And who were the 4 teams that finished above them? Warrington, St Helens, Wigan and Huddersfield arent struggling for money, Leeds arent competing with them because of the SC and they cant only compete with Leeds because of the SC.

Three quarters of the League arent cannon fodder, a small minority is, Leeds, Saints, Wigan, Wire, Hudds, Les Catalans, Hull FC, could all comfortably spend more, thats half the league right there, then you have the likes of Bradfor and Hull KR, who arent rolling money but arent out with begging bowls either. Add in Widnes with their backing from O'connor and we have 10 of 14 clubs able to compete in a non SC world. The 4 clubs left are 4 clubs who cant spend the SC even now, we cant hold our game back waiting for those clubs to catch up.

Besides, there is no law that means because a club can spend more, it has to.

I didn't say three quarters of the league are cannon fodder. I said they would be if we removed the salary cap.

I think you over estimate the wealth of Catalans and Hull, and forget that Huddersfield and Warrington are very dependant on their owners, which is not sustainable. The rest would be even further behind if we removed the salary cap.

I can't understand why you still can't see the affect the salary cap has had in spreading talent around the league.



With no cap in place, they would have to, to be able to compete.

Once again, who exactly are you arguing with? Nobody, as far as I can tell is saying have NO cap in place. The OP asked a question about an increase, and I've suggested restructuring it so that it's focused mainly on turnover and tough squad limits.

Is that discussion unreasonable? Are you convinced that we've got the cap exactly right as it stands? For that matter, taking your logic - is it not too high already? If you think the cap equalizes competition and improves standards, why not lower it to the level the weakest club can afford?

Your argument that equalizing competition and raising standards go hand in hand is nonsense. There's practically no correlation. You can pick examples in sports all over world 'supporting' one side of the argument or the other. The primary driver for high standards is a limited number of berths in the top competition and a large pool of players very keen to win those berths. The better that ratio, the higher the standard. We'll only genuinely improve standards by increasing that pool of players clamouring for the top berths and I'm afraid that possible fame and (limited) fortune play a major role in inspiring people to fight for those places.

I play cricket in a very tight league - this year, with 3 games left, any team could have been relegated or promoted. But guess what? The standard is universally s**te.

There was one year when my skills (and motivation for that matter) improved a lot (in my case from worse-to-bad, but hey). We had a pro in the side from Indian first-class cricket who taught us a lot and inspired us to improve. We got the most out of it because he was at our nets 3 times a week, but in a small way, other players in other teams got the chance to bowl at a top-class batsman, and learned that some (most) of the stuff you get away with bowling at amateurs doesn't work at a higher level. Hopefully this had a small improvement on them as bowlers. Guess what? Other teams whined about it. They were perfectly entitled to have a pro too, but couldn't afford it. ( In fact, neither could we, we were very lucky that the guy was in England to work that summer on some other cricket-based scheme and we happened to be the nearest club - he played for free). Equality? No. A small contribution to improving standards? Definitely.

To make the game more successful and widely known we need more general advertising and making more cap space available to encourage any up and coming athlete to choose rugby league as their sport so putting an increasingly entertaining product onto the field,
Let the richer clubs spend more money on their cap say up to a mamimum of £500,000 on the condition that every £1 spent an equal amount is given to the RFL towards their advertising campaigns to promote the game.

Pretty much agree. Personally I'd like it to be more robustly structured so that any extra (say your £500k) was specifically only used to fund 'superstars' not to just beef up the squad with mulitple mediocre players.

All you have to do is look at all those bankrupt, skint sporting clubs in USA. Strangely enough American Football, hockey, basketball and baseball all operate within a cap.

If we move away from RL and just look at Business as a whole, we find that the most creative and successful business sectors tend to be those were there are a significant number of similarly sized organisations able to compete on a mainly even keel with each other. This drives them to look at all possible avenues to move their business forward.

Now compare those business sectors to those that have a single or limited number of all powerful near monopolistic suppliers. What you see then is an organisation that moves at a much slower pace.

