edited for accuracy





bizzare season really lots of teams have yo yo'd with perfomances.

Wakefield have been on their knees financially all season and have fielded a scratch side of loanees & journeymen, but have won 6. it's not surprise they are struggling at the run in to the season.

Harlequins started off well beating Catalans , Leeds & Saints etc but their lack of squad depth took it's toll , Crusaders were Top 8 in 2010 but as we know the cash was never there .

Catalans couldn't buy a win now are going great , Salford supposedly recruited better for this season but sort of forget to upgrade their coaching set up so struggle to get a consistent performance out .

Only Wigan, Warrington & Saints have really been consistant and have regularly handed out beatings to most teams not on their game. and they can build up a 2-3 try burst to blow most teams way even if they are up for it.

There is not a huge gap in class if the clubs put out their best 17 fully fit , but he gap shows in the class in the overall squads over the season.

Dumping the bottom 4 out of SL and having a ' top table ' won't strengthen the game , it'll just strengthen the top 10 clubs and deny 100 players of competing in SL and getting better. RFL need to toughen up the Quota - non federation to allow / force SL clubs to use more emerging talent , unfortunately with crusaders demise 13 more quota players will pad out the weathlier SL clubs.





If RFL really wanted to act radical they would pool the best emerging talent in an NFL draft pick system , allowing the weaker clubs first choice to the best spare talent , ie no, don't waste 300K on 3 Aussies , pick the best three from the England Knight Squad and spend the other 150K you've then got spare on their academy set ups . think of 10 clubs spending a combined 1.5mil less on imports and putting 1.5m into their youth development.

Loans happen at present & dual reg but it's piecemeal & transient.

Until there is a minimum & Maximum salary cap limit there will always be hammerings in Super League. One thing about the NRL is you see much closer games and they dont have a NFL like style draft system.

well said can do without idiotic posts like that , cullen gave 20 years service to the wire

Too many teams don't spend to the cap and the coaching is awful.

It was the Wire chairman who changed everything for them. Paul Cullen was never going to take them to the heights they are at now. The chairman was the instigator.

I'm not on about league positions, challenge cups im on about when he was still playing and doing alot of work behind the scenes in the office and stuff, he was the one who got the wolfpack season tickets going also he was the one who got the ball rolling with us changing to Wolves.

The NRL has two advantages - a far bigger and better pool of players and the fact that most teams spend close to the cap. David Gallop (NRL CEO) said that some SL teams only spend around 30% of the cap. Its not surprising that a team that can only afford to spend a third of the amount of other clubs will struggle to have any depth or quality in their squad.

And what did he get at the end?



Loads of abuse

Not totally true since the takover of the club in March... Trinity have been finacially stable, however the expected 'sword of dameclese' in the franchise process meant that no one... literally no one... wanted to sign with a club who were expected to lose superleague status.



but i take your point!

I'd rather have SL cut down to a league on 10 or 12. Or possibly have the Super League as a 10 Club league, and then the league below that being another 10 club league.



So, say, a SL comprising of



Wigan, Warrington, Saints, Catalans, Hudds, Cas, Leeds, Hull FC, Hull KR, Bradford



and then a league below with



Salford, Wakefield, Quins, Widnes, Halifax, Fev, Barrow, Leigh, Crusaders (if they've gotten themselves sorted) and 1 other.



You could then maybe get a 1-for-1 promotion/relegation between these two leagues, or stick with the franchise system.



It would also have other benefits - 2nd league teams have something more realistic to aim for, the quality of players in these leagues should improve, and it's better for the player's health as they're playing less games per season, amongst other things that I can't explain coherently at 2.30am.

It's more to do with the changing nature of RL I think. Small differences in the teams can mean big points.



Much as it pains me, take Huddersfield. On form capable of beating anyone, and topping the league but have had off days where they shipped 30+ points against they might have expected to deal with "easily"



It's become a truism that RL is a game of inches, maybe even millimetres. If one team has it's calibration off by a smidge then they can easily concede points, and how often do we see halftime leads of 18 or 20 points over turned?



I wouldn't mind seeing a bonus point for close games, since many many times a very close game has been decided by a contentious call or miracle bounce of the ball.

Rugby League (in particular in the summer era with fast pitches etc) is a sport that will always have lob sided score lines. It simply isn’t a sport where a team can play for a draw or keep the score down



In football, a team can put 10 or 11 men behind the ball and a clearly inferior side can achieve a 0-0 or lose by a small margin. In RU, the laws of the game allow for negative tactics – i.e. removing the ball from the pitch on a regular basis and slow the play down. But in League, this can’t happen – one team doesn’t have to be better by too much to get 20 or 30 points on their opponents... it is a sport where it is very difficult to be defensively minded



The first half of this season was as competitive as I have seen for a long time with a lot of upset wins. It is fair to say that the teams with the larger (more depth in quality) have come to the fore in the second half of the season but that is to be expected and we are in continuous development not overnight change