That is mis-management and poor attendances, not the salary cap.

But that wasnt the question he asked was it. He asked if the Salary Cap had helped. Having an SC isnt neutral, it isnt the default position, it needs to have positive effects to be justified. It needs to be helping if it is to be kept.

This is just bizarre, you can't go claiming that the SC has levelled things down instead of up and then claim it hasn't helped the smaller clubs.

Of course it's helped the likes of Quins & Wakefield. It's helped them by keeping them more competitive than they otherwise would have been as evidenced by their league positions/playoff appearances over the years that wouldnt have happened without a salary cap.
Just as a few examples from my own club. The salary cap forced Leeds to release the likes of Ashley Gibson & Jodie Broughton to Salford who otherwise could probably have earned more being squad backup at Leeds and playing 10 or so first team games a year for Leeds. The cap forced Leeds to release them so Salford has benefitted from the cap. The cap also forced Leeds to send the likes of Luke Ambler, Kyle Amor & Ben Jones-Bishop out on loan, something which Quins & Wakefield benefitted from.

I'm receptive to the argument that the cap brings the top downwards and doesn't help us in the short term compete with Union or the NRL in terms of wages, but it most certainly does benefit the smaller clubs.

Doesn't that mean its actually gone up then if over 20% (in tax & NI) now isn't counted?

So you believe it self-evident that smaller clubs benefit from a decline in the standards of the league.

If there was no SC, leeds would still have released Broughton and Gibson because of the emergence of Hall and Watkins, they would have still loaned out Ambler, Amor and BJB because they wanted them to have first team games, thats why they werent recalled when we had injury problems.

The SC has left league where we cannot compete for the big names, we cant use the big names to attract those with nothing more than a passing interest and it has led to a decline in the quality of the league.

The SC did not stop Leeds taking Gareth Ellis, Hull taking Westerman, or Saints taking LMS.

Some counts, some doesnt (hence the tax issues we are having now). When the RFL changed it, it was portrayed by them, that the change kept the SC the same in real terms. My memory maybe incorrect and it may have just been NI which was removed from the cap.

Regardless, this would ignore the massive effect inflation would have had on the value of that £1.65m over more than a decade.

Mostly bollox.

Bradford's demise is directly attributable to not having a sugar daddy, or a wealthy owner when it mattered, and therefore not being able to compete financially with those clubs who do. Its as simple as that. Bradford used the Sky money far more astutely in the early days of SL, investing in the people and activities that built the platform for the early years success. In particular, they did NOT get into the nonsense of paying stupid salaries to players like certain other clubs did. But the club did NOT make ongoing profits. Without the Odsal settlement, the club would have hit financial retrenchment several years earlier.

It had fekk all to do with the salary cap "making it more even" and everything to do with other clubs using wealthy owners' money (along with helpful councils, unlike our bunch of useless useless donkeys) to pay for what Bradford had to fund from within the club. Other clubs have been able to seriously outspend Bradford OFF the park. Where the cap is irrelevant. Their good fortune, our misfortune. Life's a bitch, and its currently our turn to be on the wrong end of it.

My personal opinion (as those who have seem my posts on the subject before will know) is that the salary cap has the potential (I'll leave it at that) to be optional where you have a wealthy owner. There are too many ways to circumvent it if you are so-minded, and have the financial resources.

It is no different to Soccer and other sports (other than maybe in scale) - the future belongs to the clubs with the money, and its the wealthy owners who have made and will make the difference.

I think this would be a dream for the RFL, but only if 14 mega-rich investors, or even 6 mega rich investors wanted to come into the game. We have none.

Now then, a year or two ago Boots n all had a discussion about the salary cap. Phil Clarke had an interesting idea (his first?). I think he maybe got it from an American sport?

If a club wanted to go say £200k over the cap - they could only do it on a 1:5 ratio. They would have to put in £1m - they would keep £200k and the other £800k would be shared amongst the other 13 clubs. An expensive option for the club wishing to do it but the other clubs get benefit as well. And those clubs not quite at salary cap level would have an extra £60k to pay a player.

And we'll never know.

As I say, I'm pretty sure this comes from Basketball. Don't know about the ratio.

But is allowing clubs to buy titles they weren't good enough to achieve with a level playing field really progress for the sport?

Wasnt it Bradford who spent most of there salary cap on Matt Orford and then realised that they cant put a decent team on the park. One man does not make a team and you cannot put all your eggs in one basket

I remember speaking to quite a few Bradford Supporters who believed they where going to win the league that year because of one man

We either want a average league or a Super League

My choice would be a Super League with Superstars earning good money

and its inevitable that the 'bigger' clubs would find themselves with the superstars, but a lot of people in the game can't stand that thought, and would genuinely prefer a mediocre sport with 'level-playing field'. Unfortunately, the RFL seems to think the same.

If a person GENUINELY values 'level-playing field' over commercial success, I actually respect their view, because although its not what I want for the game, at least its a coherent argument. What I don't respect is the fools who think that they can have it both ways, and think that the secret of success is to hold back the best clubs, whilst the rest somehow 'catch up' commercially. Ain't EVER going to happen.

Bringing over Union players would actually help, because the top clubs wouldn't want most of them, so we could use them to put bums on seats at the smaller clubs.

I think most people want a Super League, but more than a 3 or 4 team Super League which is all it would be with no salary cap.

