....and you think those backers are only held back from buying RL clubs because player salaries have a fixed limit of expense? They're just waiting for the opportunity to lose £2m a year rather than investing in a sport where they can run a competitive club without getting into spiralling wage inflation.

BTW, the view here in Northampton is that it was move from imported players to investing in local talent that got them on the up again.

Of course not. However to make out that Union has no more investors throwing their money into Union than League, as you did, is completely false. I was merely putting across the reality, that most RU clubs have rich backers, that these clubs run at huge losses and that the Union salary cap is only at the level it is because of these backers. Without them the RU salary cap would have to be much less. Union is backed in much more of a similar way to Football than you are trying to make out, albeit on a smaller scale, and it certainly does not live within its means.

In League even if we have rich backers, such as Moran at Warrington and Lenegan at Wigan, then it is of little use anyway as they cant spend more than the low cap that we have at the moment. The leading clubs can generate this amount anyway without the need of additional money from backers.



Nothing to do with Barwell spending millions to build up the club to a point where they were sustainable then after losing between £500,000 to £750,000 a year. It is much easier to build a team when you have a millionaire benefactor putting the strong foundations first.

OK, it's got a few more investors. Are they as a result of the larger salary cap, or the greater profile of the sport?

There is plenty the likes of Moran, Lenegan and Cadding can spend their money on, other than player salaries.



Just a bit of local knowldege.

But 'sugar daddies' are not really investors - at least not in a financial sense. Simon Moran, I'm sure, knows that he would always make a better financial return on every pound spent on concert promotions than on the Wire. However, his spending on the Wire is to bring him another form of satisfaction, and he has the resources so to do. It's also fair to say that it looks like SM expects the Wire to more-or-less break even, so that the club never becomes ( as in your many Union examples ) nothing but a painful financial drain.

We arent producing the amount of players we were ten years ago, there are more overseas players playing in this league now than there was in 2001.

How are we supposed to catch up to the Australian intensity when our best players move to either RU or to the NRL and we import Aussie reserves to fill out our squads?

None of the best rugby players in the world play in our competition, we cannot compete for those players, our only hope is to produce them and enjoy the 5 years or so we get with them before they go on to bigger competitions and whilst the Salary Cap remains in place, in the format it is we will continue to be unable to compete for the best players and falling behind.

Not forgetting that the players we have in our league also affect the quality of player we can produce.

You also cannot behave as a silo - if you want to be successful you have to have to be proactive in your market place and that includes soccer and RU. It is in the interests of the owners to keep the salary cap down - Hetherington has stated he would like the cap reduced, then he never spends to it so maybe he has a point!!

On overseas players - the fact we have so many average players is a sad indictment of the coaching standards here - even very average overseas players have a better grasp of the basic skills than many of our so called "stars".

On growth - not sure how you measure this - but we have less activity at amateur level with less teams than we have ever had, less participation and outside of SL a professional game that is a complete shambles.

TBF the only time we were competitve in my time was the early 90's when we imported talent from RU. Maybe the answer is to have two GB eligible marquee players a club that sit outside the salary cap. Then those clubs with the means can sign the best players in the world but not to the extent that damages the competitiveness of SL.

revert back to GB and let clubs sign the best Enslish, Welsh and Scottish RU players again. At least we will have some success at Int level.

If the team had been GB the line up would have been the same - we could never compete financially regardless of how you manipulate the salary cap now that RU is a professional sport.

In RU there are only 2/3 positions where conversion to RL is plausible - non of the forwards nor the half backs so that leaves centres and wingers - hardly going to make the difference in standards that currently exist.

Better coaching and increased participation at junior level is where we should be investing not in very average RU players.

Yes we are.



That may be a reality we have to face. What do we do if that becomes a reality? Do we throw good business sense out of the window to chase a dragon? What purpose does it serve us to engage in high risk financial activity to pursue that particularly with the economy in the state that it is?



