According to todays Express the english premiership simply cannot compete with the french who have no salary cap when English RU is restricted to just £4 million!
Just adds even more laughter to Noble saying if we had another £50k we could sign some RU players, try £500k+

He never said that.

He did.

He never said that we'd get them [ifor[/i £50k, but his whole premise is that if each club had an extra £50k they could all go out and sign an RU international.

What he said was that only £50K of their salary would count on the salary cap, the rest would / could be funded by sponsorship.

As I said if someone can go and find me another Boston, Vollenhoven, Offiah, etc then I'll buy into it.

We've got to face facts that we are not producing decent backs at the moment for whatever reason. Superleague is 13 years old and we are currently worse than we have ever been at top level.

He definitely implied that if he had another £50k he could make a major signing the rest paid for by sponsorship, what the other £500k of an international RU players contract? i dont think so brian!

no he didnt, he quite clearly said that £50k would count on the SC, the rest wouldnt, they could pay the player £8.2m a year if they could afford it, but only £50k would count on the cap

What he said is that Superleague Clubs should be allowed to sign top class Rugby Union players (if they wanted) up to a maximum of one per team.

Only £50K of their salary would be counted on the cap, the rest funded from sponsorship.

So the Superleague club in fact only risks £50K per year, but it has to find sponsorship for the rest.

I've seen the arguments that say the money should be invested into other area i.e. Junior RL but as I said we've had 13 years of Superleague and gone backwards at the very top level. We are NOT producing enough quality young players particularly in the backs.

I'm not saying Nobles idea is perfect, it certainly isn't, but let's not just throw it out without decent debate, clarification and if necessary amendment.

The thing is that none of the Super League clubs could attract such stupid spending and those that potentially could include Leeds and Wigan. It's easy to see why Nobby would like such an idea, as Wigan spent 10 years under Mo trying to find new ways to spend themselves into bankruptcy. Is anyone really going to 'sponsor' Cas £500,000 per season so they can sign Danny Cipriani? I doubt it. Noble has firmly lost the plot.

i say we should just raise the salary cap 2 2.5 million

And have a 'Super 6' competiton when half the teams go to the wall?

The vast majority of Super League clubs lose hundreds of thousands per season, giving them room to spend more would risk the future of those clubs.

You have to remember that the salary cap was introduced purely as a reaction to League's most famous club, Wigan RL spending themselves into bankruptcy. Letting clubs spend more would just mean adding £Xm to the bottom line losses.

editted for accuracy

The list would run to every club bar Leeds I would suspect?

It is an interesting idea which I thought was completely bonkers when I first heard it. I am not sure how it would pan out though as even with sponsorship I can't see how top quality international players could be tempted to leave now that Union players earn the money they do.

1. RU backs are no better than what we have currently and I would say they're actually worse.

2. Noble is getting the excuses in already because he knows the game has moved on from his coaching techniques.

3. It says a lot about his faith in Wigoon's youth policy if he feels that he should be turning towards RU to be a success.

Are there any players in RU better than we already have in RL. If there are they are certainly not worth spending huge sums on.
RL wants to concentrate on it`s own youth policy, as we have the talent in our own backyard.

Players will always go where the money is, if the biggest money was at League clubs players would come across, but it's not so they won't

and Hull, and Saints most probably would be profit making now, had it not been for the poor administration prior to Mcmanus

id expect both Wire and Hudds to be in a position to take advantage of nobles idea easily aswell

also id say clubs like Wakefield would find it easier to find a sponsor willing to get their name in the paper by spending £300k on a marquee player than they would getting someone to invest in their business

probably all clubs should feel the same, in the 13th year of SL no british club has produced a world class back 5 player,

Englands best two wingers, and best two centres of the last probably 10 years havent come from the british RL system, no club has managed to bring through a back 5 player of real quality at all in SL

Well where is it?
I'll ask the question again, how many top class backs have we produced since Superleague was instigated.

There's nobody more supportive of young players than I, regardless of who they play for, but the plain fact is that there is not enough quality coming through


Are there any better players in Rugby Union

The answer to that is we don't know.


Look at the Wales backline in 1995
Harris, Devereaux, Gibbs, Bateman, Sullivan, Davies and Ellis.

Five of those came from Rugby Union.

Are you telling me that they would not benefit Rugby League and GB team.

I don't think the idea should dismissed out of hand without a decent discussion or proposed amendments.

Which rugby union players would you take ?

Certainly none from the English RU - there backs are quite frankly sh*te!! Sackey, Tindall. Noon etc... would all make very average rugby league players.

The only players that are worth signing are a few Aussies, Kiwis and Brian Habana of South Africa. However none of the southern Hemisphere players like leaving there countries because they then give up playing for their countries.

It;s a sh*t idea and rather pathetic, just play young lads like Ainscough - give them time andwatch them Flourish FFS!!

An over reliance on overseas players and the ability in the past to raid RU perhaps?

The fact that he's coming out with this idea just as he has a number of potentially great backs in his youth teams is a damning indictment on him and his coaching IMO.

Short term Wigan tinking.

A £100k contract on an RU player would be better spent on developing youngsters in link ups with St. Judes/Pats etc.

even if RL as a sport still doesnt attract those players with the natural abilities to play in the three-quarters?

there are probably 15 players of each generation in the whole country to be a truely world class three-quarter, if RU are taking all of these, it doesnt matter how much we put into youth development, if the players arent there, we arent going to bring them through

Rugby Union doesn't take many youth players away from league. Our Andrew Johns', Darren Lockyer's and Israel Falou's are playing Sunday league football because playing a mickey mouse sport like rugby league never crossed their mind or wasn't an option because they weren't brought up along a few miles of the M62.

they take plenty, any player playing RU is one taken away from RL