Quote ="Roofaldo"TBH, this whole "Team X has more overseas players that Team Y" is a boring issue.
The fact is, for SL clubs to be competitive, they NEED imports. This is because there is simply NOT the depth of quality players available to SL clubs that the NRL has.
It's an undeniable fact that RL in the UK is a minority sport. Even more so for Catalan. They have to compete with French RU which throws money around like it's water and we have to compete with football.
It comes down to an aspirational question for kids getting into sport when you look at the wages for a pro-RL player compared to a pro-footballer. A top premiership football player will likely make in a week what a top RL star makes in a year.
Cutting quota's is an oft repeated mantra on these boards, however all that will do is put a greater divide into the league as it will put top English players at a premium in terms of wages commanded and mean that clubs have to rely on lower ability players (who as they're British will still be able to command better wages than more talented "journeymen" players from abroad). So clubs will have less squad depth available as more money from the salary caps will be used in order to fill restrictive quota rules. Which means that clubs who don't have the magic salary cap that some clubs do will struggle as they're having to employ lower quality players and will have their best youngsters poached by the bigger pocketed clubs.
It's the RFL who should be the ones under the microscope here. They need to be making the job of professional RL player an attractive choice in order to increase homegrown talent and thus reduce SL's reliance of overseas players.'"
Why is it that it only seems to be RL that worries about having local players in the local teams?
As far as I'm concerned, the catalans and their team will do so much more for the game in France by winning than having 17 locals each week getting pumped by 50.
Bring on the second French side.
