Match 31: Hull KR (Home - Qualifiers)
fevnut's musings
Are the Super 8s
working?
This week’s fixtures will take the Super League and Qualifier 8s
beyond the halfway stage, the rest are already past hallway. So we thought we
would consider whether, in the long term, this format is fit for purpose.
When the concept was first introduced three years ago, we
supported it, primarily because it re-opened the possibility of promotion from
the Championship to the Super League. Many viewed it with suspicion suggesting
that it was a charade which purported to offer promotion but was designed so
heavily in favour of Super League clubs that Championship clubs wouldn’t have a
chance because of the huge balance of funding which gave even the weakest of Super
League clubs squads way superior to those in the Championship. Well the ‘nay-sayers’
have been largely proved to be correct we are sad to say. All the evidence
suggests that only if a Championship Club has the funds to run a full-time team
can they possibly compete seriously in the Qualifiers. That, of course, is
dangerous because it tempts clubs to ‘break the bank’ in order to run a
full-time team. Sheffield tried it and it very nearly killed them.
The question is what the potential of a top Championship team
would be if they won promotion by seeing off the rest of the competition in
their own division, earning them the right to play in Super League with the
vastly enhanced central funding that would then become available to them.
So what do we believe the next major re-structuring bring (and
we are under no illusion that there is any hope of it happening!)? First of
all, a return to league competitions that are on a level playing field with
every club playing the others home and away. Do away with the Super 8s and
expand both Super League and the Championship to fourteen clubs so as to provide
a sensible quantity of league fixtures. This would obviously have major
implications for League One but that competition is not fit for purpose anyway
(see below to see what we are referring to). Whilst we believe that winning the
league should be the main aspiration we have to recognize that the ‘Grand
Finals’ have been wonderful occasions and we would still retain a play-off
system at the end of the season but we would rename the League Leaders Shields
as League Champions trophies.
The two clubs at the top of the Championship should be promoted
and the two at the bottom of Super League relegated. The Championship should
revert to a fair competition with all teams having part-time players. Clearly
there are big problems then for the players of teams that are relegated. That
should not be solved by parachute payments to relegated teams allowing them to
retain full-time players but instead there should be centrally funded ‘redundancy’
payments to those full-time players who fail to pick up contracts with other Super
League teams.
One of the problems with the Super 8s has been lower than
predicted attendances. It seems to be a similar problem to the Challenge Cup in
that games that are not part of a season ticket are failing to attract crowds.
This way there will be less of that as the season tickets would be for the full
13 home league matches.
So what do we do about Magic Weekend and Summer Bash? We don’t wish to see the principle of home and
away league fixtures ‘corrupted’ by one additional ‘pot luck’ match but
nevertheless the concept of bringing together teams and supporters from the
league has been excellent so perhaps it could be taken forward with some form of ‘Festival
of Rugby League’ maybe in a 9s competition spread over a bank holiday weekend.
There have been suggestions of a knock-out competition for non-Super
League teams with a final at Wembley in a double header with the Challenge Cup
Final. We like that idea and it would help boost Wembley attendances.
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League One is proving to be unfit for purpose and it needs to be
the subject of a huge overhaul. Expansion is important but the way it has been
done recently is simply not working. We now have talk of a merger between
Oxford and Gloucestershire All Golds with the ‘new’ club to be located in
Bristol. That’s no merger - it is two expansion clubs failing and yet another attempt
to find a location for part-time professional rugby league outside the
heartlands. Then there is Hemel Stags who are proving to be a joke. They were a
very successful amateur club doing wonderful work to establish rugby league in
Hertfordshire. The attempt to run it as a professional club is proving to be
disastrous. The team nowadays trains in West Yorkshire and travels way to its so-called
home fixtures in Hemel. Little wonder that the highest attendance so far this
year has been 155 and there have been six matches with crowds of less than 110.
The expansion intention may have been laudable but it is now turning into a sick
joke.
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Finally, it could well be that either Barrow or Whitehaven win
promotion to the Championship this year. Just imagine being one of their
supporters who will have 11 away league fixtures in 2018 which could include Toronto,
Toulouse, Catalans and London let alone all the miles they will have to travel
to Lancashire and Yorkshire. We hope the local economy is doing well and their
fans are being paid handsomely.
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