Would be great for the game to have a successful side in Salford (Manchester) and given time I'd like to think it could happen but everyone (including the new owner) needs to be realistic - it's not something that can or will happen overnight.

I don't particularly understand the logic of removing Veivers at this point (albeit his post-match interviews have come across as a little shrug shoulder casual) only to put Alan Hunte in charge but perhaps all will become apparent with a new full-time appointment.

I know Sheens has been mooted but tbh some of the good Doc's transfer targets have been so out of the ballpark that I wouldn't be surprised to see him try something much more speculative - perhaps a Shaun Edwards or Ellery Hanley-type target.

Tim Sheens would make sod all difference.

Salford are a collection of Championship standard players running around in SL every week. Expecting them to finish any higher than 13th this season would be unrealistic, no matter how rich their owner might be.

If anyone can polish a turd surely it's Mr Sheen[size=50s[/size?

If Salford suddenly have more cash to splash then there's no reason why Sheens couldn't make a difference - at least in turning them into a more competitive side. Salford are hardly going to keep their current squad if Sheens is brought in, are they?

Not wishing to boast or anything....

The level of players Koukash has been targetting are simply not going to be released mid-season. Even if they were, there's a limit to how many he can sign and stay within the salary cap/overseas quota.

Whoever comes in as coach is going to have to face up to being short of quality for the rest of 2013 and building again for 2014. It needs to be someone who can spell out to Koukash that Rome wasn't build in a day and that getting Salford to a position where they can compete with the top clubs is a long term job.

Koukash is now saying he wants the salary capped raised, I assume so he can go buy the Australian test team.
Yes lets go back to the days of the wealthy clubs like Wigan in the 80's who put 50 points past everybody week in week out and won the Challenge cup every year as theyt bought all the best available players and were fulltime.
I can only see this guy harming Super league if he gets his way being a pal of Nigel Woods.

It doesn’t need to be so extreme.

Salford, and SL would benefit from some more of the better players in Rugby playing in our League. I cant see what problem people could have with the buzz he would create by signing a big name. I think it is wrong that we put ourselves out of the market for most of the best players in the world.

There can be a middle way.

What would be the problem with having an SC of £1m and 5 marquee players off cap?

Mainly that most of those marquee players would be at 6 and 7 which would be a nightmare for England selection, and a lot of clubs couldn't support that level of spending. Imagine what happens when Wire, Wigan, Leeds and maybe Saints and Hull can just automatically hoover up the best of the available key players (think full back, halfbacks, hooker and the rocking-horse-poop that are quality centres) because they can pay far more than everyone else. The league would be getting more uncompetitive.

Leeds generated a huge buzz over the 2004-2012 period (ongoing really) based on home-grown players in most of those positions.

Agree. Seems reasonable to suppose that they've got a bit of cap space at the moment, so they might be able to bring people in, but the big teams are not going to de-stabilise their seasons by releasing star players, because the cap doesn't contain enough money to make that worth their while by paying a huge transfer fee.

Which player has created as much buzz, home grown or not, as Ali Lauitiiti did in 2004? Or Buderus? Or Webb?

There is the other side of things which whilst a team could spend big on bringing in 5 top top quality players and If we took your example even to the extreme and Leeds signed Inglis, Thurston, Cronk, Smith and Hodges, they would still need to sign 20 other players on an average of only £50k a player.

Or to make things a bit more flexible, keep the cap at £1.6m and have the option of up to 5 marquee players whose cap value is capped at £120k.

Koukash has been in the game 5 minutes and he presumes, because of his wealth, to offer an opinion on something as important to the sport as the salary cap.

When will he do a Whelan and threaten to throw his very expensive teddies out of the pram if he doesn't get his way?

Build something Mr Koukash, don't buy it. Rather than spend a fortune on Ausrtalian test players fund some development officers in the Manchester area. Hire a a proper, well paid marketing manager and give him a budget, fund schools and amateur clubs in the area. Build a foundation that can make Salford a real force in machester for the long term.

Spot on

he'll need to spend a bit on players short term so that they don't get hammered every week, but the top players aren't going to move there just because he's there. Even if he paid Tomkins another 1-200k a year is it actually worth it to Tomkins to move away from a club able to win things and move himself out of the spotlight in terms of NRL or Union.
As you say his biggest contribution to Salford and RL in general will be in his spending off the field.

