders when it comes tonthe sport.

Only once did RL seem to benefit from any competition and that was when it got the bumper TV deal for £200m over 5 years. Sky looked to lock in RL early, paying the sport extra to do so, because they were scared of losing sports rights to BT. Whether that was even on the horizon I doubt but Sky were sufficiently spooked to pay overs for several sports.

[The Blues Ox]

1 hour ago, sam4731 said:

The teams that finished bottom 4 in the SL that had to load up on panic buys only had themselves to blame. If you don't want jeopardy, do better. 

Yeah the middle 8's were only a car crash if you were one of the bottom 4 SL teams. Some of the teams that ended up in that situation kicked on and did improve. Others just continued to do the same thing and those are the sort of teams that probably should not be in SL and give other teams a chance to see if they could do better.

[Harry Stottle]

3 hours ago, Tommygilf said:

Because we can't afford the vulnerability and short termism to severely impact a third or half of the top flight. The sport isn't big enough.

I don't know why you conceive that 4 or 6 clubs would be severely impacted Tommy in an 8's situation, in the 4 years it was played '15 to '18 out of 16 SL clubs only on 3 occasions did SL and Championship clubs change divisions and two of those involved were HKR and Leigh who swapped places twice

Realistically no SL club should be losing to Championship clubs in those mini leagues with the difference there was in funding in those years, and most definitely not now, I just don't see the fear that those fans of SL clubs have they would still posses the ability to buy themselves out of 'bother' as happend previously, didn't Wakey do it on a couple of occasions and indeed your own club with the acquisition of James Segeyaro in '16.

Edited April 7 by Harry Stottle

[PREPOSTEROUS]

Trinity were in the middle 8's only once when they stayed up after stinking the place out in 2015. Leigh walked the championship but chocked when it mattered meaning a terrible Wakefield side prevailed. The following three season were, ironically, the best we've had recently (2016, 17 and 18). 

 

[Harry Stottle]

3 minutes ago, PREPOSTEROUS said:

Trinity were in the middle 8's only once when they stayed up after stinking the place out in 2015. Leigh walked the championship but chocked when it mattered meaning a terrible Wakefield side prevailed. The following three season were, ironically, the best we've had recently (2016, 17 and 18). 

 

Then I stand corrected, was it in the years after when it was 1 up 1 down that you went on a spending spree to avoid the drop?

Edited April 7 by Harry Stottle

[sam4731]

4 minutes ago, PREPOSTEROUS said:

Trinity were in the middle 8's only once when they stayed up after stinking the place out in 2015. Leigh walked the championship but chocked when it mattered meaning a terrible Wakefield side prevailed. The following three season were, ironically, the best we've had recently (2016, 17 and 18). 

 

Didn't you finish 5th consecutively, just before they made the switch to top 5 playoffs?

[JT RL]

The starting question should be,”how do we beat the Aussies”, and “how many players are in the system that are good enough to compete with the Aussies”.

[sam4731]

1 minute ago, JT RL said:

The starting question should be,”how do we beat the Aussies”, and “how many players are in the system that are good enough to compete with the Aussies”.

Playing them would be a good start.

[N2022]

48 minutes ago, JT RL said:

The starting question should be,”how do we beat the Aussies”, and “how many players are in the system that are good enough to compete with the Aussies”.

I get that's an ideal on one level, but those games come round every few years and sometimes come down to moments and mindset. I'm not sure building a whole domestic structure with that in mind is (a) advisable or (b) likely to be effective.

Because the optimal for nwating Aus might be to have a highly selective SL with just maybe 6 or even 4 teams and a hyperconcentration of talent in them, but this risks (1) generating too much gap for others to get into that elite (2) becoming repetitive for spectators and (3) damaging visibility of the wider game. To beat Aus you'd maybe say the elite don't have to spend time visiting schools, hospitals, signing shirts etc but what does that do for game image and future recruitment.

I'm going on now, but you see my thinking, it's complex.

[glossop saint]

The 3x8s ended up focusing on the middle 8s. The top 8 and bottom 8 ended up just petering out. Standard RL. Focus on mediocrity. Not the top teams who can help produce the best to increase our chances on the international scene or show off the quality in a bid to entice new fans and coverage and money. Nor the bottom teams who are trying to expand the sport into new territory to again help with the development of the sport albeit in a different bottom up sort of way. No, we focus on spending valuable resources on the middle ground again.

[Archie Gordon]

1 minute ago, glossop saint said:

The 3x8s ended up focusing on the middle 8s. The top 8 and bottom 8 ended up just petering out. Standard RL. Focus on mediocrity. Not the top teams who can help produce the best to increase our chances on the international scene or show off the quality in a bid to entice new fans and coverage and money. Nor the bottom teams who are trying to expand the sport into new territory to again help with the development of the sport albeit in a different bottom up sort of way. No, we focus on spending valuable resources on the middle ground again.

I agree that the top and bottom 8s didn't work. 

But the middle 8s did. 

I think we also see the game from very different perspectives. I want the game to deliver entertainment and excitement. I feel that competitive games with outcomes that matter between the 9th-15th best teams in Europe delivered that. You just saw mediocrity. I genuinely feel a bit sad because of that.

[glossop saint]

12 minutes ago, Archie Gordon said:

I agree that the top and bottom 8s didn't work. 

But the middle 8s did. 

I think we also see the game from very different perspectives. I want the game to deliver entertainment and excitement. I feel that competitive games with outcomes that matter between the 9th-15th best teams in Europe delivered that. You just saw mediocrity. I genuinely feel a bit sad because of that.

I enjoyed it. There were some very entertaining games. It was the fact it was the focus of the sport for a quarter of the season. And took the funding that it did in order to make it competitive. And I think probably had a damaging effect on those championship teams who weren't top 4.

[Archie Gordon]

25 minutes ago, glossop saint said:

I enjoyed it. There were some very entertaining games. It was the fact it was the focus of the sport for a quarter of the season. And took the funding that it did in order to make it competitive. And I think probably had a damaging effect on those championship teams who weren't top 4.

I think your final sentence is a good point.

However, it has been at least hinted at a couple of times now that the middle 8s somehow took funding away from the top of the game. This isn't true. The game sold the 8s to a broadcaster who paid more to the top 8 because of that. There was more funding for everyone.