I don't blame the players for one minute. If a player is offered a 3x (or more) increase in salary then they are going to take it. The thing that annoys me is that Andy Clarke has been promoting league players to union for years. Andy was the reason that Chris Ashton moved to union.

Phil Clarke was a joint shareholder of the company that generated fees from Andy's activities (he is his brother afterall!!). Phil then appears on sky stating that the RFL have to do everything in their power to protect the sport and the talent that is developed by the clubs. B*****s Phil, your brother has been generating fees from doing the very thing that you are stating the RFL need to protect against.

At the end of the day money talks and the Clarke brothers (particularly Phil) should do the honourable thing and f**k right off.

Now that the firm has been acquired by James Grant my real concern is that the better UK based players will trot along to the kick and clap brigade.

The question is now how the RFL will respond.......

I won't hold my breath.

Rant over

So how much do you think that's worth? Any business would want to see a tangible return on its investment, I think you're grossly overestimating the value of the RL £, whether in Wigan or anywhere else in the country. Asda has previously been mentioned, the benefits they could derive from individual player sponsorship would be so miniscule (if any existed at all), to be unaccountable. That would be reflected in the money offered, it would make no discernible difference to a player's remuneration.

The suggestion of individual player sponsorship would be viewed as what it is, a poor attempt to circumvent the salary cap. The only businesses interested in such a scheme would be non-publicly quoted, run by individuals on some sort of vanity trip.

I remember ads in RL magazines by mizunu with Inga and Botica featuring on them. Tomkins, Sinfield, Roby, Briscoe... All marketable lads. Gillette, Carneige(sp), Kellogs, Iron-Bru... All big names that have been involved in RL. These lads start endorsing those products locally and things grow from there for the next generation of Tomkins, Sinfields, Robys, Briscoes, etc.

Alternatively we could just leave things as they are.

Frontline Bathrooms Charity Calender featuring nekkid SL stars in't bath/showers for the ladies?

Sell um in shed loads,

Hang on a minute. Where is the official statement that JT has actually switched?

So why do the Tote (based in Wigan), Applicado-fs and Heinz bother sponsoring Wigan? Why does any company associate itself with ant RL club? ISC are obviously off their heads sponsoring Leeds as according to you it is a complete waste of time.

And local sponsorship by national names is not new. Companies know if they are associated with the towns successful sporting side thy benefit. Why else would they be doing it? There is absolutely no reason why individual player sponsorship could not provide a boost to player earnings. At the moment there is no incentive to even try to do this but any agent worth his salt would be off like a shot marketing his players if players were allowed to earn money in this way.



Rubbish. Removing player sponsorship from a players salary cap value calculation is a simple way to let players earn more money without increasing in the salary cap. For some reason you don't like the idea of players earning more money and are jumping through hoops to try and find objections which is very strange IMO.