St Helens, Castleford, Wakefield, Huddersfield and Widnes were the clubs that voted against the increase in salary cap it has been revealed.

This may be an indication that Saints can no longer live with the big boys. Those other teams, if Mario's information is correct, would appear the be the ones who historically have had smaller gates and therefore more in need of propping up by their benefactor. Leigh and Salford although not well supported both have chairs who have advocated for this because of their ability to subsidise their teams. Maybe McManus fears for the future with an increased salary cap.

Do you have a link please.

MacManus is a tight wad, hence all the crap signings of recent years.

If true, this is a very worrying development. I support the cap, but not the level at which it is set, which has obviously become much too low compared to rival competitions. The fact that we voted with the cash-strapped minnows who don't think they can even manage at this level, is a really concerning indication of the club's state.

It is page 4 in League Express

Wow. Sensational, but not unexpected. Explains why we're dropping down the table.

Maybe that is your future. A cash strapped minnow. That minnow Castleford is showing you what it takes to be "an entertainer" this season.

There's some argument with this. League Weekly reports Leeds rather than Saints.

Seems like there's some guesswork going on somewhere.

No surprise, the current situation is reflected by perhaps funds available, not sure how the friend or colleague's loan from Honk Kong stands these days, not sure he would even for a good interest rate want to invest more money! The club has never really had a rich backer, when I was a kid it was a primary school headmaster? those days have passed.

You do realise that we spend the cap limit don't you?

Regards

King James

Really surprised that you guys voted against the SC increase.
The simplified message it sends out to potential players is "We don't want to increase your wages and we want to pay you as little as we can"

I find it bonkers that most SL clubs dont run reserve sides because of cost, nor do they even bother to have professionally run academies, yet at the same time many of these self styled clubs are quite happy to vote to raise the salary cap so they can throw money at a big name signing.

Were do they expect these big name signings to come from if they cant be bothered to spend money developing them!!

Extra salary cap money should be contingent upon having a top rated academy and running a full reserve side in the reserve league. Dont do that and you should be limited to 1.6 million spend.

I was reading an article that said Saints voted for the rise in the Salary cap but didnt agree with having two Marqee signings.

I'm not sure how raising the cap helps anybody to be honest. It will never be increased to bring parity with the NRL or RU so this small rise won't do anything to retain players in SL. We will still have the same crop of players but they'll be paid a bit more! 2 marquee players is more likely to result in player retention.

raising the cap might allow some clubs to pay the academy/fringe players a little more than sub £20k so keep more younger players at clubs instead of ditching them once they reach 19 years of age and not yet ready for first team

Exactly. Couldn't agree more.

This makes total sense I reckon

Find it strange that McManus not made comment on it. He has other things to deal with but he's usually outspoken ok these issues

We will only waste it on sh*te like Lee, Owens and Peyroux anyway.

I've got a feeling that those 3 won't last under any new regime anyway.

Who will be the next Bradford?