That's entirely irrelevant. Both to the points Gould was making and to this thread in general.

Do you really think Gould gives a crap about Melbourne? I'm pretty sure, less than a couple of years ago he was all for cutting them loose.

Gould is playing this card solely for his vested interests with the Roosters, who ironically, are renowned for buying up other players, whilst having an incredibly wealthy Chairman in Nic Politis. Their recruitment policy in bringing on juniors is VERY recent.

Please don't use Gould's rant as justification to denegrate the SC as it is fickle/naive to say the least.

Here's one for you: If the cap does reward those who develop juniors, how does it balance out the situation where clubs have a far greater junior playing pool to choose from than those who have not?

And here's one back to you - it's in the sports interest to develop the largest junior playing pool possible at a national level, right? So, if your club is in an area where the junior playing pool isn't as large as others - your club has a vested interest and an obligation to develop the junior game in your area - because if you don't, who will?

Some of us were against the salary cap when it was first introduced by Mo when he was at the RFL.
"Even the competition out" what a laugh!
Castleford have Owen, Westerman & Shenton ooc this year and all are expected to leave to perhaps Huddersfield, Hull & Saints respectively.
The chairmen and women of those clubs are the staunchest supporters of the cap yet they will take Cas's finest to their own clubs for their own benefit. So much for evening out the talent.

I've always said the SC punishes the clubs who are hardworking in developing players and rewards the bone idle and useless who hardly develop any SL calibre players.

The Salary Cap is rotten to the core, always has been and always will be!
If it were to be tested in court it would be found to be illegal anyway.
The only reason it's not in soccer is because when the G14 clubs asked the EU about bringing a SC into their game they were told that it was that illegal don't even think about it.

Phil Gould is exactly right with his views on the SC.
Gallop looked embarrassed and humiliated in that interview!

Taking his argument to its logical conclusion, they see themselves as having no such obligation. But are content to sit around doing nothing, waiting for hand-outs, which it is down to everyone else to provide.

BARLA

So the professional club has no responsibility to do any marketing or community work at all?

To have no training camps, to run no scholarsip programmes, to have no service area, etc? To do nothing of that ilk?

Has it escapoed your attention that the 2 most succesful clubs of recent salary cap times (Saints and Leeds) have been succesful BECAUSE of their investment in youth?

Saints have had 3 Man of Steel winners through the ranks. The player voted the greatest in SL history was through the ranks.

Leeds' success has been built upon the likes of Burrow/McGuire/Sinfield et al who all came through the ranks.

The idea that the salary cap discourages investment in youth is a myth. It does the absolute opposite as the strength of your squad depends heavily on the abilities of your academy products.

It's no myth that Melbourne, if they hadn't cheated, would have had to release many of their star products to stay under the cap (which could lead to the exact reversal of something we've all wanted - the emergence of a flagship club from a development area). It's no myth that several British clubs have, throughout the SL era, refused to develop anything like enough juniors and instead have spent their money on poor imports, the knock-on effect of which has damaged the British game overall.

I'd agree that it's not quite as simple as to say "the cap is stopping us having a youth system". If you don't have a youth system, that's because you elect not to have one. But I still see no moral argument for not allowing salary cap discounts on home-grown players. Even if it's true that Saints and Leeds have both been successful because of their Academies, (though let's not forget that Cunningham only stayed because Club GB allowed Saints to circumnavigate the cap - otherwise he'd have gone), that isn't really enough to prove the point. Bradford were also very successful in the SL era, and most of their star players were imports. Warrington look to be the new top dogs, and they too have a large quota of quality players they've signed from elsewhere.

We need to make the development of local talent a more attractive prospect to all clubs. Discounts on the cap seem a reasonable way to go.

You're entirely missing the point with your last comment. The player pool from your own catchment area is only 1 aspect of junior development. In fact Melbourne show that it is perhaps one of the least important. You can take juniors from [uwhichever[/u area they come from and still nurture them through your system. We took Jason Robinson from Leeds, Luke Robinson (now plying his trade for a Huddersfield) from Halifax and more recently Mossop from Cumbria and Mickey Mac again from Leeds. Any team could do the same in preference to buying in ready made players and would benefit from the (proposed) cap benefits.

In addition it is possible, through community initiatives, to increase the numbers playing at lower levels in much the same way as, say, London are at the moment. This is already bearing fruits with the likes of LMS and others and, I think you will agree, can only be good for both the club and the game in general.

