I don't think Rugby League really [ihas[/i an "Old Guard" of clubs who have always been and will always be at the very top of the game. Even Wigan were relegated in I think either the late 70s or the very early 80s, right before the time Uncle Mo came in and starting making use of the cheque book (not that there's anything wrong with that, any other business on the planet has to spend money in order to improve itself so why should sporting clubs be any different?)

[size=200=#BF0000[iAaaaarrrrrggggghhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!![/i[/size

[size=50=#FFFF00He's right though.[/size

I've lost track of how the salary cap rules work now, but I believe long-serving players get a certain amount of their wages not count on the cap (essentially giving clubs remit to spend over the cap by that amount in simple terms), and I believe Wire last season (not sure about this) registered Briers as falling under that rule.

But ... does the 50% of salary cap applicable income rule still exist? or has that been thrown away now? (the 50% of applicable income on salaries rule was the only part of it that made real business sense to me, as if you still find yourself unable to pay the Inland Revenue despite not spending almost all your income on players, you as a club have to ask some very serious questions about what you're doing with your cash).

IIRC they got rid of that 50% rule.

Fair enough.

The 50% rule went years ago.

You can get a maximum of an extra £50k for player/s > 10 years service. £50k aggregate not each.

Detailed rules [url=http://www.therfl.co.uk/operational_rules=#800000here.[/url The salary cap rules are in the Appendices.

How about the mods pinning these or the link in a sticky?

And making everyone take a test on the rules before gaining posting rights on here...?

Nothing wrong with it [iper se[/i. The clubs that do it will always be perceived as being lazy and taking the easy way out. This sort of practice fosters inequalities between clubs and doesn't really help with international competitiveness, especially if the top clubs aren't investing in their own youth development adequately (something that I'm not suggesting is going on at Warrington - at least for the last few years).

My quibble is with the very notion of 'buying success' by poaching players from other clubs - does it actually work? When Wigan had a dispensation for going over the cap a few years back, how much did they win? Warrington's lack of success outside the two CC wins is frequently thrown back at them despite years of big money signings.

My perspective on this is definitely coloured by what happened at Leeds in recent decades. We tried to buy success to compete with Wigan in the 1990s, and it was a spectacular failure (although the team were good at demolishing other teams in regular league fixtures). We tried it again when Hetherington took over by paying big money for Harris (and a few other antipodeans) and we only managed a single CC win - not unlike Warrington in recent years. It was only when the homegrown players came through that Leeds really had a sustainable platform for success. A similar thing happened at Wigan in 2010 after the likes of Trent Barrett left and a raft of promising young players emerged, including the Tomkins brothers. Of course, both clubs still brought in marquee players to complement the kids (Lauitiiti, Webb, Ellis, Buderus and Peacock were the main ones for Leeds - obviously not all at once). With the NRL cap increasing, the ability to buy in talent from overseas is rapidly diminishing, so investing in local talent is going to be that much more important (perhaps why Warrington finally seem to be getting their act together in this area...).

I don't disagree with any of that in principle, but in order for a club to attract the top quality youngsters in to their academy setup the club as a whole has to be an attractive prospect for the junior players in question to sign on with. The service area rules are supposed to (I believe) restrict slightly the initial academies that junior players are supposed to sign on with, but I think we all know that that doesn't really happen. If a club has spent big money on players but has ended up slightly outside of the actual 'winners circle', then it would certainly be a more attractive prospect to a junior player than a club signing on with a club languishing at the bottom of the table, spending no money on players and getting nowhere.

Would Sinfield, from Oldham, have signed on with Wigan/Saints instead of Leeds had he seen Leeds as, dare I say it, equivalent to Warrington in terms of first-team prospects and long-term chances of being involved in a successful team? I think it's not unreasonable to suggest that he (and others) certainly might have thought longer and harder about which club to commit the development stages of their career to.

Another point worth making is that if a club concentrates entirely on it's youth setup with the hopes of developing a winning team, it's going to be a very difficult road. Those Leeds' junior players highlighted came in to what was already a very strong and competetive team (even if they were not winning trophies), the counter-argument is Warrington. Harris and Sculthorpe came out of the Wire academy in to the first team, and while they impressed, they didn't help the club kick on to the next level, and that's because the rest of the team wasn't up to standard, had Harris and Sculthorpe not had to be sold, and had they chosen to play out their careers at Warrington, I've got no doubts that they wouldn't have had half (or even all) the success in their careers that they had, and they would be regarded in the same light as Briers: talented, but ultimately not as good as others in their respective positions, with the lack of silverware as evidence to that effect.

Not even when there is a specific rule, voted in by the clubs themselves, against it?

Think you may be correct about the "old guard" though. I don't think any clubs in RL can compare to such as Arsenal or United (though even united did a spell in div2, IIRC). I think clubs go from rags to riches and back again much quicker in RL than soccer too. Of course, the differences in the levels of finance required to back a top division soccer team and an SL outfit are so far apart as to make them incomparable, so I guess that shouldn't come as any surprise.

I do of course mean within the rules. If, for example, Wakefield (no offence intended to reading Wakey fans, it's just an example) who I think are not currently spending up to the salary cap limit, suddenly get a windfall of income somehow, would there really be anything wrong with them going out and signing some higher quality players to improve their squad? And if they got a cup win from that, would people deride them for having bought a trophy?

As far as Warrington and the salary cap goes, it's being hinted at all over the place, all I can say is: If the club are ever found to be in breach of the rules, then the club should be punished accordingly as to the rules layed down in the RFL bye-laws. But, I won't comment on whether we are or aren't, because unlike some people, I don't pretend to know the ins and outs of what every player in Warrington's squad earns as a salary.