The reality with Bradford is that their philosophy under Caisley to attract crowds with the most marketable players in the game playing in a quality team just wasn't compatible in a salary cap system. When the likes of Henry / Robbie Paul, Vainikolo, Lowes, Fielden etc move on and the players aren't there to replace them, then the performances drop and the crowds drop. That isn't the salary cap harming Bradford, that's Bradford not having a system that is 'compatible' with a salary cap system.

Thats one way of looking at it

but why is it that anyone who questions either the level of the technical detail of the cap is assumed to be in favour of having no cap??!

Virtually nobody ever says "have no cap at all".

Even the simplest possible 'cap', (pretty much the one we have now) still needs the level setting correctly. And of course, there are more sophisticated structures that would keep some benefits and fix some problems.

You're arguing against a point that your opponents aren't even making! ... by assuming we want to scrap all form of salary control.

You don't half talk some total bollox.

"Most of the salary cap"? - you are having a laugh. If anyone thinks we were paying Orford more than some other clubs (or the unconnected third parties who bought the image rights) were paying THEIR marquee overseas players, they too are having a laugh.

I never met one Bull who thought we would win the league because of Orford. I met quite a few that though we might be dark horses for around 4th-6th (and I held that view) but that is as far as it went. One or two internet personas posted silly comments on internet forums, but that was all I ever saw.

How about you come back when you have something sensible, eh?

ps. just before Orford was injured, we were 4th in the table.

There is something in that. I recall Caisley railing against the cap - or at least at the level it was set at, and I think for that reason. Trouble was, then various clubs acquired a rich owner and Bulls lost the benefits of the advantages they had built for themselves as other clubs were able to buy success. Not least by recruiting former Bulls off-field staff who the Bulls could no longer afford to retain.

If Caisley had been a multi-millionaire prepared to pump loads into the club, and if we had had a half-decent council like various other clubs, and not the pile of totally useless pond life that we in this failing city have been blessed with for too many years, you would likely still be bemoaning yet another Bulls vs Saints/Leeds/Wigan (and now probably Wire) final.

If the cap was not there then clubs with rich backers would scoop up all the talent to prevent their competitors from having them ala Wigan in the late 80's, they went on to dominate the game for years as no one could compete with them. This almost killed of RL and Wigan at the same time, they had to win trophies every season to keep up the spending, the salary cap is there to prevent one or more clubs breaking away with an excess of talent based purely on available funds rather than developed talent. If a club has cash at its disposal over and above the cap then it should be invested in the facilities and youth system to entice the best players and youngsters to the club, this is of more benifit to RL than paying over the odds for one or two marquee signings. Better facilities and local lads will always put bums on seats and is easier to spread around the competition as they are investments in the clubs rather than payments to individuals, the cap was designed to do this and prevent clubs from putting all their cash into an unsustainable wage bill for players. What will be interesting is when the batch of pre 2008 quota exemptions/dispensations fall out of the system, this combined with the SC should see a better levelling out of the competion in percentage of overseas players to British players. This is why clubs should be investing monies into the youth systems to fill these vacant squad places down the track, clubs that continue to buy in talent will suffer due to this short term gain attitude.

Adey, you have rallied against Bradford Council a couple of times in this thread. They can't be all that bad, as didn't they give the Bulls £3/4 million lump sum for handing over the maintenance of the ground? They can't be all bad.

Maybe part of the reason that the SL isn't as even as the NRL comes down to salary cap level v income. In NRL the salary cap is around 30% of clubs income. In SL it is probably over 50% for most clubs. Either SL clubs need to get their incomes up or the salary cap needs to come down to be more affordable to all clubs without them having no money left for jnr development, coaching etc.

Yes, but "cap not there" isn't what most people who have a problem with the cap are arguing for.

It's extremely simple to stop a club scooping up all the top talent, you just have a variant of what used to be the 20/20 rule...I don't know, even 13/20, whatever, someone else can work out the detail. But the *current structure* of the cap is ensuring that the sport gets left behind commercially.

I think the guy generally talks rubbish, but for once I agree with Garry Schofield about standards being very low and getting lower.

We tend to notice established players being poached by Union, but frankly, that's just a minor symptom of what's really going on, but much harder to measure...the fact that talented kids are much more attracted to Union, so we don't even know what we're missing.

We *MUST* allow the game to have superstars. Without superstars, we're not commercially interesting and therefore the game declines. In today's world, superstars means paying money. Clubs a) should be prevented from spending more than they can afford, and b) prevented from 'scooping' up talent and leaving it sat on a bench thus cheating fans out of watching the top talent.

Anything else is fantasy land. You *cannot* deliberately hold back the market leaders to 'equalize' competition, without hurting the sport. Idiots will keep trying and League will continue its relative decline.

With Wood in charge there is no hope. An accountant, not a visionary. We desperately need some vision, not a guy constantly defending the indefensible.

Unfortunately, its probably even worse than that. The fan base itself has far too many people ( just watch the response to posts like this ) who are quite happy for League to be a small parochial little game played by 'good honest grafters'. They despise anyone with 'star quality'. Look at the treatment of Tomkins. They despise successful clubs.

If the game itself (fans, players, pundits) hasn't got the wherewithal to find a way to persuade Nigel Wood and various others to hand over to people with fresh ideas, then the game itself doesn't have enough will power or desire to move forward and those of us that want to see the game grow are pee'ing in the wind. Over and out.