There is too much whinging about the need to artificially prop up ineffective clubs. The sport shouldn't be based on some sort of 'social security' for the least able! It should be based on excellence, not only on the field at any given time, but in the planning and development that is needed to facilitate excellence in the future. That is the very esscence of sport and any attempt to get away from this weakens it.

Just take a look at our recent marketing initiatives for a very good example of what can be achieved with the right people/efforts/support. We could have quite easily sat back and seen very satisfactory attendances by the standards of this competition. That was seen as not good enough. That's exactly the attitude that needs to be taken throughout the game as a whole!

AVERAGE ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH!

You have to admit though that most of your success also comes from buying in talent. Between Cuningham and Roby, you brought through wellens and thats pretty much it, please correct me if im wrong, but i cant remember any others who went on to international level. Over the last few years to be fair you have developed from within.

I dont see how anyone can argue, that a team who produces players should be made to get rid of them too teams who cant be bothered, there is nothing in the water that makes wigan lads better at rugby than say lads from wakefield. Its all down to the coaching they get.

I think there should be a cap, but not for leveling out the comp, make teams produce good kids, and lots of them, it isnt that hard as you say leeds saints bradford and wigan have been doing it for years, but who was the last decent kid brought through by wakefield? Ellis?

Mate, I know you're a good poster, but the last statement is possibly the most misguided thing I have ever seen posted on here. Because something happens [udespite[/u a certain circumstance doesn't mean it is [ubecause[/u of it! Please point out exactly how the cap 'rewards' the bringing through of academy players?

You are right in that the existence of the cap does not stop all clubs producing young talent through their youth systems. The teams you state and like Saints, Leeds and Wigan have produced
a large proportion of their squads themselves. So they haven't been discouraged from running academies etc by the cap.

The problem with the cap and it creating an opportunity to forgo youth development is not from the likes of Saints who always have and always will produce them. It is that other clubs within SL are content to do the bare minimum required in terms of putting out a team at under 20s and under 18s to get a tick on a licence review checklist. They sit back and do this as they know they can feed off the scraps of hard working clubs like Saints, Leeds and Wigan by picking up players they cannot retain.

If in 3 years time Saints are unable to keep Wheeler, Armstrong and Foster due to the cap, Leeds can't keep Watkins, Ambler and Jones-Bishop and Wigan can't keep Farrell, Davies and Ainscough then the likes of Huddersfield, Wakefield, Salford et al know that they can pick them up when those teams are forced to release them. They are then content and have been content to sit back and simply wait for the clubs that do produce juniors to be no longer able to pay to retain them. Clubs like Huddersfield built a team around doing just that.

Before the cap clubs like Wigan, Saints and Leeds were not forced to release their players and so only let the poorest ones go. The other clubs then had to produce their own talent as there was not the gauaranteed overflow of talented youngsters for them to fall back on. That is the problem with the cap and youth development. The many will leave it to the few as the system allows them the luxury of doing so.

The problem with Gould is for every 1 word of sense he speaks 99 are total chip on the shoulder garbage and sadly he has blotted his copy book, so when he does have some positive reasoned comments to make they are easily dismissed because of his own track record of outbursts and his personal agenda.

This being the case, sadly nothing he ever says will ever be taken seriously or that difficult to dismiss.

Totally agree.

In relation to attendances the point you make is an excellent one - due to the SC there is no incentive for clubs to increase crowds at all. So many clubs simply don't bother.

We can add this to the list of things about the SC that are impossible to defend.

The cap as introduced by Mo wasn't designed to do that. It was to protect clubs against themselves and going bust by limiting them to spending 50% of income on wages. The original ARL cap as discussed by Gould in the link I posted was also brought in with one of its aims being to stop clubs going bust. Neither were designed to even out the competition.

In the original ARL cap the clubs had to prove they could pay the wages they wanted to the players and things like any sponsorship a player could get were outside of the cap. They didn't care if players could supplement their income by endorsing products for example as that money wasn't coming from the clubs coffers and so would not drag the club down financially.

We must be one of the very few sports in the world who prevent their star players from earning money in this way because if they do, it counts on the cap! The cap denies players the chance to increase their earning from outside the sport and given it's a short career I think this is criminal.

The cap we have now has completely different aim the the one first introduced and even the 50% rule has gone so it can be "live" and the impetus for it to be live was basically Cas bleating penalties on Wigan only occurred in the following season.

