Think the true focus of your disappointment should be directed at the lack of balls by our Head Honchos!! Sky tell them they want to see a 'faster game and to tell the refs to let the game flow'....so instead of Headquarters telling them that the game has its basic rules, and if the rules are infringed then a penalty is due. If this has been upheld right through, then after a few games of over plenty of stoppages due to the refs actually obeying the rules of our game, the coaches would have adjusted their training to improve the speed and freeflowing action,without the cheating of 'bending' the same rules. I am, I admit an old grannyfan, but thankful that I have spent most of my life seeing the game played by teams sticking to the rules. If I wanted to see wrestling, I'd watch their games, and remember the fun of Big Daddy et al, which was great as it was all done as ENTERTAINMENT. And no matter how many times Stevo brings his MOMENTUM rule into conversation, as far as I'm concerned they are not covered by blatent forward passes. This, in my opinion, is why Saints are the great champions that they are, watch their games when you have the chance if they are on TV, and so many of their trys come from well passed BACKWARD flowing moves that flash them out along the lines to their flanks and usually onward to the try line.
Come on refs, play the game you should have been taught as a boy, and not the waffle that you are now instructed to, penalise infringements from wherever they come, as often as they occur. I know, just pretend that all teams are Hull FC....then you would get all the forward passes, all the lying on, grapple tacklesd......and eventually all teams then would play to the proper rules and not Sky's own rules. .....grannyfan Cindy

Sorry mate but I think you`ve got that back to front. It isn`t a question of how good the international player`s own team is, or whether he `looks good`, but how good the opposition is, and without doubt the strongest individual sides were during the `big four` days. The intensity and level of competition needed by the best players if they are to improve was far greater in the matches between the `big four` than it is now. Leeds/Saints the obvious exception.

International games aren`t played by average players plus the odd `star` but by all star teams and more importantly are played [iagainst[/i all star teams. It`s far more difficult to replicate those conditions when the league has been diluted in quality since it allows star players to coast through matches against lower standard players. SL is very competitive and all the better for it but , for mine, we`re doing nothing for England`s chances.

Calamity , now the mighty Saints and Leeds Rhino's are slipping in standards as well

A Salford , Quins GF anyone

Spot on. That's why some people now call the salary cap the communist cap. We are heading for the same kind of eastern european style stagnation.

The quality of RL in this country is poor at the moment. Only Saints and Leeds are anything more than mediocre and the majority of teams in SL are playing lower quality RL than 10 years ago.

Yet another well reasoned argument from a pro-SC supporter.



Happy to have a debate with you and any other SC supporters on the issues, though in my experience the vast majority of people in favour of the SC tend tesort to personal abuse, urban myths and constant references to Wigan's failings (which says much more about your obsession with Wigan than it does about whether or not the SC is working).

As opposed to you resorting to "We aren't winning everything every year" dummy spits?

When have I done that?

Dude, just stfu. Its clear to anyone who reads cherry&whine that your agenda with the salary cap is that wigan cant go and sign all the best players anymore. You and brettkenny are the same. Its all you go on about.

Saints and Leeds are the best 2 teams in this competetion. So if they can do it under the constraits of the cap, why cant your pi$$ poor excuse of a club do it, with the resources they have?

You could argue that only Leeds have been successful at winning trophies and staying under the cap, as IIRC they haven't exceeded the cap yet, whereas Saints have breached it 3 or 4 times at least. Although they were not deducted points on every occasional, they did exceed it.

WIgan exceeded it by more in one season than the rest of the SL breaches in history and were still nearly relegated

Crusaders instead of Quin's!!!

Again, another post betraying the anti-Wigan nature of a lot of pro-SC supporters. You really couldn't make it up.

You clearly know nothing about the Wigan of today. Anyone that knows anything about our owner would know that he would never even attempt to "go and sign all the best players anymore". (Thanks for the first example of a pro-SC urban myth, by the way. At no point did Wigan sign "all the best players". Again, you couldn't make it up.)

Can you post a link to the figures to back up your claim ?

So come on then, if Saints and Leeds can do it, why not wigan? Isnt it about time you stopped blaming the salary cap for wigans failings?

Quote ="Charlie Chuck"Can you post a link to the figures to back up your claim ?'" news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_l ... 896583.stm kthxbye

Quote ="Charlie Chuck"Can you post a link to the figures to back up your claim ?'" news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_l ... 896583.stm kthxbye

When did I start blaming the salary cap for Wigan's failings? I blame the SC for many things, but not Wigan's failings.

What things in particular:
[list[*Better competition on the field? With the resulting increases in attendances and viewing figures.[/*:m
[*Emphasis on better off field structures and practices as a route to success?[/*:m[/list:u

looking at the top 4 teams in super league yesterday, st helens, leeds,huddersfield and wakefield, one thing i picked up on was their teams from last week were made up of mainly british players, i think leeds and huddersfield had 4 non british players in their 17's, surely thats got to be applauded

Saints had one yesterday. All fully fit, this would stretch to 3, maybe four.

There were 3 overseas players in Saints side

Correct. I completely forget Flannery is on the field sometimes.

