Quote ="post"The reason for the state the game is in is as follows ;
1 - The Salary Cap - We are shooting ourselves in the foot by having it set so low, when we are competing with the NRL and Rugby Union by having a cap so low, we have become a feeder sport. People will say we haven’t got the money, teams can’t afford it and will go bust but on the flip side you won’t get wealthy investors, or wealthy owners wanting to chuck money at a club because they’re not allowed to. It may be a cap on players wages but the knock on effect is it waters down the quality, therefore putting off investors and sponsors and it’s a vicious circle. None of the major team sports make their money from crowd attendances, it’s from sponsors and TV money and we are dealing ourselves a thick un by hamstringing ourselves from the start with the salary cap. Which leads on to the next issue:
2 - Bad Management - It may sound like paranoia but surely if a rival sport wanted to destroy our sport, then surely put someone in or put someone to ruin it from within, like a Trojan horse or fifth column. Now not for one minute am I saying this happened, I’m saying it would be an option for an unscrupulous rival sport. Anyway, totally separate, Nigel Wood did a very good job of ruining our sport in my opinion. The constant changing of the rules, the league structure and so on just complicated things and people switched off eg The Super 8s, getting rid of GB and the Ashes, changing of the challenge cup.
3 - Sanitisation of the Sport - From removing the shoulder charge to getting rid of the biff to having overzealous refs and players blatantly cheating. From having the players back 10 metres, to scrapping certain rules like stopping tapping and go at the PTB and striking at the PTB the game has been sanitised.
4 - The Switch to Summer Rugby - We lost the Boxing Day Derby for all teams, the New Years Day fixture too. So that’s two bank holidays when everybody’s off work with nothing to do because it’s too cold to have a barbecue, go on holiday or anything else. I have a theory that with our shift to Summer, it may be nicer weather to watch a game in but people have lots more options in the summer and therefore more competition from days out. In winter, on a Sunday afternoon there’s nothing to do, so having a rugby match to go to each week gives you something to do. Say, a fixture in August on a hot Sunday afternoon will be missing some fans who have chosen to go on holiday or have a barbecue instead. Football haven’t switched to Summer, they still get good attendances during the winter months. This also killed off the challenge cup and the proper tours.
5 - Competition from outside - Whether it be other sports like football, boxing or rugby union or newer ones like UFC, or even newly followed sports like Darts we have more competition. Plus nowadays computer games are realistic and can be played 24/7 against people all over the world, you have the likes of box sets and Netflix and social media to contend with.
All in all it is the salary cap which is holding us back, I watched the NRL this morning and when they showed the teams walking out there were genuine superstars like Cronk, Warea-Hargreaves, Mitchell, Cleary, Tamou, Tedesco, Maloney, Campbell Gillard etc not to mention the British contingent of Bateman, Hodgeson, Whitehead and Sutton. When we played London, both team bar Gildart and Williams looked like League 1 teams. You’ve got to speculate to accumulate and it’ll take some rich owner to splash the cash on genuine superstars to make everyone else follow suit and keep up.'"
