Originally Posted by
Gray77
I'm going to go against the consensus here and say that I don't care who gets relegated, and I think it says alot about the problems in our sport that people give reasons for why club x is better than club y for reasons other than their quality as a team. If the structure of the comp was better, and if we didn't have a restrictive salary cap that handcuffs the biggest clubs we wouldn't really be giving thought to whether London, Hull KR, Huddersfield or Wakefield 'offer more' to Super League, because the league would be stronger and more exciting at the top end, and the clubs at the bottom end would simply be less important.
Do football fans talk about whether Bournemouth 'offer more' to the Premier League than the likes of big clubs outside of it like Leeds United or Sheffield Wednesday? No, the strength of the league means that they can happily cope with a club with a ground that only holds 11,000. Huddersfield won 3 of their 38 games last season in the Premier League, they were an absolute joke, but nobody was calling it a great day when they went down because they weren't 'offering anything to the league' because the league is defined by its best teams and not by its worst.
Rugby Union journos make the case that having Newcastle or Leeds Carnegie in the Premiership would be better in terms of having another Northern club, but at the end of the day if they're not hardly anyone gets themselves worked up over it because the league is defined by its best teams and not the ones at the bottom. Anyone tuning into a game at Sale would think RU was a game played in front of crap crowds, but you don't hear people saying Sale 'offer nothing' to the league because they aren't that important in a comp which is defined by the clubs at the top and not the ones making up the numbers.
But, in RL we continually try to manufacture Super League to make sure club x is in and club y is out, because our comp isn't good enough or strong enough to cope with a few clubs making up the numbers. In a salary capped sport if you finish bottom, tough, you're down. That should be the only consideration. There is nothing unfair about it. If Wigan, Wire, Hull, Leeds and co were punching their weight, getting crowds and challenging us at the top, and if the league actually enabled the weekly rounds to be more important we'd not worry too much about the geographical positions or ground quality of teams at the bottom. The fact that we are shows that the comp and the game are not achieving their potential where it needs to, namely at the top end of Super League.