I agree with everything else you wrote but this bit is worth highlighting.

The enthusiasm that pro cap posters (especially those who post on here who are Saints fans it seems to me ) have for driving players wages down is astonishing. And they do phrase defence of the cap in those terms and have done so for years. I have never understood it.

Let's get things straight here and remove some of this emotive language that's present.

Nobody is saying players shouldn't be paid more. What people are saying (and it's something I've said a million times before) is that the game should be in a position where it can afford it. I am not privvy to exactly how much money is in the game so can only assume that given Super League clubs are not making profits year after year after year that we're not as financially secure as we need to be. Any increase in the cap has to be considered alongside what the sport can afford. Note, I'm saying the sport and not all clubs because there will be clubs that can't keep up with the demands of running a professional sporting franchise in this competition.

What we must safeguard against (and this is something that people continue to ignore) is the danger of living beyond our means. There are numerous sporting examples of clubs which have ignored that ideology in favour of spending to succeed e.g. Portsmouth. Since 1992 some 56 clubs in the top four divisions of the football league have gone into administration. 56 and that's our national sport which is bigger than international rugby union, cricket and rugby league combined.

Let's not forget that some RL teams have found it difficult to stay afloat as well (need I remind you of your own clubs perilously close flirtation with financial disaster?). Increase the cap by all means but our sport must be able to afford it. We must act sensibly, professionally and with genuine care about game which is something that do better now than we have ever done previously.

I would love to know where you have seen this. I don't believe any poster on here would enthusiastically talk about driving players wages down which makes your post incredibly misleading about the nature of this discussion that's taking place. You should be on [iThe Daily Mail[/i with that one Dave.

It was probably where I said:



or:



or where you said:



Easy to translate into wanting wages driven down, we should have been clearer.

Or were there other Saints fans on the thread he was referring to?

We are still in the position of the SC in place and clubs going broke.
10-12 years after the cap was introduced and we haven't put in place a system or rule to prevent clubs from their own financial mismanagement. We surely can't go on like this?

The costs cap I mentioned could be set at 95-99% of turnover. This would give clubs flexibility on what they spend on all aspects of their business especially players wages, yet they would have a slight profit or at least break even. It is better, IMO, than the SC in that a club could spend what it liked on what it's priority was and still remain in business.

Clubs will be able to up their players wages and other costs as revenue rises. New income sources will soon arrive for quite a few clubs. Salford and Saints will get new grounds. HKR are modernising theirs and increasing capacity, same for Catalans. Cas are in with a shout for a new stad and that could transform their finances. Bradford have their season ticket sales pledge which will help them. So many clubs will enjoy inccreases in revenue over the next few years.

In the end though if Union come in with £200k for a massive talent like Eastmond no RL club can or will be able to afford that. These are headline figures and no one knows what is really on offer.
It will never happen but I'd liked to have seen Chris Ashton's P60 after his first full tax year in Union and see how near his actual earning were compared to the £140k quoted everywhere.

Eastmond may go and he will be a massive loss. However, what dismayed me a few weeks ago was the feeling that Wakefield Trinity may have disappeared forever due to financial mismanagement.
That for me would have been the bigger loss for Rugby League.
I do feel that clubs should be held to a far greater financial scrutiniy than they are at present and that controlling total costs should be the priority not just concentrating on the salaries of the highest paid 25 players as under the Salary Cap.

Well I can't point to any links as I am not one to bookmark stuff but I certainly did not imagine it. Posts would tend to be phrased along the lines of "We must have managed to get <insert name of player> for £20K a year so isn't that great" with complete disregard for that means for the players livelihood as a pro sportsman.

I am also sure I didn't imagine slightly more links between the cap and players having to accept less money with this being a good thing in itself. It's not entirely surprising if a cap on wages allows a less well off club to pay less for a top player the fans see this as a good end in itself as opposed to looking at it as you say you do in a previous post where you say it's the amount of money in the game that is the issue.

