frog RL sure has similar views to someone else on here.

outed.

why would i argue when people are backing my argument!

if saints or leeds dont win another SL title for 5 years that will be good for SL.

these clubs should worry more about upgrading their grounds tbh

looks like the SC is working even quicker than i thought with cas upsetting leeds at headingly.

great result for SL.

well done giants too!

FFS get a grip

i think your grip is a little tight.

leeds being upset by cas is exactly what im talking about

the giants now beating bradford. that wouldnt have happened a few years ago

its the SC doing its job

sorry.as much asd i want to agree with you nothing will change. leeds/saints.maybe wigan & wire might throw a spanner in the works but in the end i think the status quo will be kept.PS
if you think cas are going to win something cos they beat leeds in the first game of the season you really are bonkers

rome wasnt built in a day.

Pompeii took two days to disintegrate in 79 AD.

Aye, just look at what happened to Santorini



I think they went a bit too far in clearing the ground for a new stadium

I would suggest that the Leeds-Cas game last night was a good counterargument to the 'David/Goliath' effect expounded by FrogRL.

As a Cas fan of many years I'd always have looked to get to our opening game. This time, despite it being quite local and me having nothing else better to do (a rarity these days!) I had no interest in going to the game having gone to last years game and seen us destroyed by Leeds in a very one-sided encounter.

Although I was aware that playing a game this early in the season gave Cas a better than usual chance of upsetting the odds I wasn't sufficiently encouraged by the slim prospects of it happening to go along.

Part timer

Indeed, they don't.

The figures might suggest that they do though. If Blackpool play Swinton then they will get a much lower crowd than Blackpool versus Widnes. The stats will then show that "David and Goliath" games are what Blackpool folk really want. This is of course nonsense because the crowd will have been largely made up of away fans.

I think it does in the short-run. There is no question that the came against <profinity removed> will get a higher crowd and the tickets will be more expensive.

However, teams like Sunderland used to win the odd trophy (against Leeds as well

) and this would have a permanent boost to their crowds (as Warrington will probably get this year and for the next few years). Now their wins will be few and far between leading to a gradual reduction in crowd sizes.



A fair point.



It does to the reduced number of people who still care. The Aussies have beaten us so consistantly at league that even they don't care any more.

The reverse happened at cricket. The Aussies had beaten us in every series for 17 years and the usual broadcaster dropped the Ashes series as it was no longer a big event. England then won what has been described as the best series ever and suddenly the Aussies cared a great deal about it and the old rivalry was reignited.

Sure, an absence of real competition is not desirable. The paper addresses this point too. It argues that there is no evidence that competition is unlikely to go away without salary cap and that revenue sharing may be a better solution:

"Sixthly, the RFL and the clubs consider that in the absence of a salary cap, a club will dominate the competition because it can afford to pay for the best players and 'stock pile playing talent'. Rottenberg stated that talent accumulation on one team would be limited by a club's profit motivations. Additionally, in the course of the interviews, players were asked to identify the factors considered when deciding whether to enter into an employment contract with a club. The factor most frequently identified by the ten players interviewed as of primary importance when choosing to contract with a club was: the opportunity to play regularly for the club's first team. Therefore, in a free market the ability of a club to stock pile talent may be restrained by the value a player assigns to playing. Players may be more likely to move to a team where the opportunity to play is present, and such opportunities are less likely in a team filled with many players.

Sevenly, in a professional sports league where the objective of clubs is win maximisation [... revenue sharing would achieve competitive balance by ensuring less affluent clubs are provided with additional income in order to compete for professional players. Revenue-sharing would provide teams in financially weaker markets with extra income and likely increase the number of financially viable teams. It would also be a means of achieving competitive balance without distorting competition in the market for playing services. The clubs share SLE revenue and profits, although gate receipts from Super League round-robin games are not shared."

saints losing to hull
bradford losing to the giants
leeds losing to cas

well done salary cap

this is the kind of competetion people want to see

Yes success does increase crowds but only one or two teams can win something each year so the effect of winning trophies on crowds overall would I think be minimal. Furthermore, a new club winning something, say Huddersfield, means that another club, Leeds, doesn't so what effect does that have on Leeds' crowds? By your theory they will go down by about the same amount that Huddersfields goes up.

dont think it anything to do with the salary cap really.hull i would guess have got more financial clout than saints.bradford haven't been the same since they were done for breaking the salary cap, arnt there gates down 4/5thou from a few years back.what can you say about cas eccept well done hope you keep it up.imo the best way to tell if the cap is working is at the end of the season if 2 team from say sal/wakey/cas/quinns/cats get in the top 6 i'd say its working

once new fans have a taste of it, they wont walk away if the club is well managed.

so hudds winning it might see their crowds rise 5000 or more, but leeds crowds wont fall by the same amount. indeed with good marketing, leeds have had enough recent success to have loyalty

a good example is wigan. all their success 80s/90s has bred fan loyalty today.

new grounds, well managed and marketed clubs, each club spending the full salary cap. thats the future.

on field success shared around by as many clubs as possible

without a salary cap, what chance would cas ever have of beating leeds at headingly.

sure its only 1 result but you get the picture

with no salary cap, leeds can spend double or tripple on players than cas can, so barring a mircale, leeds always win.

thats boring. soccer can get away with it because you have european competition to test the big clubs. and because the game is so big

RL stagnates with 3 clubs being succesful every 10 - 20 years.

I do, sort of, agree with your line of reasoning but I don't think actually winning trophies is the key. I think There are too few of them to make a difference in the way you suggest and to actually win one involves a huge number of variables over which the winning club(s) has no control, winning trophies must be considered a bonus.

However, if supporters know that on any given day their team has a good chance of defeating any other team in the competition (brought about in the way you suggest) then that will encourage greater overall attendance numbers.

the salary cap should increase competition and protect the clubs financially, however if you consider a team like wigan.

an excellent stadium, very good attendances and sponsorship, a host of international stars etc.

even with everything above in place spending £1.7million on players wages is far more than the club can afford or generate.

they therefore are not financially viable and are a rich mans folly. lets hope the sugar daddies dont get bored or dis illusioned with the game otherwise the club and many others in the same boat would be left high and dry.

the sugar daddies are effectively making a mockery of the salary cap, by allowing teams to spend more than they can really afford.

You have to bear in mind that the article seems to have been written for the benefit of sports lawyers to argue that their client is being unfairly discriminated against.

Revenue sharing is mooted because it doesn't interfere with the ability of the players to make money (in the short-run at least). That's what they care about.

Players may take into account the likelyhood of first-team action but given their egos, they may well have an unrealistic view of the likelyhood of getting this. Young players are also quite likely to be willing to wait and even feel that they gain some benefit in being understudy to a rugby league great e.g. Roby and Cunningham.

Super Teams will buy up players not just for their own benefit because they think that this player will add anything to their squad but also to deprive a rival team of that player.

Celtic's Jock Stein once said that if there were two equally good players; one Catholic and one Protestant then he would sign the Protestant because Rangers couldn't sign the Catholic.

why?

if all clubs were forced to take the pain for a time then there wouldnt be a huuuuge gulf in class at that point and they would still be a competitive league. It would just mean you needed to scout and train the best british players to be top of that league, if you didnt you wouldnt, and you wouldnt have the option of being the top of that league by taking the easy option of ready trained average Australians

yes, it will.

The issue of foreign players in the PL isnt ignored. and they have implemented rules in the lower divisions to promote young players trained by those clubs to first team.

Uefa are also pushing more and more for something similar. They have limits in Serie A and Spain. The PL is lagging behind here