Those two things don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

I think there is a good argument to say that having development officers in an apathetic area isn’t going to make the difference it could. There is sense in Dr Koukash using big names as part of the strategy to break-through and follow that up,

Who is going to inspire the kids in Salford and Manchester to take up RL more? Mick the development officer or SBW?

With regards to marketing, you have to have something to sell. Spending a million pounds now on marketing the club right now would probably be a waste of money, They might get some new people to attend but such a rubbish squad getting 30 points put on them will probably leave the vast majority of new attendee’s dismissing them as the ‘same old salford’.

Lets face it, Leeds have never been afraid of a big name, and whilst our recent success has been built on some top quality youngsters being brought through, we have gone out and added some pretty big names like Ali Lauitiiti, Danny Buderus, Chris McKenna, Marcus Bai, Brent Webb and bought in some of the top british players like Jamie Peacock and Gareth Ellis

All of whom were prepared to move a big club. Salford aren't a big club yet. They need some average signings first to get the ball rolling and then hopefully get a couple of reasonable names for next season. In the mean time, the structures off the field are far more important. If the area is as apathetic as you suggest then getting SBW in wont help because they won't know who he is, and he won't come anyway. But Mick the development officer who you dismissed so quickly, could have plenty of success in enticing kids to have some fun and play something other than football.

Why?

Why do Salford need to go from rubbish to average to good? Why cant they just go from rubbish to good? What is this extra step gaining them?

Im not dismissing Mick the development officer, but when he is talking to kids and trying to inspire them he wont be using Darrell Griffin as that inspiration. No kid grows up wanting to be a middling prop doing the grunt-work, hell even a middling prop doing the grunt-work doesn’t want to be that. The same as kids grow up wanting to be Wayne Rooney rather than Kevin Davies, kids in RL want to imagine themselves being Benji Marshall, not Darrell Griffin.

It is wrong to say that high-profile signings, in and of themselves, cannot be part of a long term strategy and it is fundamentally wrong to assume that Salford are automatically more sustainable by spending less on wages. Salford spending £1m on wages in front of 2k fans may be less profitable and as such less sustainable than Salford spending £3m on wages in front of 8k fans.

The reason is that the top players won't come to this country let alone to a side with no prospects. You have to try and build your squad up incrementally, so that players being targetted could see the potential of what you are trying to build. You need to get to a place where you are a middling team, but with potential to go to the next level, so that the big players can buy into the vision

They will if you give them money.

I'm not sure they would. I can't see Billy Slater giving up a kangaroos jersey to play for Salford, even for £1m. Even then, the salary cap would not allow it. If it were so easy, why wouldn't other clubs have done it by now. Warrington are the closest, but they were a regular top 6 side before hey had loads of cash

Well yes that is the point. The SC wont let them do it.

Billy Slater might not want to come over, he might, i dont know but the SC stops Salford even asking that quesiton in a realistic way.

I have no doubt that every RL player has their price.

Mick the development officer without a doubt.

The apethetic Manchester public will probably have little or no idea who Billy Slater is. However, get the kids interested in the sport itself, get the parents interested via them and that interest will grow. I have friends who have started attending games every now and again (inlcuding internationals) because their kids started playing junior rugby and because they went via their club. They wouldn't have known who Billy Slater was before their kid started playing and they probably still don't. But they've been to Headingley....and Wembley to watch Rugby league.

I agree to an extent. However, Bullmania did come before the Bulls real successes so it can be done.

The foundations for the success have been the juniors. None of the players you have listed have played in all six of the Grand Final wins. Can you guess which players have done? I'll give you a clue, none of them are Aussies. These Grand final wins were built from the late 1990s early 2000s when the current crop of junuiors all came through. None of the overseas players you mentioned were at the club when the foudnations were laid.

It's also not guarantee that signing Slater will alter Salford's fortunes in any way. What pack will he play behind? Remember, Wally lewis once played for Wakefield and they won nowt, Allan Langer once played for Warrington and they won nowt.

The salary cap is an integral part of the game (and many other, more wealthier games). I see no reason to tinker with it to pander to an impatient wealthy man who has no real understanding of or background in the game.

I don’t know, i remember my first times playing RL were in the park with mates or in the playground at break-time playing touch and pass pretending to be whoever had been the best that weekend. I went on to play for youth sides because of that, im not sure I would have joined a youth RL side if I didn’t know what RL or who played it. Im not saying community development can be ignored at all. Im just saying that the glitz and glamour of the big names makes it a heck of a lot easy to get kids in to it.
But bullmania only peaked when the Bulls were successful. They go hand in hand. One makes the other a lot easier. It is a hell of a lot easier to market a good product well, than to present a sows ear as a silk purse.


