GIANT DAZ wrote:
Tell ya what i think the problem is ...Cost !!!
For many years Rugby League was an affordable sport to everyone, even non season ticket holders were looking at maybe only £13-18 to pay on the day at most grounds 5 years ago whereas football was over £20-25 minimum at most places which people scorned at - now RL is at the very same prices and is unfortunately pricing a lot of people out of the game with admission prices. Even my season ticket works out at about £15 a match now compared to maybe 8 or 9 5 years ago......thats a problem i should imagine most clubs are facing , its not necessarily the product thats poor its the cost of watching it.
Its a factor for sure, but I feel the main problem is that one way or another we've taken a lot of tension out of at least the regular season. I'm not one of those that's up in arms saying its ALL due to it being an 8 team playoff, or due to the lack of relegation, but as I say, for me, there's not enough tension. Hindsight is a wonderful thing and its not, to me at least, totally obvious that the 8 team format would backfire, but I think its clear that it has and needs changing pronto. Not easy. At all. The problem is that we have two interacting issues: no relegation and a "rump" of poor clubs. Either on their own isn't so bad ( for tension I mean, forgetting other issues for now) - with good clubs throughout you can live without relegation, and with poor clubs and relegation, at least there's tension around the relegation battle. We've got the worst of both worlds. And "lowering the cap" is effectively suicide for the sport.
Best I can come up with (not that it's great) is SL1 and SL2 with P&R, but maybe only 7 or 8 teams in each and a commitment by all clubs to spread the Sky money equally between 1 and 2. Maybe also 1 up, 1 down from SL2 to championship, with a parachute payment to relegated sides.
