League Express reporter STEPHEN IBBETSON pleads against the introduction of one-week loans.

LAST week professional clubs were informed that a new loan system will be introduced from next season.

One-week loans will be permitted, down from the current two-week minimum, and dual-registration subsequently scrapped as it is no longer necessary.

If this sounds like a minor and somewhat trivial change, think again.

Instead, it’s the end point of a recent trend which is eroding Rugby League to the point of being anything but ‘professional’.

Essentially, from next year, any player can play for any club in any given match.

Squads? Pfft. Contracts? They mean nothing. Sporting integrity? Not for us, thanks.

It’s been slowly happening for a while. The minimum length for a loan was a month until 2021 when, quite reasonably, it was reduced to ensure squads could be filled during the Covid chaos. Quite unreasonably, it has stayed the same ever since.

Mixed with dual-registration, it’s now common for fringe Super League players to hop from club to club with abandon. Have boots, will travel.

Let’s take the example of Lucas Green, the young Warrington forward turned intrepid explorer, in 2024. At the start of January he was dual-registered with Widnes, featuring in two pre-season games for them and then playing against the Vikings, for Warrington in a further friendly. Three weeks later, he played for North Wales, also on “dual-registration”, in the 1895 Cup, against… Widnes!

In March, he played a single game for Bradford on loan. In April, he returned to North Wales for a solitary appearance. He then played four times on loan for Swinton, running into May. Then in June, in a remarkable twist, he played once for his actual club, Warrington, in Super League – and only because they were resting all their top players for the Challenge Cup final.

After that a proper run of games followed with Widnes, and currently Green is on a season-long loan to Keighley which has thankfully, so far, lived up to its name.

But it’s just one example of a system that allows players to feature for an unlimited number of teams and, frankly, makes a mockery of the competitions. Next season, it can only get worse.

The loan system is already a mess, with the sort of flexibility that makes most usual agreements worthless. A season loan is nothing of the sort, nor a month or any other period. After two weeks, they can all be interrupted or cancelled. Even two-week loans can be broken after a week if the parent club pleads a good case to the RFL.

The only good news would be the end of the widely-discredited dual-registration system. This has already been eroded of late to allow clubs to partner with multiple teams, even in the same division (London are currently linked with Leeds, Salford, Warrington and Wigan simultaneously, thanks to a ridiculous exemption to the usual rules for clubs outside ‘core’ areas).

But it will be replaced by a system in which, effectively, each club is dual-registered with every other club, with totally unrestricted freedom of movement.

Many in the game – or at Super League level, at least – will tell you that it’s a perfect solution, that it allows all players to play at the best possible level every week. And they believe it, too.

But take a step back, survey the bigger picture and the whole integrity of the sport is being compromised.

The finer details are yet to be rubber-stamped, but what is to stop a player featuring for every team in a division in one season? What is to stop them playing for one team one week and against that team the next? What is to stop a club sending players on loan to bolster another team the week they’re playing that club’s title or relegation rival?

It is also to be determined how many loan players will be allowed in one team. The current limit is five, or six if at least one is signed on a season-long basis. That’s already a third of a team and if it changes under the new system, it will only be increased.

Most supporters want to watch their own players each week, not a bunch of strangers dropped in at the last minute, playing one game and then never being seen there again. They certainly don’t want to see the opposition suddenly strengthened, for this game only, by a host of full-time athletes.

And what good does it do those players? Maybe it’s ‘character-building’, but a one-week loan will not improve any youngster’s skills or confidence. A loan move can be hugely beneficial, but only over a period of time, working consistently with the coaches and their team-mates.

So of course a loan system is required, but it must be robust. One-week loans will instead provide a ‘Wild West’ of free movement, rendering contracts as meaningless and distorting competitions.

Look across the game on any given weekend at the moment and you will see a swathe of Super League players in the Championship, a bunch of Championship players in League One, and a good number of League One players playing via dual-registration in the National Conference League.

Meanwhile the reserves competition has been undermined to the point of irrelevance – don’t be surprised if this loan change proves to be the final nail in that coffin.

Sometimes, the best solutions are the simplest. Let’s have players playing for the clubs they are contracted to. If a Super League player is ready for the top flight, they can play in the reserves until called upon. If they’re not ready, they can join another club on loan for a fixed period of time (with a minimum of, at the very least, one month).

It would be best for players, best for clubs, best for fans and best for competition integrity.

The bigger picture

FAR more headlines over the past week have been generated by another significant change in the offing for next season – the increase in the overseas quota.

Clubs are to sign off on a rise in the number of non-federation trained players permitted in a squad from seven to ten.

The arguments for and against are fairly well rehearsed. More overseas players means a better product, or more overseas players means fewer opportunities for homegrown talent.

On the former, we seem to be reaching something of a saturation point. While Super League expansion is very much on the table, and a potential driving force in the move, so two new clubs will enter the NRL imminently. Wherever the extra players come from, the overall quality will not increase.

The latter is a real concern, certainly in a twelve-team competition. The end result will be more British players pushed down the ladder, facilitated by the aforementioned loan system.

Put these changes together and it’s potentially a grim picture.