14 teams really isn’t future. It’s the fast lane to shit street. We’re already on it, in all honesty. A string of Q-Cupper dross padding out top end Championship sides masquerading as Super League teams and beginning to pad out the likes of Warrington, Saints and Leeds’ sides too. What a prospect it’s going to be watching some crap Australian forwards, with barely 5 NRL games to their name, on a glorified gap year plodding around Odsal ankle deep in mud and running into raised corners that look like a sandwich left out in the sun.
The paltry standard of Super League is going to take even more of a kicking than it already has done over the last ten seasons, we’ve just fast tracked it with an increase in quota players from 7 to 10 and sticking two under funded teams into the mix, who we haven’t worked out how they’re going to be funded after this season unless we get a magical TV deal, which is almost certainly not happening as everything points towards it being decreased, as per other sports’ TV deals. It's sheer lunacy and it's going to be a car crash. It's inevitable and the scorelines between the very top and the bottom is going to be gruesome.
Independent governance is required, though we haven't done that well before, either. Robert Elstone came and went in the flash of an eye, like an English summer and IMG came out with their independent findings and what they wanted to do but under Elstone and IMG, the same ugly issue arose; the clubs themselves. Yes, someone else could have control but not all of the control, just some of it, like less than the collective 'power' of the clubs. And that is the overriding issue. The clubs. The old men in the boardrooms, nearly all of them who have led us through, franchising in 2009, the Super 8's, promotion and relegation, forcing out Nigel Wood, bringing in Robert Elstone, forcing out Robert Elstone, bringing in IMG and bringing back Nigel Wood, they're the problem. You wrestle control from them, and by control, actual control not the "yeah, you can be in control but you do what we say" that we've had before. I just don't see it happening, I don't see the Turkey's voting for Christmas, I don't see them handing over control to V'Landys or anyone in Australia but what they may do is do what they did with Elstone, they'll go out and find someone "independent" and then just pull their strings to keep actual control and then go "look lads, independent governance".
My post after the first Ashes test holds more weight now, the English game is lost. It has no identity. Nobody knows what it wants to be. There's no working relationship between Super League and the England side and vice versa. There's no strategy for England and how England are going to attempt to win a World Cup and build upon crowds of 132,000+ watching three games of rugby league over three weekends, there's no strategy for Super League and how that competition generates income or what we want the clubs to look like and I don't mean nonense like "London is a big city name and people will like that", I mean minimum standards and not some crappy form of minimum to keep those at the top table there at the top table. We need pathways, proper plans, an investigation into pathways and how we generate English talent to play at the very top, rule changes onfield to promote a style of play that we want English players to be accustomed to, clubs held to account for their shortcomings and a schedule that allows players to play the optimum amount of games so that they're competing at World Cup's and in Ashes series.
