Cougars chairman Gary Fawcett has welcomed the proposed restructuring of British rugby league with open arms and targeted a place in Super League by 2018.

Fawcett attended a meeting of the Championship clubs on Wednesday at which a radical overhaul of the game was discussed.

Nobody seems quite sure how the restructuring will work but, with the current round of Super League licences due to expire at the end of 2014, a return to promotion and relegation seems inevitable.

Under the proposal apparently most favoured by elite clubs at their meeting in Huddersfield last week, instead of a 14-team Super League, there will be two divisions of 12 from 2015.

The bottom two clubs at the end of next season would be relegated and joined in “Super League 2” by the leading ten teams from the Championship.

The clubs would play each other once and, at the end of the 11-match competition, the two leagues would be split into three divisions of eight, playing each other home and away to produce 14 more matches.

According to leaked information, the clubs in leagues one and three would have their earlier results incorporated into the league table, whereas teams in the middle division would all start from scratch.

The top division would still play off at the end of the season to produce the champions.

Then, at the end of the season, the top four clubs in the middle tier would be promoted to the top flight, with the bottom four relegated to the lower 12-team league, and the whole scenario would be repeated the following year ad infinitum.

With the licensing system effectively ring-fencing Super League clubs for three years, Champion-ship teams such as Cougars have had little to play for other than pride.

“The Championship has lost crowds because there’s really nothing to play for at the end of the season,” said Fawcett.

“If you’re in the middle, your crowds just drop off whereas if there’s a prize at the end of the season then it can really give the game a boost.

“The way it’s being proposed is going to be palatable for everybody concerned, but money is generally the most important thing in all of this.

“I think it will breath money into the game but the thing I’m most excited about is that you will have something to play for every single season and I think that will help bring the crowds back.

“Teams in the second tier will want to make investment in the side and I think we’ll attract more sponsors in.

“Certainly from our perspective, we will attract more sponsors and bigger crowds because it’s more exciting and that will enable us to invest in the team.

“It may get restructured again in three years’ time, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction.”

Fawcett has cited Featherstone as an example to follow as Cougars bid to make it to the top flight in the coming years.

He added: “Featherstone are an aspirational Super League club but four years ago they were down at the bottom of the Championship in danger of relegation.

“It’s great to see how they have evolved into a dominant force in the Championship, and they have essentially done it within a four-year period.

“We’re targeting 2018 to get into the top tier of Super League.

“There is a lot to do to prepare a club to be ready for that but, with five years’ preparation, it’s realistic.”

Meanwhile, Fawcett has spoken of his disappointment at Cougars’ current position at the bottom of the Championship.

Last weekend’s defeat to Doncaster increased Cougars’ relegation fears and Fawcett admitted: “It was a bad result because we expected to beat Doncaster.

“But a couple of wins can very easily take you into a play-off position.

“But I did genuinely feel we would beat Doncaster. We let little things get on top of us and when decisions weren’t going our way it gave Doncaster confidence.

“I know Paul March has worked on that this week in training.

“We got confidence from the three wins and I think that confidence has gone a little bit after playing Warrington.

“He just needs to build their confidence back up because we should be in at sixth place at least with the squad we have. They are capable of doing that.”