What to expect from RFL meeting as Super League expansion timeline and IMG plans explained

It has been billed as a fairly significant day on Tuesday, with all member clubs meeting in Wakefield to learn the outcome of Nigel Wood’s strategic review.

Wood was appointed by clubs to lead a review alongside a number of other individuals that would scrutinise and analyse the state of the professional game. No subject was off-limits in that review including the future of IMG, Super League’s size and, most controversially, the future of expansion.

But while Tuesday represents a line in the sand moment as Wood delivers the verdict from that review, it isn’t quite as clean-cut as the widely-held expectation a swathe of decisions will be made on the day.

Clubs will learn the outcome of what Wood and his strategic group recommend. That will not be an order for change; it will, like the IMG recommendations – some of which were ignored – be pure recommendations about how the sport proceeds in 2026.

There will be no grand vote on the day about whether or not to keep Super League at 12 teams, expand to 14 or remove the French clubs from the professional game. All of these decisions will be made at a later date, with clubs set to go away and deliberate over the verdict of the review.

But perhaps the most intriguing topic of debate is whether Super League expands to 14 teams as early as 2026. It remains on the table as a viable option – with the IMG system likely to dictate which two clubs would come up if an expansion was approved.

Again, an expectation from many that the relationship with IMG will be torn up on Tuesday and promotion and relegation will return is wide of the mark. So too is a decision over which clubs are going to be promoted next year.

Rugby league’s governance structure means that Super League clubs hold the majority of the voting power with major decisions.

Therefore, a meeting of those clubs at the end of July is going to be the key day for that decision on expansion.

Clubs remain open to 14, but only if their financial distribution remains largely unaffected. That is where the ambition of several Championship sides comes into play – especially with the IMG system likely to dictate the promotion and relegation picture at the end of this year.

RL Commercial are already distributing key information about criteria data capture for the autumn – to change now to a traditional promotion and relegation format at the last minute is almost completely off the table, irrespective of what the Wood-led review recommends.

Love Rugby League has already revealed last month how some Championship teams would be willing to take the financial risk of essentially funding a step up to Super League themselves without any central funding, in order to get it over the line.

That remains a huge talking point among the corridors of Super League executives. Do they take the risk in 2026, expand and have a cleaner and more simplistic fixture schedule?

Or does the competition wait until 2027 in the hope of having secured a better TV deal, making expansion more financially stable for all clubs involved?

Even if it stays at 12, Love Rugby League has been told by several different Championship clubs that they are quietly confident of achieving a score that could put one of Huddersfield Giants or Salford Red Devils in danger under the IMG system.

And while there will be little in the way of concrete decisions on Tuesday about the sport’s long-term future, one thing that will almost certainly happen is Wood being installed as permanent chairman of the governing body.

How that has been allowed to happen after the way he left the very same body just a few years earlier is quite clearly up for debate.

As is the results of his review as and when they emerge, as the direction of the sport again appears to rest on the shoulders of one man.