Mrs Barista wrote:
Determining the top 10 will be so contentious. Obviously you have the Big 4 plus Catalans then a raft of clubs vying for the other 5 spots including London, Toulouse, Bradford etc. Could see a revert to franchising or similar.
The way it is being set up (obvious caveats about how it actually turns out acknowledged), the controversy wouldn’t be all that significant for the top 10, imo. Being in the second tier wouldn’t be like it is now, on the other side of an economic gulf. So if, against the odds, one of the Big 4 finished second bottom next year (massive injury crisis sorta scenario), it wouldn’t be such a dislocation.
with a smaller disparity in central distributions, personally I’d like two conferences of 10 (18 games H&A against your conference rivals and 10 H or A against members of the other conference). But perhaps the jeopardy of P&R helps sell it all. Anyway, the point is more what happens beyond the relocated gulf outside the
20.
If we used current league positions, it would mean clubs including Sheffield, Widnes, Newcastle, Dewsbury, Oldham, Swinton, Barrow, Workington, Doncaster, Keighley and Rochdale… doing what? Tbh, there’s several there I didn’t expect to see in the top flight again my lifetime. But four of them have played in SL previously. And Newcastle seem ambitious. But how, or even whether, they fit in the new pro RL ecosystem is probably the most challenging issue if all of this goes ahead.