Template talk:Rugby Football League seasons

I'm not sure what's been done with this template is a good idea. Super League seasons shouldn't be put under the same banner, as this was not just a change of name, but a change of organisation, winter to summer, etc. And dividing up all the pre-Super League seasons (into NRFU, RFL, etc.) I think is unnecessary because I understand that they were merely name changes, not organisational changes. I think the way it was before was fine.--Jeff79 (talk) 02:47, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

I understand what you're saying and did consider these points before I made the changes. My thinking was, Super League is still being described as e.g. the "110th season of top-level professional rugby league" in articles and that RFL and Super League seasons are not entirely disconnected - they still decide the Championship. There is also the 'precedent' of Template:National Rugby League which combines NSWRL, ARL and NRL seasons. Regarding the division of pre-Super League seasons (into NRFU, RFL, etc.), they give the reader a bit more detail and disabuse them of the notion that all of those seasons were known as Rugby Football League seasons. It also was in line with the names of the links locations in the table. On this last point about the labelling perhaps it could be changed to just dividing between RFL and SL seasons (if it's thought best to retain the SL seasons in the table). JoelUK (talk) 15:20, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

No worries. The thing we need to decide is if the Super League only template stays. The idea with templates I think is that they go on articles that they link to, and also if a template links to an article it should appear in that article. So the RFL template (as it is now) should be appearing in SL articles, as it contains links to them. In which case the Super League template should go. Which I'm not sure about, because Super League is the current embodiment of the competition (and so somewhat more relevant/significant), and I'm happy with the way the template on super league articles is called "Super League", y'know? I dunno if I'd like the Super League articles to contain a template called "Rugby Football League". I know what you mean with the NRL template. I'm far more familiar with that situation than with the English situation. In that template we don't make any distinction between New South Wales Rugby Football League seasons and New South Wales Rugby League (since 1984) seasons because that was just a name change (Much like Northern Rugby Football League to Rugby Football League, I think). Also the ARL was effectively the same organisation as the NSWRL and was also pretty much just a re-branding. The NRL did represent a more major shakeup of things, but I think less than that of Super League in England. Here it remained a winter season and all parties agreed that (club, player, etc.) records would continue unbroken from pre-NRL times. Not sure if that's the case with Super League or not. But it did become distinctly separate from clubs not in the top flight didn't it? I understand that in RFL times, it was just the RFL with first and second division. But now we have Super League, distinct from National Leagues One and Two. This, combined with the change to a summer season, new trophy, etc. to me represents a more major change.--Jeff79 (talk) 03:47, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Hey Jeff, I notice that you'd reverted to the previous version. Here's why I think we should return it to include Super League seasons: (1) Ease of use. Users of Wikipedia are going to find it a lot easier to navigate between seasons of all the British rugby league Championships are in one template. (2) As with the NRL, the statistics on appearances, tries etc. for players and clubs who played both before and in Super League were continued. As an example, when Leeds won Super League the other year it was repeatedly said by media and supporters how Leeds hadn't won the league in 30 odd years. (3) I think looking at the NRL vs Super League that it wasn't Britain that had the largest shake-up. The NRL unified an ARL and a rebel competition. The NRL is currently half controlled by News Corp and half by the ARL. Whereas Super League was in danger of becoming completely separated from the RFL from its inception until 2002, it is now unified again with the RFL (see: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20020126/ai_n9672037) and also Rugby Football League Limited and Super League (Europe) Limited are both under one roof at Red Hall in Leeds. (4) Super League isn't distinctly separate from the lower leagues. There are differences but they are all part of the same structure/pyramid - there was relegation and promotion after all. Before Super League the leagues had many formats; it started as a single league, then split into Yorkshire and Lancashire, then re-organised into first and second divisions, and then a mixture, then two, then one, etc... there have always been changes and re-vamps. Whether there should be a Super League template and a RFL one is another question. I'm happy to keep both. The SL template doesn't just contain the seasons, it also has the current participant clubs. Perhaps further distinctions could be added? For an example, have a quick look at what Template:NHL topics includes. JoelUK (talk) 02:30, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Ok, for ease of navigation I think it's ok to include Super League seasons in this template. It's also appropriate if Super League is controlled in some way by the RFL which I believe it is? The NRL is a joint venture of the ARL and News Ltd. It's a similar situation with the RFL? Not much info about Super League's background/history in its article. So it could be said that Super League seasons are still, in a way, RFL seasons. However I'm still unwilling to bend on the right-side panel showing name changes with years in brackets. I really think this gives the false impression of major organisational changes rather than mere name changes. The identical kind of division between "Northern Rugby Football League" and "Rugby Football League" exists for the change to Super League. A navigation box is just that: purely for navigation. They're not meant to be informative and I understand that the more detail you put in them, the more you're pushing your luck witht their existence. I think two sections: one for RFL and one for SL is better.--Jeff79 (talk) 00:23, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

rm some brutal hacks

I set the year links up as a table rather than attempting to counter-balance partial rows using invisible text.

Also, the software doesn′t allow you to make a link appear as though it′s not a link. That is it provides no way to change the style attribute of a link. For some reason it does treat <font> tags as a special case (although they are deprecated by W3) by sucking them inside the <a> tag, giving us an appearance like this which is ugly and barely readable on an LCD.

If we want to set them apart visually in the long term I recommend changing the background-color of the cell. ―AoV² 23:26, 2 April 2010 (UTC)