I agree. We're not going to stop Tomkins or others in the near term. But go look at Nigel Wood's statement on the RFL site. He closes by re-emphasizing his 'vision' to have the RFL recognized throughout the world as a leading governing body. Can we not have a vision for the *sport*, rather than vision for how much back-slapping he wants for himself? What does 'leading' mean? Anything he wants. He can say they always make a profit, or they've got the best equal-opportunities policy, anything. Who decides whether they've acheived their vision? They find someone to say.."oh yes, that RFL, leading body that is" and then they can turn round to us all and claim they did a good job. It's all horsesh*t.

All we get is "to create the best...." with no defintion of what that means and therefore nothing that's specific or actionable. Lazy, pathetic stuff. Our game deserves better.

Lots of people come on here saying..." well we'll never compete with Union.." as if that statement, true or false, means we should just settle for mediocrity. Regardless of who or what we have a chance of competing with, we should always be driving the game forward as strongly as possible, and these guys are not up to that job.

Aside from the money, the biggest appeal RU has is a strong international game. No surer way to drive ambitious young men to the other code than an empty Wembley in November.

People also need to rmember that there is no mass exodus of talent to RU. It's a few players and RL lives on. People wailed and gnashed teeth over Eastmond leaving. Is Super League a poorer product for it? No, Lomax and Gaskell to the fore for Saints, people will have forgotten Kyle Eastmond was ever a League player in a few year's time. If the Tomkins brothers go, it'll be a shame, but the conveyor belt will produce another.

Not every player is actually well suited to both codes anyway. There are few RL forwards who are likely candidates for RU, unless they play both from a young age. For every successful convert there are a string of failures. Harris failed to live up to the billing, Henry Paul and Andy Farrell never justified their central contracts. That's why you won't be seeing the RFU splash out a lot of cash on RL players, it'll be left to the clubs to finance, and they aren't as rich as you would think.

I'd rather be the sport with the conveyor belt than the one with the chequebook. RU's finances are not as rosey as they once were. When they run out of cheques they might have to start producing their own players, then they'll quickly realise that the public school network is no deeper a talent pool than the M62 corridor is.

This sport is bigger than a few star players.

The RFL simply does not have the money to subsidise contracts to the extent that they would need to in order to stop Union from taking our players.

Boycotting an RFL event such as the 4 nations will leave them with even less money, whereas getting extra people to go will get them more giving them the option of giving money to clubs (and increasing the SC) or subsidising key English players wages.

The suggestion of boycotting the 4 nations is a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face - not clever.

Ok firstly. wow thats the worst solution to keeping players in the game. BOYCOTT games. lol

Secondly this is no major exodus. Eastmond well we replaced him in erm three weeks thatwas a toughy. Not to be cruel but Joel is a second rower acting as a centre Wigan will replace him without a blink.

As for the salary cap I have no problem letting this go. It was a fix to even up the comp. encourage youth development and steady club finances. For me it did one of those three to a limited level. The federation ruling has meant clubs have to develop youth players more than the salary cap did. Neither does anything to stop clubs overspending.

For me a new profit ruling would be a better way to go. Break even over the licence period or risk anything from a heft points deduction to an automatic loss of a licence to SL. This would not stop money men putting cash into club but it would stop them loading debts onto clubs that the club cannot afford the repayments on.


If players breaking contracts are an issue maybe we need to look at the way we write contracts. Currently we pay players I assume on a PAYE employee basis. Maybe we need to start thinking about treating players as self employeed sole traders offering RL services to a club. The clubs could offer to buy said services for a period of time with penalties built into the contract for not providing those services for the full period.

I have a mortgage and if I change providers early I have to pay a percentage fee to get out. This way you build in set parameters at the start when people sign up. Any outside party wishing to retain the players services would have to offer enough to the player to cover their early exit fee.

As a final word. How much do players get paid playing for England. If the RFL dont want clubs to break the cap there is nothing to stop the top talent getting paid alot more for turning out for England ver and above the cap.

today just shows how far league is behind,our fans are talking about boycotting the 4 nations,played in our own country in our own national stadium,in contrast wales ru play on the other side of the world,take a good following and put on sale 60k tickets to watch it on a big screen,at club level ru is suffering at international level its world wide,rl at club level is fntastic but at international level even rl fans are not interested, why the differance and what do the rfl need to do,is it just the rfl's fault or do we as fans take some of the blame ?

The Rfl have a massive job on their hands trying to grow the game in this country. I agree with most people that we need a strong international scene before we can hope to do this. The problem with that is it would have to be at the expense of some rounds of SL or maybe a shorter play off series. At the moment we play most international matches at the end of the season when players are exhausted, supporters wallets are exhausted and the weather is poor. I know the NRL wouldn't agree to international games being played during the regular season, but I'm sure there'd be more support for a series of international games in spring than autumn/winter. Don't know if a mini series between England, Wales and France (only 3 games needed) would maybe whet the appetite of supporters enough to bring a few more out for the end of seaon 4 Nations, which for me would be Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand, with France and PNG sharing the other spot.