Haven't the SL suits negotiated "record" Sky Sports deals the last few times, in fact the last one we jumped into despite the deal not being up for a few years because it was so impressive apparently. Where is that money even going? Clubs must be getting more Sky money than ever.

In the NRL the cap has increased by over £1m in the last 12 years while ours has barely changed in nearly 20 years. I'm not saying we should just put it up, but that just proves there are deeper issues surrounding our game and the administration over here.

The fact that most clubs couldn't be bothered registered a reserve side this year is ridiculous, and that sort of thing needs sorting before a cap increase. The RFL could try something like, allowing clubs an extra £250k to spend a year but it's mandatory to have U16s, U19s and a reserve team.

The SC has been set at a level which favours only a few clubs.

It has had a huge bearing on securing the amount of silverware that Leeds and a couple of other teams have won.

If it had the effect of levelling out the competition, we'd have seen more clubs than Leeds, St Helens and Wigan winning the comp during the last decade.

Only if you're naive enough to think the effect would happen instantly. Takes time for clubs to build teams capable of challenging established winners, and yes that time can be as long as a decade (how long did it take Leeds to win a championship again?)

Since the return to the new Wembley, 9 of the current 12 have reached a final there and of the other 3 Wakey and Widnes are beaten semi-finalists.

jesus, talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel, SL sides only had 3 games before the semi's. Widnes beat, Halifax Salford and Keighley and this is somehow evidence of the equality in SL.

that assumes a direct correlation between spending on wages and clubs going bust.

No it's not evidence of equality in SL. It is however a starting point unless people unrealistically expected the likes of Cas, HKR, Catalans, Widnes etc. to automatically start finding themselves in GF's after a few years of having a SC.

If Leeds, saints and Huddersfield maintain their less than flash standard perhaps Wigan and Warrington may be joined by 2 of that other wbsrl squad

a few years? its been 15. The next cohort of Scholarship players werent alive when we didnt have it.

in the 15 years prior to the introduction of the SC Sheffield, London, Halifax, Cas and Widnes all reached the CC final, the year prior to that was a Cas v Hull KR final, just 4 years before that saw Fev v Hull

Which I would imagine is almost certainly the case... look at the overspending football club in Leeds. They went bust trying to buy and pay players to keep them at the top of the tree....
Unless a club builds a new stadium, their general costs stay similar each year. Bringing in new players on higher wages would be the likely candidate for a financial meltdown, I think.

For me, the key to increasing the amount of media coverage, sponsorship and money generally flowing into the game is to increase the awareness of our sport to 'non-RL folk' - get more people to know about and take an interest in RL, and I think there's a fairly obvious way we can do this - but it will take a bold and risky move... Take less of a cut from Sky and insist on a level of 'free to air' coverage of the game - even if it's just 1 game a week and a highlights programme.

There'd be a significant drop in the TV rights money, but I think this would be short term pain for long term gain. The British public love live sport, our sport is great for TV, and there's minimal live sport available 'free to air'. A regular time slot on terrestrial TV could see us gain a huge national following....

But NRL is the 2nd biggest sport in Australia, after Aussie Rules. It is bigger than cricket and rugby union. Therefore it gets a bucketload more TV coverage (and money)
By comparison, RL is the a very minor sport in the UK, which cannot draw the same audience and advertising revenue.

Yeah and if you want to run this (or any) sport like it's still 1986 then go ahead and see how far it gets you.

the other side of that coin is that it isnt that Leeds spent too much, its that they failed to bring enough in.

yeah if we ignore facts then we can pretend that the 15 years since its introduction having fewer different finals than the 15 years prior doesnt completely destroy your argument that the number of different finalists under the SC is evidence of the game becoming more equal.

That's not the point at all.
Our spending has barely increased in 17 years. You'd expect some increase considering inflation, increases in sponsorship, massively improved sky deals, better ran clubs etc. etc.

But nope, we are at square one.

Are you saying that the players & staff are on the same money now, as they were in 1999??
I am sure we can go to Companies House and clarify, but I would be ABSOLUTELY GOBSMACKED if that was true!

Players yes, absolutely.
It's a cap on salaries that has gone up 10% in 17 years and squad numbers haven't decreased. It's not hard to do the maths is it?

But that is how business works.. If you spend more than you bring in, you go bust.
Leeds UTD could have had another couple of successful years, and put money in the bank, as I would do with my business. They decided to 'speculate to accumulate'... and it didn't work. They spent money they didn't have. If they had the money, they wouldn't have gone bust. They were relying on future income to cover their costs.

Your argument isn't wrong, it is just, as you say, the flip-side of my same argument.

For my money, SuperTed has a good point.



