AHEAD of what is expected to be Leigh’s final Super League game until at least 2023, interim boss Kurt Haggerty feels a return to licensing provides the best way forward for the troubled sport.

As it stands Centurions will be relegated to the Championship following Sunday’s trip to Huddersfield Giants (kick-off 3pm).

At a recent media briefing RFL chief executive officer Ralph Rimmer confirmed: “All the mechanisms that were previously in place for the end of the season will remain in place.”

Pressed on the possibility of a 14-team competition for 2022 he responded: “I don’t think there will be a transition in the form described as things currently stand.”

“We all have an opinion,” said Haggerty when asked for his own blueprint for the future.

“Whatever we come up with there has to be a three-to-five-year plan so teams can build and sustain while they are building.

“I don’t want the game to fall by the wayside and keep constantly changing things.

“Let’s come up with a plan, stick with it so we can all adapt and move forward with it.

“Let a club build appropriately to be successful, not just dip in and out, with the same people and the same players circulating. Stick with something and stop changing it.

“The time is now to do it because there is so much uncertainty around the game. It is time for drastic change.

“Believe it, back it and give it the best chance of being successful.”

Licensing was first introduced during Richard Lewis’s tenure as RFL chairman.

Promotion and relegation was scrapped until its reintroduction via an inaugural Million Pound Game for the 2015 season.

The quality of the on-field product has also come in for scrutiny this year, but Haggerty insists: “The spectacle itself I don’t think has ever been in doubt.

“There is just that much uncertainty, lack of clarity and constant change within the game, people have lost the way.

“On the field and the product that is put out, it remains the best game in the world for me.”

Leigh now have one last opportunity to win more games than they did back in 2005 when relegated with just two victories. They stayed in the second tier until 2017.

“The Championship is very difficult, I have been in there and I know how hard it can be,” added Haggerty.

“You have got to recruit the right people, the right players and there has got to be a certain style of play to compete every week, especially at places where you are expected to win.”

For now, however, and buoyed by last Sunday’s 26-18 win over Wakefield, Centurions remain part of the domestic elite.

However, Huddersfield stunned League Leaders’ Shield winners, Catalans, 30-18 last weekend and haven’t lost at home to Leigh since a 22-10 reverse at Fartown in October 1990.