With the Salary cap the aim is to create a dynamic internal playing market, one that will create coaches who wont win the league by buying the talent but will win it by developing players and creating innovative systems to keep ahead of the rest. Players themselves wont be able to merely overun opponents they will have to work hard on developing their game and playing at the best of their ability. Examples of this are the NFL, NRL, NBA.
These sports enjoy huge popularity and get massive TV ratings

Now look at the monopolistic league with no salary cap and one or two all powerful clubs. With this there is no need to develop players and innovate on and off the pitch, all that matters is the wealth to buy up anyone that may threaten your hegemony. The end result is a league with a small cadre of talented players all with one or two clubs, and low playing standards because those talented players dont even need to break sweat to win games. The classic examples of this are the Scottish Premier League and Rugby League in the mid 1980's to mid 1990's. These sports become regarded as jokes and see a decline in popularity and TV ratings.

thats a very selective choice on non SL leagues isnt it? what about the Premier League? La Liga? almost all of soccer? These sports are massive and worldwide bigger than the NFL, NRL, and NBA, they enjoy more money coming into the game, bigger tv ratings and premier league is the most saleable sports league on the planet by a fairly comfortable distance.

Besides, i dont think anyone would be arguing against the SC if it was in the hundreds of millions of pounds like the NFL and NBA and allowed us to bring in the very best players from around the world.

It's unfair to compare with US sports because of the college draft system, which is pretty much unique in world sport and provides a constant influx of talent into all of their professional sports leagues on an annual basis at no cost to any of the teams. There is no academy system in any professional league over there and teams do not develop their own young players prior to drafting them. The exception is the MLS, mainly because soccer is the only sport that is played to a higher level outside the US

I don't think you'll find many people on here that want the Cap abolished altogether but although the aim of evening the competition is applaudable, the reality is that all the Cap has ended up doing is hold back the stronger teams and bring them down to the level of the weaker clubs, rather raising the standard of weaker teams, resulting in a weaker competition as a whole. There is no incentive for anyone to improve anything with the way the cap is curently structured

The big clubs need holding back, particularly Wigan. Bought for a fiver and wouldn't exist now if it were not for Dave Whelan needing a multi-use angle for planning permission on his new stadium for Latics.

Perhaps we could have SC bands A, B, C etc.. with penalties.
The higher band the club want to be in, the less they get from the RFL pot. That extra money can then be used to support the lesser well off clubs, to build with.

The salary cap should be lower, Most clubs can;t afford it and it has done little to create an even competition due to this. I would set it at 1.2million but allow bonus spending for players that will actually add to the game ie:

1.2mill base
an additional 250k to spend on any Welsh or French International standard RU player signed
and additional 250k to spend on any current Australian or NZ Test player
an additional 25k for every player your club develops through your own jnr programme
players that have olayed 10 years for one club are cap exempt

that would do me.

That would do most big clubs. They would have an extra £300k on current cap levels just on the academy players bit.

But clubs can't afford to spend more, so there really is no need to let them.

Maybe they should be spending more on having feeder clubs

, then they could share ' facilities ' like grass fields , balls and tackle bags

You and your short sighted attitude is making me regret my £20 donation to Leigh RLFC's survival fund

My question was should the Salary Cap be increased and I think I got my answer it all depends on which club support

Thats a real shame because I am first a rugby league supporter who supports the national team and realise doing nothing now would mean we have to bring as many NRL players across to play for England as possible or we have no chance against the Kiwis never mind the Aussies

2nd im a Hull FC fan and wish we could sign players like Cooper Cronk as the club can afford it but why would he want to come and play in a sub standard league

And what about the players? what do they get in return for their cut in wages?

Not that it's any of my business , but it should be higher , but until all or more are able to spend up to it with ' earnings ' , then it will stay approximately where it is

And where is the incentive for those clubs to sort out their marketing, strategy, player development, academies? None - as they aren't the ones being held back.

Yes but they're safe from relegation

Can't argue with that

It really depends if you see defections to Unioin as a problem that HAS to be solved, or just a pain that you can live with. At current levels of defections, the likes of Joel Tomkins leaving may be seen as something we can live with. If it were Sam, would people think the same?

If defections are viewed as a real threat to the sport then the level-playing field issue doesn't cut it - we ought to look at any solution to the issue (e.g. completely exempting third-party payments to players). If that benefits the top few clubs, sobeit.

If defections aren't seen as life-threatening to the sport, then we carry on as we are.

Based on my salary cap most players wouldn't actually get less, but it would target clubs to be more productive in range of areas.

ps getting 50-100k to exercise all week and then play a game for 90 minutes isn't a bad life!

If RU clubs were to regularly attract RL stars and pay them the sort of money being bandied around, we might suffer a few years of pain. But it will all be worth it because after five years of defections the RFU would be bankrupt.