According to an article in today's Daily Mirror, Toulouse winger, Matty Russell, is urging the Rugby League to not allow any relegation this season. He states that he thinks newly promoted teams need at least two seasons to consolidate. I can see that he has a valid point, but don't recall him urging the powers to be on this matter at the beginning of the season. Whilst such a change of the rules would obviously suit Trinity, in a strange sort of way the ongoing battle between Trinity, Toulouse and Wire has added spice to the end of the season.

Matty Russell is on the wing but it's no good asking for a change at the end of the season.
Would he have said the same if they'd beaten Warrington and we'd lost to Wigan? I think not.

This conversation usually raises its head when the promoted team are, as is often the case, struggling towards the back end of the season.

Was it Widnes that were relegated at the expense of Catalan all those years ago? Look how the fortunes have changed for those two clubs!

P.S. my first thought was why have we signed another winger...!

It's a decent quiz question.
How many promoted sides have retained SL status and we should exclude Catalan, who were given 3 years protection.
From the top of my head, I can only think of Trinity, KR and Cas. Are there any more ?

Huddersfield?

I have little interest personally other than us who goes down, but if we are talking about the validity of the matter don't you think that after spending all that money to achieve their ambitions of reaching super league, that Fev and Leigh would be less than amused if Toulouse got they're wish, Catalans entry was slightly different to Toulouse and though you can sympathise with them to a point, all this should have been sorted out at the start, at least Cas knew this.

He's just sounding off because he thinks he's about to become a championship player.

What is his proposal? That there should be relegation just once every three years? Or that the newly-promoted be exempt? But if the newly-promoted were exempt for two years, two teams who didn't finish bottom would be relegated, and possibly even the 10th place team going down, as the same would happen with the new team, so maybe all teams would get relegated at some point!

I'll tell you what, Matty, stick to being a bang-average winger.

Promotion and relegation is plusses and minuses. There is a decent argument to say that the halcyon days of super league were during licensing, but maybe not so much for the lower leagues. And what has changed is that the Aussie salary cap has boomed and ours has stayed the same, so that the best british players are no longer on display here. Even young Brits are trying it over there first (Farnworth at Brisbane and the lad on the wing at Newcastle). Of course, Oliver Gildart went too, but I'm not even sure Wigan fans miss him.

Wasn't picking out Toulouse particularly as deserving a second consolidation season, but any promoted team really needs to establish themselves otherwise you get the "yo yo" situation. Perhaps teams like Fev, Leigh, Halifax and even Widnes could probably be exempt. To be honest,Chissitt, if it was up to me both Catalans and Toulouse would be better establishing a credible French League and leaving Super League to the traditional clubs.