On the first point - people take it for granted that the salary cap is 'abused' and teams are breaking it, but without any evidence.

How many people making these accusations have actually got evidence that some teams are actively cheating and gaining an advantage, or is it just inference based on the fact Warrington are so far ahead of the rest of the league that they must be doing something that the other clubs aren't.

On your second point as regards Bradford being part of the "old guard" I guess your impressions of old guard depend on how long you have been watching RL. The teams I would regard as the "old guard" ie traditionally successful clubs, are Wigan, Saints, Leeds, Bradford, Hull. When I was younger I'd have had Widnes and Hull KR in that group but its been a long time since they were successful. When Bradford became strong in the 1990s it wasn't so much a new team emerging as an old powerhouse of the game returning to the fore, after all they had been champions in the early 1980s and had Ellery Hanley etc. When we became good under Tony Smith it was a new team emerging because we'd won f-all since Alex Murphy won us a one-off Challenge Cup in 1974.

Warrington have done something that other clubs aren't - paying transfer fees and thus avoiding getting into bidding wars with other clubs.

If a player is out of contract and able to talk to a number of clubs you can guarantee he will be playing one off against another. Whilst if say Richard Myler has a year left of a £10k a year contract at Salford is he going to accept a four year deal contract with Warrington at a few grand less per year than what he could negotiate if he saw out the additional year at Salford? I would suggest yes - so the value a rich benefactor provides to Warrington is that he is willing to bank-roll the transfer fee to provide exclusivity. Look at Carvell when he left Hull - no other club would pay the fee Hull wanted - if five clubs were willing I'll guarantee that his salary now would be a few grand more.

The only player I think we have picked-up at the end of his contract was Ratchford. Even for Chris Hill we paid a transfer fee that suited all parties before he went on the opern market.

The other thing Warrington have done is to award long term contracts to ageing players that has on occasion swung things in our favour in securing players - Hodgson and Morley spring to mind.


Thanks to Adeybull for the link to the new salary cap regulations. Lots of concessions that Warrington will qualify for to up our salary cap, I'd even imagine we'd persaude the RFL that either Evans or Williams qualify for the Player Talent Pool one that will remove their salary completely from the calculation. Interesting that there is no "marquee player" exclusion that Leneghan from Wigan was going on about - looks like he spoke to soon in that instance.

Interesting insight there Paul

And of course if Warrington are paying transfer fees that are being financed by a rich benefactor then that money is going to the receiving clubs so this is an injection of finance into rugby league which is good for the game.

But surely that just ties up a salary cap for a long time and not all players are worth that gamble?

Anyway what I can't understand is the logic behind the salary cap anymore. If ther are so many clubs with rich backers supposedly flouting the rules why is it not scrapped? How would the clubs with no backer be any worse off and how would those supposedly flouting the rules be better off?

It would make things worse though. At least at the moment, clubs have to at least try and pretend they are keeping under the cap and therefore can't have an international in every position. With no cap, rich clubs could drive up wages, buy who they like and pay stupid money, the others would be left far behind.
It would in effect create a two tier league I think.

The idea someone on here had a while ago, about allocating points to a player and having a points cap rather than a salary cap is brilliant. I don't know why it is not used. I am sure the rich clubs would vote for it...

Even a system like that could be 'fiddled' with. A top notch player could be 'encouraged' to ... let's say "take it easy" for a season, his rating would then drop, allowing the club to bring in another highly rated player - the reigns are then taken off the initial player, cheated the system.

Also, what would you base the points system on? Subjective opinion as to how "good" someone is? Try/Points scoring record? metres gained? Tackles made? etc etc.

And the difference to what we have now is what? It's not that there is an uneven playing field that annoys people so much as the powers that be denying it.

The way I would simplify the cap is to have no limit on overall spend but say each club can only have 20 players earning above X salary, and only 6 players earning above Y salary.

You then set X as being what would be a reasonable benchmark for a first team regular.

Set Y as being what would be a reasonable benchmark for a top class international player.

The effect of this one would be that the richest clubs could pay whatever they wanted for their very elite players, but you couldn't get a club hoarding all the top talent, because once their top 6 players had been accounted for, they were then facing a salary limit of Y for the any other player on their books. So the guys who were say the 7th and 8th best players at a top club would then be likely to move to another club who had space on its quota of 6 players above Y salary.

It wouldn't be a perfect system by any means but it would keep the top players away from union and it would distribute talent around the league, after a few years under that system you would hope that each club had at least 6 big gun players.

Its a good idea in theory but entirely misses the point of how the Salary Cap is currently being manipulated.
See Adey's posts.

Phil Clarke could be in charge of making the ratings.

Sam Tomkins would put Wigan over the points cap on his own.

I don't know much about the player talent pool but hopefully Bateman will qualify for that in our team. Will give us a bit more for other players.

The idea is fine - as far as it goes, but it only covers [icontract[/i money from the club and not 'extras' , like image rights, from the 'perfectly legal' non club -connected, third-party sources. The RFL have the power to look through a club's books, but obviously not the book's of an owner/sponsor or business partner of owner/sponsor, who would find it very easy to 'lose' large amounts when paid through various company accounts and not even necessarily paid in this country. Though clearly I wouldn't accuse anyone of indulging in such a scheme, as I'm sure all clubs are above reproach on this, but it could be done quite easily.

You and others may think that it is being manipulated, but as Sally says, how do you know? It's really all pure speculation. Rival fans talk about Warrington being full of internationals but Saturday's team included Chris Riley, Mickey Higham, Paul Wood, Matty Blythe, Mike Cooper, Stefan Ratchford, Chris Hill and Tyrone McCarthy, none of whom are current internationals.