I don't think anybody is saying that the cap should be kept down. What the anti-cap brigade seem to do is jump to the conclusion that anybody who isn't for getting rid of it is automatically against raising it. That simply isn't true. What we are saying (and I think I speak on behalf of most of them with this view) is that we can only grow the cap according to what the game can afford. Why can't some people see this, especially those of you who work in business or finance? Any raise has to be balanced with the sports ability to pay. I don't know what that figure but those who are in favour of a unilateral raise in the cap must remember that.

Yes! Completely agree.

Scott Quinell
Jonathon Davies

I am pretty sure there are plenty of half backs who could make great RL players, likewise forwards, fullbacks, centres, wingers. Only position they probably don't have is hooker.

No, we aren’t. I have provided evidence that we aren’t, where is yours that we are?
It isnt a reality We face, it is a reality we are creating. If well run, sensible and sustainable clubs are what you are after then set about creating well run, sensible and sustainable clubs. The SC doesn’t do this, there is no reason why Leeds being limited to spending about 12% of their turnover on wages and Wakefield spending about 60% of their turnover on wages helps either become well run, sensible or sustainable. Choosing a completely arbitrary number, and spending that amount on wages isn’t good business sense, its nonsense.

It can be good business sense to spend more, it can be good business sense to spend lots of money on a player. A club could easily recoup more than its outlay on a player like SBW in merchandising. Sponsorship etc. To do so would be good business sense. In this context the SC actively stops clubs from using good business sense.

me can afford what its owners are prepared to spend. The idea that the game can afford £1.6m for the past 10 years, and then slightly more in a year and slightly more after that and so on is complete nonsense. Some clubs can afford to spend much much more right now and still be well run and sustainable clubs. Some cant get close to what it is now, and wont be able to without massive input from their owners in the foreseeable future.

This SC in its current form simply doesn’t work, and wont ever work. It is obvious that that is the case. There is no reason why our tool for levelling out the league has to be related to wages. In fact it is infinitely preferable that it isn’t.

I don't recall us producing heaps more talented players before the advent of the salary cap, when was this?

Erm.... before the salary cap?

When exactly?? We've not won an ashes series in over 40 years, are you thinking back in the swinging 60s?

As long as I've watched the game we've been either gallant second in the world or worse. Often swapping between the two.

When Wigan outbid every other club for decent players and built the best side in the land I don't recall heaps more kids coming through than now. If anything I'd say clubs now are better run than ever before.

BTW I'm not against raising the salary cap, just against getting rid of it completely.

I never said clubs werent better run now than every before (in fact they would struggle to be run any worse Than the were immediately prior to SL. We did however, at that point have fewer overseas players and more british players in our league.

And I have no problem with us having some kind of levelling out levers. I just think there are plenty better, plenty which are more focused and flexible than an arbitrary wage limit.

Squad limits of 25 with a minimum of 15 which have come through your academy would stop a club buying up all the talent. The points system floated in Australia. A squad of 20 to fit under a £1.2m salary cap and 5 marquee players whose salaries don’t count as examples.

I'm all for some flexibility that rewards clubs that work the hardest to bring through young players (note I say work the hardest, not pay the most).

I'm not against allowing a kind of "cap free" idea for marquee players either, so long as we didn't go overboard. Maybe a maximum of two per club with the rest fitting under the normal limit, with the rules to be voted on every 2 years?

As it is I suspect some clubs already have ways around the cap to ensure players are paid by third parties unconnected to the club but known to a club owner. The RFL can only audit a club and not another individual or company.

I think the real key is to attract money into the game as a whole, for many clubs such flexibility is a dream. It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation, big money backers will come with a big profile game, but only international success will get that. But to get international success we need more kids playing the game and getting good coaching and coming through the system.

Jonathan Davies was a RU half back who played wing and centre in RL - Quinell struggled to get in a Wigan side.

In RL you need half backs to break the line and create things - that is the last thing you want in RU as you would lose the ball.

RL is a territorial game - RU is about keeping the ball the only thing they have in common is the shape of the ball and the first name. Centres and wingers play a similar game in attack but it is the defence where RU players would struggle.