Unambitious? Why because he voted against the rule putting faith in a salary cap and academies. Our owner has invested a hell of a lot in training facilities for the first team and younger players. Something our last owners wouldn't put a penny too!

Give it a couple of years and people will be moaning when it goes t!ts up and the status quo hasn't changed and Salford are still attracting no more than 3500 fans

It doesn't affect spending on any of those things. You're acting as though the salary cap has been removed altogether. We're talking about an exemption for one player, with huge incentives for that player to be home-grown by the club. Your club could've used the rule to keep Tom Briscoe or Tom Lineham. There's no possible downside to this.

Another death nail in the "development" system of the game in this country. Wasting money on 1 or 2 players whilst the HARD WORK of training and developing players is left to hard working volunteers with little or no help from the "senior" clubs.
Well that's what everyone seems to want so the game carries on.
It's sad to see the slow demise of a game in this country which with the right thinking could have taken the country by storm. The opportunities have been there but then blinkers always seem to have the RL fashion of choice.

Perhaps the death of the 'development system' in this country is necessary. Its hardly like its doing brilliantly.

Seen a it about people arguing that 'clubs can't afford an u21's or reserves but can afford this' but why are we assuming those are good things to spend our money on?

It seems crazy to me that we have on one hand worries about the gap between SL and the lower leagues, and on the other a game struggling for visibility and coverage, yet people are arguing we shouldnt bring in big names until we fund a competition that takes the best young players from the lower leagues to put them in to a competition people wont watch.

I'm not acting as if the salary cap has been removed, if anything id rather the cap was raised a little more.

Far as I'm aware tom lineham still plays for us and as for briscoe he had the chance to re-sign but left it too late

No top class Aussies new Zealand er is going to give up mega bucks to come to Britain to earn less than they are getting back home. It will be more average overseas or the ones like Cronk seeking a last big pay day

This seems to be another situation like the free play rule, people getting upset about something because they don't really understand it properly despite it being fairly straightforward. Do you really think clubs are going to use £175,000 of their salary cap (and pay even more) to sign 'average overseas' players? And if they do that then it's their own fault for being stupid and wasting their money.

As I said, you don't have to start throwing hundreds of thousands of Aussie dollars at players from the NRL (although no doubt that's what your club will do because they don't seem to be able to manage themselves properly). You could've used this rule to keep the likes of Briscoe without impacting the rest of your squad, or use it to resign Danny Brough or somebody. Or if Hull happen to develop any good players in the future with all this apparent spending on the youth system, you would actually be able to make an effort to keep hold of them instead of them going to the NRL or somewhere else. Again, there are literally no downsides to this rule being introduced. Use your brain.

People keep talking about the 'low standard' of SL currently, but is that really the case anyway?

From where I'm sitting, and thinking back to (say) the 2008 WC, when the Aussies looked like they'd score every time they got near our try-line, it seems to me that England are more competitive relative the Aussies and Kiwis than we've been in a long time.

I suppose the real question now is how do you define a Marquee Player? Is there an age restriction on them? A minimum number of international caps or competition wins? Or the number of individual honours received?

I have read this whole thread and I seem to get the gist of it. The gist being that everyone is signing Cooper Cronk.

Well if people are happy watching say Wigan,Leeds, Saints and Warrington win every thing and eventually be the only clubs playing each other then fine.

It's progress I suppose but i doubt if the majority will be interested. It's the way I see the professional game going in this country.

Another person who doesn't seem to have read/understood the rule. There isn't a "definition", it doesn't need defining, it's just a cap exemption for a single home-grown player earning more than £100k or a single non-home-grown player earning more than £175k.

I suppose we can expect a raft of rumours about players moving to RU or the NRL started by their agents in a bid to secure them the "marquee" status and a nice pay rise.....

I don't see a problem with this.

I'd like to see the reserves come back though - so many young players are being lost because they're not given time to develop their games in their early 20s.

I'm cautiously in favour of the rule.
It allows those clubs who can to compete with the NRL and Union for at least some of the top players.