What do you mean by "better competition"? Are you claiming, for example, that games are closer now (a claim that's often made, but for which I have seen no evidence) or are you saying that small clubs can win the SL now (there's no evidence for that whatsover - this is the mythical "level playing field"icon_wink.gif or that smaller clubs have had more top 4 finishes in the last 10 years than they did from 1987-1997 (they haven't).

Surely any increase in attendances is down to better stadia. Isn't that why, for example, Saints crowds are relatively poor whereas an uncompetitive Wigan team has over the last 5 years drawn similar (often larger) crowds than it did in the early 90s?

In relation to off the field structures and practices the world cup has shown just how successful the SC's encouragement of those practices has been. What the SC does is stifle ambition and encourage mediocrity.

I'm saying that games are more competitive and less predicable.



Some clubs have moved to better grounds and seen improvements in their crowds partly due to that. However clubs that have not moved have also seen improvements in their attendances. Viewing figures have also risen which are not affected by the state of grounds. They are linked to how competitive the games are, people want to watch competitive games they don't want to watch uncompetitive games (see CC attendances where games between teams in different divisions have poor attendances as they are highly unlikely to be competitive). As you rightly say Wigan had lower attendances when they were playing in an less competitive league.



The world cup showed how successful the Aussies have been. With their salary cap. Why hasn't it stifled their ambition and encouraged mediocrity there?

One of the big differences was the 50% of turnover rule which limited the spending of 'smaller' clubs stopping them from being competitive. This was maintaining the various tiers in SL. At the top we had the well run clubs spending the full cap. Below them we had the poorly run clubs maintaining their league position due to their spending power, never able to compete with those above but never to be displaced by those below. Below that we had the 'small' clubs who could never bridge that spending gap. Since this has been removed the league is starting to give a truer indication of where various clubs are.

Ah, by competitive you mean that the results are more uncertain. That's an interesting definition - and the lack of certainty of results is something I haven't seen a great deal of evidence for - and of course in any event a league of mediocre teams would tend to produce less predictable results.

I'd like to see a league that was more competitive because the weaker teams had got stronger, rather than because standards have been dumbed down...

Supporters of the SC should also be careful about claims of "competitiveness" and the notorious "level playing field" claim (you haven't made this laughable claim but many of your less sensible fellow SC supporters have done so may times on "Cherry&Whine"icon_wink.gif because if you look back at the top 4 since the SC came in it has been far more dominated by big clubs than it was in the late 80s and early-mid 90s. If the play-off system had been in place then we'd have undoubtedly seen at least the odd small/medium sized club making it to a GF, rather than it being the big club closed shop of the SL era.



Not sure what your evidence is for improvements in crowds being down to the "competitiveness" of SL.

I didn't say that Wigan had lower attendances when playing in a less competitive league, I said that a less competitive Wigan team has drawn bigger crowds than it did in the early 90s. That's down to the better facilities at the JJB.

People want to watch competitive games but that is only part of the picture - they want good facilities and of course they want to feel they are watching a quality product. The championship in soccer is probably a more "competitive" league than the premiership but a small premiership club will always get big crowds for games against Man U, Liverpool etc because people want to see quality, even if their own team doesn't stand much of a chance.






Ah, the Australian SC argument. This is one which is often deployed by SC supporters. Unfortunately it falls down for a number of reasons, firsly because the star players of big clubs can earn lots of money via the vastly higher media profile of RL in Australia, secondly because the talent pool is so much wider that spreading players around all the clubs doesn't lead to mediocrity, the whole environment in which it operates is different.

I'm puzzled by your second comment. The 50% cap rule has gone which means that small clubs can overspend and get into financial difficulties. Wasn't the SC originally supposed to be about eliminating financial problems from the game (well, lets forget about the Gateshull fiasco, London's repeared crises and Bradford's current predicaement...

)?

The only thing more bizarre than this was the ludicrous 20/25 rule which penalised clubs developing players and was indirectly age discriminatory in that it meant that the salaries of young players were artifically depressed.

And while we're on the subject of player salaries, there's been a fair bit of inflation over the last 5 years or so, and gates have been improving at a lot of clubs. Now I understand that the better facilities which have driven the improvements need to be paid for but it seems very wrong to be that the SC hasn't been increased in line with wage inflation. But then again this just shows that the SC was never really about fairness... just about dumbing down standards...

Good. Because that's where we are heading with the salary cap. No-one's making the top teams weaker we are just creating a environment where weaker clubs can become strong (by removing one obstacle to that).



You get lower crowds and viewing figures for non competitive games. You get higher crowds and viewing figures for competitive games. We have been getting higher crowds and viewing figures.



That's a shame. It was a good point. Things were worse for everyone (including Wigan) in the less competitive pre-salary cap era.



Good point on the talent pool. If we are to improve we need to grow our talent pool. With all clubs spending the same on salaries clubs have to look at developing their own talented players in order to be successful. And those players need to play with and against top players in competitive games week in, week out to improve. Having our top players play a handful of competitive games each year does not and has not enable us to improve.



The 50% rule was holding clubs back, stopping them from competing. Spending the same amount as your rivals enables you to be competitive. Similarly without a fixed salary cap clubs are held back from competing for the same reasons.



Paying players more will not make them better players.