Whitehaven CEO Lee Butterworth has revealed that the schedule for the newly-merged Championship is likely to be based on seedings, not geographical location: and admits there is ‘no perfect solution’ to the issue.
The Championship and League 1 will come together to make a huge 21-team competition in 2026. However, it is impossible for each team to play every other home and away, as that would yield a 40-game season.
Instead, there will be a 24-game season which will lead to every club playing a chosen ten home and away, along with four bonus loop fixtures.
It had been suggested that would be based on geography, with each club playing its ten closest on a map home and away. However, as Love Rugby League reported last month, the favourite for the schedule choice is one based on seedings, with clubs playing what are deemed to be the most competitive fixtures for them.
That was confirmed by Butterworth on Whitehaven’s Facebook channel on Monday night, as he confirmed their league seeding of 19 out of the 21 teams means they will mainly face teams who are also in the bottom portion of the seedings.
He said: “It’s 21 teams next year in the Championship from what we’ve heard, and you can’t play 21 teams home and away. It’s like the Champions League in football, you’re going to be in and around teams based on your level.
“Where we finished last year, which was 8th in League 1, we’ll be seeded 19th of the 21 teams. There’s going to be ten home games against teams around your level.
“So if you were in the middle of the table it’ll be five above you and five below you, they’re your standard games. There’s then two extra home games when.. the RFL are trying to find the most compelling games. For us, chances are it’ll be Workington and Barrow. If three Cumbrian teams are playing each other it’s fantastic for all three clubs because it’s bigger gates and less travel.”
That means it is possible a team at the bottom of League 1 this year has a theoretical better chance of wining the Championship – because they will play seemingly poorer sides than those who finished in the upper echelons of the second tier. Oldham, for example, would play games against the likes of Halifax and Widnes and play no low-ranked League 1 teams from 2025.
And Butterworth admitted it is a difficult balancing act to get right.
He said: “If we won every game playing lower-level teams, Whitehaven would win the league. It seems crazy and it will devalue the League Leaders’ Shield because someone could be seeded bottom – Newcastle, for example, are combined with York, so they bring a lot of good players in and they’re seeded bottom. They win the league.
“We’re a League 1 club struggling from last year and now all of a sudden we’re in the Championship and how do we compete? There was talk about putting a more realistic salary cap on but if London are wanting to get in Super League next year, they need to spend the full cap and build a realistic team where if they do well, they can compete in Super League.
“There’s no perfect solution. We’re playing teams around us who have smaller budgets like ourselves and the bigger teams are playing the better performing teams, but they’ve all got big budgets. The teams that will miss out are the ones in the middle who have the not so bigger budgets and they go up against the better teams.
“We’ve got a smaller budget but we’re playing teams with similar budgets.”