Originally Posted by
magic superbeetle
So I have thought about it and the conclusion I have come to is if we’re moving to 2 leagues of 10, we will have to introduce a new competition to balance the fixtures. Now immediately people will point to the Challenge Cup/ FA Cup and say “but cup competition is waning”, but I think we would need to be more creative, and look at the 2020 model in cricket.
The lazy answer would be a 7s or a 9s series where we round robin in groups of 4, then some finals structure, which outputs an additional 6-8 games into the calendar for the teams. Instead I would much prefer us to look at adding more rules to create interest. Something like limiting the number of times a player can play in the competition (say 4 times) mean you see more teams like ours against Castleford, which most on here thought was far more interesting than a regular game. You could also “win” the round robin by scoring the most points rather than winning the most games, removing the current emphasis in the sport on defence. There’s a few things, it would need to be thought through.
Then you would have;
23 games from the league
0-3 games for the Playoffs
1-4 games for the Challenge Cup
6-8 games for the new competition (with a limit per player of 4)
0-1 game for the World Club Challenge
This means that the players will play the same number of maximum games as now, the clubs gain an extra two fixtures, and the fans get to see some more interesting games, with emphasis on attacking rugby and using deep squads. Of course upping the cap to support deeper squads need to be part of that, but that’s a separate conversation.