One of the biggest benefits in my opinion is that it opens up more sponsorship opportunities for the marquee player at each club as they're currently restricted by the salary cap.

Yeah, because all the best English players have been improving their game in the NRL!

Joe public would be even harder pressed to name an overseas player I think. If they aren't interested in the domestic game they'll be even less interested in Aussie or NZ games IMO

There are about 400 top flight standard RL players in the NRL. 14% of these play at international/inter-state level for, NZ, NSW/QLND (AKA Australia) and they should be considered the ELITE. I very much doubt that any CURRENT Maroon or roach will be tempted away, the same with a current Kiwi, so that leaves the level BELOW elite who might be tempted to come to the UK. But then, if you're nearly a pick for Origin or on the Kiwis training squad, do you give up on rep football? I don't think so, leaving us with the third tier.

400 NRL players and we've discounted 102 of them already.

I believe that this Marquee allowance will be used to bring the Billy Slaters/SBW's of the game over at the end of their careers in the hope that if you're paying them 400k a year, they sell the 20,000 tickets to cover their wages.

People act like we didn't have marquee players before, like we didn't get good value out of plenty of big names before. You think Garry Hetherington isn't confident in the value of bringing in Ali Lauitiiti? or Saints think it might not have been worth paying loads for Jamie Lyon?

When the exchange rate was more favourable, and when we had a Salary Cap that was about a third bigger in real terms than it is now, we brought in big players and it was virtually unheard of for us to lose a player to the NRL.

Because of inflation, since the cap came in in 2001 we have lost ground on the amounts we pay. Under this rule A club could pay 1 player about £1.25m a year and not be spending any more in real terms yet apparently it will both kill the game through overspending and not bring in anyone of note.

Aren't we taking a knife to a gun fight here? This exemption was announced on a day when Daly Cherry Evans signed a contract extension reportedly worth around $1.5m a season.

I'm not against this rule, but I do think that there is a danger of it becoming a blunt instrument. If we work on the basis that the best way to attract, develop and retain talent is to pay it more (and that's debatable), then lets work at bringing more revenue in the game, across all of our full-time clubs, to facilitate that, rather than creating "loopholes" in the salary cap that only a handful of clubs can exploit.

Having the RFL tinkering with the salary cap rules doesn't address the core problem which is that the game lacks cash. Placing greater demands on the owners and commercial managers at our clubs to generate more revenue from ticketing, commercial partnerships, merchandising and hospitality is the way that we can ultimately reward our players in a way that is sustainable.

Does Wigan signing Tompkins improve Hull KR's ability to sell sponsorship, or will Leeds signing Gareth Widdop stop Wakefield from hemorrhaging money?

No but it may help gain more sponsors and media intrest and in turn attract more viewers. Which will put us in a better position when negotiating future viewership rights for our competitions.

We need to strive to be the best, and pandering to the lowest few clubs is not the way to get better and expand.

Man city or Chelsea don't have to ask Burnley and Palace whether or not they can buy Fabregas or not.

I do agree we need some limits, football is not the model we want. But the SC needed to grow years ago we need to attract and maintain the best talent.

1.5m aud is abut 750kgbp. We have just signed a tv deal worth (apparently) 600k more per club. I really don't think, financially, we are as far away as people think.

Spot on. The reserves need tk come back as well.

But For those saying the marquee player is the death of junior development, it allows clubs to pay ONE player as much as they want. How is paying one player stopping an entire junior system working.

The marquee player will work for teams like Wigan, Warrington, Leeds, Saints as they have junior set up in place that allows ten to have a good squad. They can then go and buy that superstar to bring in additional fans, sponsors, media interest etc

It’s a shame that self interest reigns and as a result we can have a consensus that brings in the “marquee player” rule but also one that puts players on the scrapheap at 19 and devalues lower league competition by using the discredited dual reg system.

No club in Britain (even Leigh or Hull KR) would increase their attendaces by 20000 just by signing one player. Even if it was Greg Inglis or Jarred Hayne.