Rugby league's hypocritical restructure proposal is riddled in self-interest

[josie andrews]

Once again, a debate over league restructuring is going to be on the agenda.

Here we go again. Another league restructure proposal. Colour me shocked.

Next month's RFL Council Meeting will see a proposal to reintroduce conventional promotion and relegation back to rugby league discussed.

In a nutshell, the push is for the club that wins the Championship to be guaranteed promotion to Super League by replacing whichever Super League club with Grade B status finishes lowest in the table. And if there aren't any Grade B clubs in the top flight, then the Championship winners are promoted to join an expanded competition.

Like any structure, it has its merits and its flaws. But rugby league's desperate pursuit of a perfect league structure is as irrational as the person who keeps chasing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. For some reason, people in this sport are obsessed with meddling and tweaking something that time and time has proven to not get to the root cause of the problem.

More often than not, the reason for that is self-interest and it comes as no surprise whatsoever that the proposal has been put forward by the chairman of a Championship club in the shape of Batley Bulldogs.

How ironic it is that clubs from the Championship, who regularly bemoan the selfishness of their Super League counterparts, now want a tweak to the structure that would only benefit them. Let's be right, moving the goalposts because a few clubs call for it, whether it be Wigan, Cornwall or anyone in between is nonsense.

Tweaking the league structure, again, is not the answer and the fact that people within the sport seem to see it as the panacea for rugby league's issues becomes more mind-boggling when you consider how many changes have been made without the desired effect.

For what it's worth, the new proposal would give Championship clubs a shot in the arm. Many are finding it difficult to keep supporters engaged when the feeling is that what happens on the field is irrelevant.

But then it is riddled with flaws. Last year, the fact London Broncos were destined for relegation before a game had been played was widely criticised, yet this proposal would guarantee that if only one Grade B club was in Super League, they'd be guaranteed to go down irrespective of league finish. Even if there was more than one Grade B club, they could still be relegated without finishing bottom. Where is the sporting fairness these clubs seek in that? Expanding the competition on a whim comes with all sorts of issues too.

Almost every club in the land is bemoaning the small size of the player pool so the idea that Super League can have 14 competitive teams of high quality is, at the very least, fair to question.

I'm a reluctant supporter of IMG's grading system. Like many, I believe promotion and relegation should be determined by performance on the pitch and not box-ticking. But we've already seen that the grading system is forcing clubs into action. Rather than talking about what they're going to do, they're actually doing it. Castleford and Wakefield are the best examples of that so far and others will follow suit in the future.

With a bit of luck, doing this for several years will put the sport in a healthy enough spot to reintroduce the conventional mechanics of promotion and relegation. Doing so now appears counterproductive, and changing for the benefit of a handful of clubs makes no sense.

The reality is that under either system, you need a lot of money to get up and stay up. Nothing really changes in that regard. That makes it a tough sell for clubs like Batley, Widnes, Halifax et al who don't have the financial resources to make the appropriate improvements to realistically get to Super League when gradings are in use. Promotion and relegation allows them to dream at least.

But to propose a drastic structural change for their gain is hypocritical, but that shouldn't really come as a surprise in a sport riddled in self-interest.

https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/sport/ru ... 4776833d50

[Wiganer Ted]

Self interest in sport? Surely not?

[archiekeith]

Self interest in sport? Surely not?

Excellent post Josie