guest on the podcast<\/a> of Bradford Bulls and Ireland forward Ronan Michael, which focussed on the differences between the NRL and Super League.<\/p>\nInevitably, the conversation turned to whether or not expanding to 14 teams was the right decision \u2013 with Michael\u2019s Bradford side one of three teams who were promoted in the off-season.<\/p>\n
Austin, who featured at international level for Great Britain and also played Super League rugby for Castleford, insisted he felt even 12 teams was too high a number \u2013 and would go lower than that.<\/p>\n
Austin said: \u201cI think there\u2019s too many teams. I think there is. I\u2019d go smaller and I\u2019d get better.<\/p>\n
\u201cLock in your.. eight, I reckon ten maximum. Lock them in and then you get two or three extra from a team out of the Championship to come up and you start getting a better balance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perhaps more controversially, Austin said there were some teams currently at the top level who needed to be removed and told their only purpose is to produce players for the elite clubs and to play for a second-tier title every year.<\/p>\n
He warned Super League needs to \u2018get with the times\u2019 and modernise.<\/p>\n
Austin added: \u201cYou\u2019re going to say you\u2019ve done a lot for our sport and thank you very much, but from hereon out you\u2019re going to play in the Championship comp and the only trophy you\u2019ll ever be able to win is a Championship trophy.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Super League is for the big boys, we\u2019ll take some of your good players every now and then and give them a chance to play on the big stage but otherwise you\u2019ll just be a smaller community club and you\u2019ll keep producing players.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, that\u2019s the way the game has to be. There\u2019ll be a few 70 or 80-year-old blokes backing Keighley and clubs like that for a long time but sadly, we\u2019ve got to get with the times.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Warrington Wolves and Leeds Rhinos half-back Blake Austin believes Super League has to get smaller to \u2018get…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":267527,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-267526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}