HFCHU8 wrote:After been quite strongly against licensing in the past, I’m accepting in the fact that the sport realistically needs it to develop teams lower down the pecking order. I think the initial IMG proposals are positive and for the good of the game, it’s a fine balance between putting pressure on sides to improve their faculties whilst also giving them a realistic time frame
Totally agree and if we are all to be honest it is long overdue and something that is needed to bring the whole sport in to the modern world and more professional form top to bottom. The sport as it is can not carry on like it has as it is diminishing rapidly and needs a real injection of change not just papering over the cracks as they have done before as underneath the cracks are now great chasms.
Lets be clear the room for error has gone due to the p!5s poor way the sport has been run both by the RFL and the SL clubs themselves. The changes they make have to be right from the start and the sport needs to have professional media and marketing to sell itself to the wider audience which is another area it continually shot itself in the foot. I think the lop fixture situation also needs addressing as its a league season that is an un level playing field for all teams as some benefit from the loop fixtures and others are disadvantaged as unless every team plays each other the same equal number of times both home and away how can the league standings at the end have any real integrity about them?
The criteria to meet the requirements to be a SL club need to be enforced rather than the blind eye that was turned. One of the biggest things has to be that all SL clubs run and reserve grade as well as youth development. As the failure to run a decent reserves set up generally in the sport is embarrassing, ground improvements/standards also need to be enforced.
Its certainly interesting and concerning times all round this off season for RL
