8ULL5HITT4 wrote:
And there's me thinking that Halifax graced Super League....memory playing tricks again.
We did have promotion and relegation in the early years of Super League......some clubs got relegated.
Yeah, they did - and often went belly up at then same time as financial meltdown struck - this was the principal reason P&R was dropped and licensing was brought in.
Rugby league has always had the problem of not enough clubs at a similar level to make decent divisions. In soccer, there are four divisions, of around 22 clubs in each, between the top full time clubs and where the part timers start; in RL the part-timers start in the top four of the second division, or to put it another way, approximately 17 clubs down from the SL champions.
After and earlier attempt, in the 1960s, to have two divisions, which didn't last long, there used to be a total of around 30 clubs [all semi-pro], all in one division but playing different fixture lists in two separate [Yorks and Lancs] leagues. Then, in the early seventies, we went back to a first division of 16 and a second division of 14, with P&R. The difference was often too much though and the term 'yo-yo clubs stems originally from this era.
That split of 16 and 14 lasted until the start of SL, and despite changing the number of clubs and the way they gained promotion they've never got round the problem of too few clubs and the semi pros starting so close to the top.
If you want a soccer comparison with modern RL, promotion from the championship to SL, is a little bit like [say] promoting a conference club into the Premiership. Obviously it's daft, and would never work, but that is our eternal problem.
