I’m torn on this one.
I like the 8’s, it’s probably the only system that eliminates as many “meaningless” games as a system ever can do and it does breathe life into the bottom of the table and the top of the Championship.
However, I think it draws too many clubs into potential relegation. Leeds being a good example of this this season. A team finishing 9th in the season is having to delay signings and planning for next season and beyond because their future in SL isn’t certain. Now for a club like Leeds they can probably deal with that uncertainty for a year but smaller clubs who are in that position year on year must be struggling.
So whilst I’d prefer a licensed league, I prefer the new structure over the current one. I like the top 5 playoffs as well.
I don’t like the loop fixtures. I get clubs would struggle with only 11 home games but I’d rather expand the league than have extra games against the same teams. Personally I’d expand the league to either 16 or even 20 teams.
What I don’t like though is the squabbling and time and effort that has been put into this from elements of the sport when they should be finding ways of improving attendances, corporate sales, sponsorship and non-game day revenues instead of just blaming the RFL for all the game’s ills.
The structure of the league isn’t going to significantly improve the health of the league. Clubs improving their own infrastructure instead of spending all their money on players, will.
Personally I’d introduce a rule on the salary cap, either you can only spend a maximum of 25% of your clubs income on players wages, or 50% but discount the TV money from a clubs relevant income for the calculation.
That way a club would have to bring in around £4m a year of their own money before they can spend the full cap.
I get there are concerns about the size of our salary cap compared to the NRL and Union, but whilst their salary cap is much higher so are their revenues.
We need our clubs to grow their revenues before spending more on the same players.