hooligan27 wrote:
Why scrap promotion / relegation. Just killing off the championship clubs leaving nothing to play for and same at the bottom end of the table in SL
Basically the championship will be years of friendly's and that it did not work last time and wont work most fans will not bother
It encourages clubs to improve and get investment. Say Bradford for example. If they got the new ground and got a new owner and won the Championship, they'd become a category A club. They'd have good crowds etc. Wakefield will not get a category A licence unless they improve the ground, do better on the field and improve as a club. It'll be interesting to see what the criteria are, hopefully it will incorporate facilities, finances and on field performance and potentially even strategic importance. That is where the controversy often comes into it.
But looking at the proposals, promotion and relegation will exist until there are sufficient category A clubs to fill the 12 spaces. If we have 12 genuinely category A sides then the competition will have gained about 7 from what it has now, which would indicate great progress. It also talks of room to expand to 14 if there are enough A clubs. It all sounds sensible to me and if someone can get investment, good facilities and win the second tier, they're going to have great leverage to get into the top tier, so the arguement that there is nothing to play for is never there. Realistically there might be some minnows that won't have a chance, but they in reality don't have a chance now, they just don't have to face up to that on a daily basis so continuing on is seen as being better.