It may not work, but we need to try something to get the figures, (which leads to money via advertising/TV revenue) up.

not even that really, the upping of the cap was more to do with a change in how NI contributions were calculated.

we have been drastically cutting the wage bill for a decade and a half. In 2001 Wigan were spending over £3m in wages. The NRL SC now is about £3m. the SL SC 15 years later is £1.8m. Had we kept up with inflation from what Wigan were spending in 2001 we would have an SC of 4.5m.

Our SC, had it kept up with inflation from when it was introduced, would now be at £2.7m we have gone backwards hugely. You cant keep cutting and not effect the quality of the product.

So what's the answer, then?
Do we aim for a similar thing to football, and use 'financial fair play', where we could up the SC, as long as the club could afford it with their own revenue?
That would allow, as per the original post, the successful clubs to have more money to play with........ So they could afford to buy better/more expensive players.
But does that then widen the gap between the 'haves' and the 'have nots'. It would be a shame (for MOST of us), to go back to the days of Wigan winning everything*, because they had more cash.
*(I prefer the recent times of Wigan whining about everything!)

Yep read what you want to read instead of what was written. Typical Smokey yawn-fest.

Hard to take you seriously when you so strongly argued we should've kept the previous league structure to allow teams at the bottom of SL to build slowly but then support a SC increase/removal that would see the top teams pull away from those bottom teams with their spending power.

Two completely contradictory views.

I've posted this before but I believe the answer is to reduce the number of clubs in SL again, probably to 10. The player pool wouldn't change but it would be distributed across less clubs which would immediately improve the quality and clubs would get a bigger share of the Sky money, therefore an increase in cash to spend.

A top 5 play-off system and a similar "middle 4" system with the bottom 2 SL clubs vs top 2 Championship clubs in a group format with the top 2 finishing clubs in SL the next season.

Less games, a shorter season where we can fit in proper International tours at the end of it while giving the players a decent rest afterwards.

The average SL salary is about £60k, that's ridiculous for an elite full-time sportsman. These fellas put their body on the line each week, some sacrificing a lot for a middle-management salary which will last 12-15 years if they are lucky.

There is no point increasing the salary cap. All it would do is inflate the wages of players. Whilst that might (and I stress the word might) slightly increase movement between top clubs that does nothing to improve the competition and also allows the bigger clubs to hold on to more players and have bigger squads, thereby widening the gap between the top and bottom clubs.

I think people are forgetting the complete and utter sh|thole RL was 15/20 years ago. It was in a terrible state at the dawn of SL. It had spent at least 15 years (probably longer) spending all its money on players and none (virtually) on club and sport infrastructure. We've been calling ourselves a professional sport all this time but realistically we're only starting to run our clubs on a professional basis now.
We have few clubs who can operate properly. Even Leeds, with an income double most of its rivals, is not awash with money. We have clubs in SL who can't afford full time management never mind other activities.

We are still in a prolonged period of recovery from the complete and utter mess the sport got itself in. It hasn't helped itself along the way with the RL affliction of selfishness and backward attitudes along with a centralisation of the country's media in London which really has negatively affected our coverage. But we are still in a recovery period, with lots of work in this respect left to do. We have clubs in SL who can't afford the current salary cap. We have clubs who are one unexpected cost away from disaster. We have clubs who don't perform basic functions of a pro sports club.
Why in gods name would we want to spend what little money we have on increasing the wages of the same players?
If it were to entice top NRL players then I could at least see the point in that. But NO SL club can afford an extra £1.5m.

I agree on the point about player transfers between clubs. We do miss out on providing a regular drip feed of news stories. Which is why I favoured the marquee rule. But the fact we've got that exemption allowing Koukash or anyone spending as much as they want on a player but still not seen a big player move, shows its not all about money and that plenty of clubs simply don't have the money.

But people are kidding themselves if they think it would be anything like transfer day in football. To get to that point you have to get people interested in RL FIRST.
Now, since we don't have the media on board, we have to do this through the grassroots. Getting people, both kids and adults, involved in the amateur game is the way to increasing our profile. Even in the heartlands participation is pathetic. So that's where we have to focus. Grow interest steadily, all over the country. But, due to the extremely limited funds in RL, I'd focus on massively growing participation in the heartlands and one or 2 specified areas of the country that all resources of the sport can be targeted at. We have to have big events (internationals etc) in London to get any media at all. But I'd focus on an area like Newcastle. Tie in with Thunder and the Magic Weekend, take an international there, provide lots of top players for grassroots events etc.

RL is off the life support machine it was on but it still needs plenty of bed-rest and physio before it can even walk without crutches yet.

I didn't use to agree with a reduction to 10 teams but I'm coming round to thinking it might be necessary now. I'd also like to see internationals mid-season.
I agree on players wages, I think they should, ideally, be paid a lot more. But we've got to sort our clubs and sport out first, or they'll be paid even less in the future.