So we went from a cap designed to stop clubs going bust to a flat rate cap designed to even out the competition that still included the 50% rule and now we have got a live cap that has had to toss the 50% rule away and so has the sole aim if evening out the competition.

When in sport is competition supposed to be even? The very essence of sport is being better than the rest!



Yes and last year Wire took Myler and Atkins from smaller clubs despite the cap. The cap needs to make it easier for clubs to hold onto home grown players and harder (or make it a disincentive) for clubs to buy-in talent like that because clearly the cap as it is doesn't work in this regard.

And what pro-cap fans simply don't get is we will NEVER get to the utopian ideal of all clubs being equal, so this will always happen. They also don't understand if it ever did come about that it effectively makes the competition a lottery, not a competition.

Dave

That isn't even a Utiopan ideal.

That would just result in stagnation and an inwardly looking view of the world.

Any competition needs clubs who excel and force others to meet that level...........or suffer the consequences.

Under the CC, the "consequences" seem to be to inherit the players that have been nurtured by other clubs, but "not quite" good enough to make it for those clubs.

Some consequence........

I know it wasn't introduced to even out the competition but that's what is being said by those who seek to justify the cap. When it was introduced some clubs were spending 90% of their turnover on players wages.

Things have now moved on. SL clubs don't go into administration anymore although those in the Cham and Champ 1 still do so although they too have salary caps. SL clubs probably don't due to the £1m from sky more than the SC.

I've emailed Nigel Wood a few times and he truly believes that the purpose of the cap amongst other things is to even out the talent. This is why the insane 20/25 rule was brought in, which thankfully has now been dropped.

We also have a majority of SL club chairmen who will also vote for the cap so their clubs can remain competitive without them putting in the work they need which would take their clubs forward and improve standards both on and off the field. I've mentioned before on here that a former SL CEO told me that as far as he was concerned SL the tail was wagging the dog!

A real test will come for the SC end of 2011 when Saints are in their new ground with improved revenue and/if Eastmond leaves due to higher salary levels in Union. Saints will have the money to keep him but under the SC may not be able to spend it to make sure he stays at their club and in RL.

As has been said the idea that some clubs think they have the right to other clubs players and vote in artificial mechanisms and rules to leverage them away is plain wrong. No one can justify it to me and no one ever will.
The whole thing is rotten and it stinks!
Clubs should be forced to produce their own players and the home, federation rules should be applied to the team's 17 each week not the first team squad of 25.

Whilst I agree with basically everything you said above, plus the first part of the quoted sentence, I think it would be unfeasible to "Federation Test" the starting 17 every week.

What happens if a team suffers a run of injuries affecting their Federation-trained players?

Do they have to loan home-grown players from other clubs, despite having cover within their own squad, simply because the cover consists of all of their non-fed players?

The bitter irony of this particular point, is that in our case, our wage:turnover ratio became massively worse at the switch to summer rugby and formation of SL - 1994/1995 we worked to a 14.5k average attendange, and got it, SL1 starts, summer play, rule changes (10 m etc) and we start to look at sub 8k attendances, putting a massive financial squeeze on us. I'm pretty sure at the time Jack Robinson stated that we were losing far more money from the dropped attendances than we were recouping in TV rights.

All of a sudden we're in deep financial mire, are desperately trying to offload players (Quinell, Edwards, Offiah, Inga etc) and oh look, our finances are now a poster child candidate to justify a salary cap!

When do service areas start? U13/U14s at the earliest, do you think these kids pick up a ball at 12/13 and start playing? BARLA has already done the spadework to enable these kids to enter the Service Area squads.

one of The best posts ever written. well done sir

Wigan Warriors have been in the primary schools in this borough for years now. Kids as young as 9 and 10 have regularly attended special training camps run by Wigan during the school holidays, and have attended open days at the DW. I know, because my grandson is one of them.

Clubs who don't show this sort of initiative only have themselves to blame if neighbouring clubs who do gain a long-term advantage from it.

Just out of interest, are you really suggesting that clubs should not go out into the community and try to develop a junor player base, because BARLA will do it for them?

Is this another part of the 'we must have a level playing field at all costs' mentality, and 'no-one must be allowed to gain any kind of advantage'? Or is it just a wind-up?

I sincerely hope it's the latter.

My eldest lad (just turned 8 ) has just started receiving rugby coaching by Wigan Warriors after school (on school grounds) once a week. I went watching him for the first time yesterday, nothing too fancy or complicated with the emphasis on being fun. He loves it.

Dave