SLE Shareholders Meeting – Wednesday 11th November

Super League (Europe) Ltd has today held a shareholders' meeting to determine how many clubs will take part in the competition in 2027.

Having agreed in favour of moving from 14 to 15 clubs, SLE has passed their decision on to the Rugby Football League Board.

The RFL Board will now set out criteria and assemble a panel to run the process to judge against it.

A recommendation will be made in due course.

Two other resolutions were voted on regarding amendments to the Super League salary cap and financial sustainability regulations.

SLE agreed to the first amendment, relating to injured player dispensation, which removes players who suffer an injury or illness that results in missing eight consecutive salary cap relevant matches from that club's salary cap for the period they are injured.

Once the player returns, even if he becomes re-injured, no further dispensation will be available unless he misses a further eight consecutive salary cap relevant matches.

It is designed to ensure that clubs have an opportunity – from a regulatory perspective – to bring in a replacement player where a player suffers a long-term injury/illness whilst not increasing player welfare issues, such as forcing younger players not on cap eligible and not ready, to have to play.

It also approved a new regulation – a young player dispensation designed to enable clubs to trial younger players in 2027 in Super League or allow them to cover injury issues without significantly placing pressure on a club's salary cap.

It is designed to only be available for players aged 23 or under on January 1 of the season in which they play and those players must not have played any salary cap relevant match for any club in a previous season.

Under the proposal, the player may play two salary cap relevant matches without counting on a club's salary cap. If they play between three and five, they would count on the cap at 50% of their salary cap value. Any further match appearances would result in the player counting at the full value on the cap.