JOHN Kear insists the Bulls will not take their eye off the ball with talk of a revamp to next year’s Championship.

An RFL plan to extend the second tier to 14 teams by promoting three from League One would effectively leave them needing only one win from the final four games to go up.

But going into Sunday’s home derby with Keighley, Kear has told his squad to ignore the implications from any restructure until they become fact.

Kear said: “It’s not a distraction one iota to us. We’ve spoken about that.

“It’s like anything else in life. Rumour and speculation leads to people being unsettled.

“Facts leads to clarity in the way forward.

“We’re just saying it’s rumour and speculation so we’re trying to put it out of the way.

“We’re only dealing with facts and they are that top goes up, second is in the play-offs. That’s the case at the minute.

“If it changes in the future, we’ll deal with that as and when.”

The Bulls go into the last month two points off leaders York. They are six ahead of third-placed Workington with a vastly-superior points difference.

The potential reshuffle so far into the season threatens to have major implications for those sides currently stuck near the foot of the Championship and the top half in League One. But Kear has no issue with the timing.

The Bulls coach added: “It’s not only us. It would have an effect on Workington, Keighley, Hunslet, Whitehaven, Oldham, Doncaster, Swinton, Rochdale – everybody.

“But we’re over 21. We’re not little kids in school or little snowflakes drifting to the ground – we’re grown men.

“We will handle it and will do the best we can.

“I’ve been quite heartened with what I’ve seen from both Robert Elstone in the Super League and Ralph Rimmer in the RFL.

“I go back a long way with both of them and they are people with great integrity.

“I think they are trying to work together to produce a whole-game solution. I’m not getting involved in the politics because I’ve no issue with anybody who’s running the game.

“Obviously if you’re running an organisation like the RFL, you can’t keep everybody happy.

“It’s a foolish way to go at it if you do try to do that because all that leads to is a mish-mash of compromises. You need a clarity of where you need to go.

“We need to trust them and hopefully they can deliver what’s best for rugby league as a whole.”