Great - another Yorkshire team to up their game for us only to then get whalloped by Hull KR a week or so later.

They won't want Toulouse, surely?

Looks like I’m in the minority that feel this is a positive move. The 14 teams structure needed to happen eventually and when it did there was always going to be a year or 2 of pain to go with it for the clubs coming in so why delay it. Delaying it simply delays the timeline of getting them up to speed. 


We will now have an extra game to show on Sky ahead of the TV deal renewal in 2027 which will assist our negotiations.


Yes there are concerns over player quality and development but it’s a chicken and egg scenario and if the clubs that come up don’t move quickly to put the structures in place then their stay in SL will be short lived until we find a club that does. 


If I’m honest I expect 1 club to come up abd potentially go back down for a year maybe 2 until we get the right balance. 


The awarding criteria is open to interpretation though for the 13th & 14th clubs picked by a panel rather than IMG rating and that doesn’t sit comfortably with me, I think that leaves us open to a legal can of worms. 


If I were I betting man I think York and Toulouse are nailed on.


I also expect Salford to drop out with one of London or Bradford to replace them.

It's just ridiculous that we are constantly changing the top tier of the sport. I guarantee that in 4 or 5 years we'll have another structure or process in place, probably in the form of a buyout from the NRL if this doesn't work. It's very tiring as a fan.


Yes loop fixtures are rubbish, but if the fixture planning wasn't so stupid, it wouldn't be so problematic. Most teams end up playing the same team two or three times before they've played another once.


These changes are always very reactionary to the TV deal renewing. The problem since 2019 has been no serious competition to Sky bidding for SL in the UK and our obsession with free-to-air, not how many teams are in the league or the performance of social media. Now the sports streaming market has completely changed in the last couple of years and is extremely competitive due to Netflix, Amazon and a couple of others spending huge amounts.


We need to do a much better job tendering the product to every service possible to create another bidding war. That's the only thing that will drive the financial state of the sport. The other thing is advertising but right now we are so far away from any attractive brand sponsorships that it's not worth wasting time on.


Stop bothering about the sport being on free-to-air and just make as much money as possible in the next deal. Netflix and Amazon already have 15-17m subscribers in the UK, probably 1.5-2x what Sky have. Just get The RFL and at least 12 clubs into a strong place financially, improve our grass roots, the marketing of SL and the professionalism of everything.


Oh and stop caring about the league and all teams being equal - literally no other sport cares about it. Every single league in the world has 2 or 3 teams that lose every week, it's just part of it.

Listened to Woods on 2 separate podcasts he simply won’t give a straight answer lots of waffle but no straight answer I fear for our sport