Kept expecting Father John to wobble up on his bike, but that was probably just the heat stroke getting to me...
Hi Rick.
The league actually used to run like that (the Island league still does), but there were a couple of issues with it:
1. if you have a really strong team that enters the league, they end up killing everyone for 4-5 years before they can get to the appropriate level. For most teams, that's a long time (a career for some guys), and it's hard to keep a group together for so long (even if you are winning regularly).
2. The instant gratification generation won't wait that long. Even now, you have teams who want to get into the league at a higher level than from the bottom, so they take over a spot from someone a bit more established. Having a shorter pyramid instead of a full ladder is supposed to prevent (or at least minimize) that...
3. Then you get the hard sell of how to pick who's going to be dropped to Div 7... One would think that there would be more of an appeal to have lower divisions be more recreationally-focused (say at the Urban Rec level) and gradually have things more competitive as you go up, but this doesn't seem to sell...