Yet all of them had an integral part to play in that success.

Yes leeds put the foundations in place for a successful youth development system, and yes we spent about 5 years building towards the 2004 season. But during that time we didn’t just make do and mend we were paying £350k for Iestyn Harris, making big noises about million pound contracts for Jonah Lomu, bringing in big names like Powell, Clyde, Mullins, Lee Jackson, Barnhill, Mackay, Walker, Vowles.

And there are fans of Wakefield, who are fans of Wakefield even now, because of Wally Lewis, people who heard the noises about the crappy little RL club down the road signing a superstar and challenging the big boys.

That’s the message a superstar gives, that this crappy little Salford, the Salford of relegation and second tier RL, the Salford who haven’t won anything since moses was a lad, the Salford whose best young players left as soon as they could, the Salford of The Willows, the Salford who got beat every week don’t exist anymore. This is new Salford, the ones who are mixing it with the big boys, the ones who are trying to not only challenge but win, the ones where 2nd best isn’t good enough any more, a Salford to be proud of and that is one of Salfords biggest barriers right now.

No amount of careful planning and youth development (as massively important as it is) sends that message. Sadly Mick the development officer isn’t sexy, he doesn’t capture the imagination, he doesn’t get the people going.

The Salary cap isn’t right. I know it isn’t right. It cant be right. The SC hasn’t changed value for over 10 years. In real terms it has gone down by about %30 over that time. So either it was 30% too high 10 years ago, or it is wrong now. If it doesn’t change next year its real terms value will go down again which means it is either too high this year or too low next.

Yes, we need some sort of talent distribution system, yes we need something to stop someone buying up all the talent, and yes we need to try and restrict wage inflation. I don’t get why this structure is always the best structure for that and this figure is always the best figure for diverse businesses in an ever-changing game in an ever-changing environment.

You already knew RL, clearly. If you don't know it how do you know you wanted to emulate?

If the people of Machester are ignorant of it, get the kids in the schools playing it and get them tickets to watch it. I just don't see how Billy Slater means diddly squat to a guy in Burnage who knows nowt about Rugby league. I do see a scenario where his kids comes home from school full of excitement because they played it that day and he has two free tickets for this weekend's game so Dad is nagged into going. Salford don't necessarily have to be the greatest team in history to keep their interest. I was taken as a child in the 70s when Leeds were good but I really showed little interest. I really started taking notice in the early to mid 80s when they were garbage. I've been going ever since.

How many amateur clubs are there in Machester compared to, say, Leeds or Wakefield? We have to build that up (or should I say Koukash has to)

They certainly do go hand in hand but there's no doubt that Bullmania came first and the Bulls were the pioneers of Super League and transformed themselves. It started before the success.

Integral? Not sure about that. Webb played in 3 of 6. Buderus 1 of 6 Mckenna and Bai 1 of 6. You might be able to argue Ali was integral and you can certainly argue Peacock has been integral but none of the others. It's inarguable that McGuire, Burrow, Sinfield and other juniors have been integral.

All of whom served a purpose, none of whom played a part in a championship. By the way, Lomu is an interesting name to throw up. At the time we were throwing money to tempt him we were heading full steam ahead to liquidation and nowhere near winning a championship. Hardly an argument for Koukash to follow suit.

That's rhetoric and I don't believe there is a single fan that goes to Bell Vue now BECAUSE Wally lewis played for them in the 1980s. Some may recall it nostalgically. Most old timers though will probably harp back to an earlier era when Wakefield won trophies with local lads like Don Fox.

It's an attempt to deliver that message via a quick fix but history shows that more often than not, it usually fails. How many trophies have Wakefield won since they attempted to lay the foundations by signing Wally Lewis, how much has their fan base increased and how many times have they been insolvent since?

He does. He gets the kids going. That is the key part. Mick going to their school every week and getting them to play means more to them than the overpaid Aussie they probably haven't heard of who has made not a jot of difference to the fortunes of the team they don't yet care about.

It isn't right as a principle or it isn't right in value. You can argue the latter I suppose but i'd suggest we simply have to be realistic and cut our cloth. IMO, you cannot under any circumstances argue the former coherently. If the Aussies have one, heck, if the NFL has one than Rugby League is not above one.