If that is the issue then there should be no need for cap at all. If IL says he can't pay out an extra £500K more than Wigan do now then I assume he would not pay it if there was a cap in place or not.

I think you'll find that most of the posts on this thread calling for change to the SC are from people who have also called for financial controls to be brought in to prevent clubs overspending.

There is far too much confusion of the two issues from people in favour of the SC in its current form.

It is not an either/or choice - reform the SC or ensure clubs are financially stable (even growing!). We can and must do both. The attempts of pro-SC people to muddy the waters by suggesting that the cap can't be raised because clubs would go bust are just ridiculous. Financial controls should be brought in as soon as possible, they are urgently needed. Any rise to the SC would be small and need to be phased in given the current desperate state of many clubs, but in any event the financial controls would prevent overspending - if the club couldn't afford the maximum SC it couldn't spend the maximum.

The SC is only part of a bigger problem which is the lack of proper management, financial discipline and business planning at RL clubs.

I would love for the sport to be able to raise the salary cap however it is patently clear that at present this is not feasible as the money isn't there.

It is somewhat ironic that those who adamantly support a raise in the salary cap also generally say that stricter controls should be imposed to stop clubs spending money they don't have. So in effect they actually are proposing a real-term drop in salary cap for probably 12 out of 14 Super League teams in any given season.

Nobody has yet said where the additional salary expenditure can be sustainably produced by the sport.

The best bet for me is to hold tight for the next couple of years and hopefully when the country/world moves out of the "recession" the sport is in a healthy state ready to move forward and hopefully increase revenue to see players rewarded at a level appropriate to the talent they have. Then the cap can be re-appraised.

Whilst I can't comment on the feasibility of the money being present I agree with your post completely. We can't spend what we haven't got and looking at the sport currently it doesn't appear to be awash with money.

It is not ironic. Raising the salary cap would provide an incentive for clubs to bring in more revenue so that they could spend more on players. Ensuring that all clubs maintain financial stability is a good thing, regardless of whether they are spending the full cap or not.

Not sure I follow the second sentence of the second paragraph. Are you suggesting that the cap is too high at present and that 12 clubs are spending money they don't have? If this is true then things are even worse than I thought.



Bigger crowds, more merchandising sales and more sponsorship monies for starters? It's not rocket science – though I accept it will be difficult in the current environment to get a massive increase in revenue, particularly given the failure of clubs to grow revenue in the healthy economic climate of the late 90s through to 2008 - but when clubs have no real incentive to increase their revenue then we can't expect them to do so, they’ll just stagnate (or decline).



This bit I do have some sympathy with, which is why I said earlier in the thread that the RFL should announce a small rise to come in from 2013. I would want the RFL to keep the situation under review.

Sooner or later the cap has to go up though. If it doesn't then inflation will erode player wages to the point where the level of pay simply won't support a fully professional league.

You'd have a point if everyone was spending the full cap.

That incentive is already there for clubs not spending full cap. Raising the cap wouldn't provide any more incentive, in fact it is more likely to do the opposite.

So making profit isn't an incentive in the first place then? That doesn't make sense. You make it sound like Saints or Wigan aren't interested in making as much money as possible and given some of Saints merchandising prices I know that to not be the case. Clubs want to make as much money as possible. Changing the salary cap total isn't going to change that ethos because it's the fundamental reason for a business existing.

I haven't read the whole thread, so apologies if this has been said, but isn't the answer obvious? Why are we even arguing about whether the SC should be raised when all that has to be done to retain the top eschelon of talent is to remove sponsorship from the cap! No extra cost to the clubs and also makes use of the fact that the best (and therefore highest profile) players are the ones who would attract the most lucrative sponsorships. Keep the SC for club paid wages, adopt the universally accepted best practice of favouring Academy nurtured players and simply allow whatever sponsorships individual players can attract. Simple really...

But the incentive isn't there. The cap in real terms is 30% lower than it was when it was brought in.

Anyway, how could raising the cap provide [iless [/iof an incentive?

I'm afraid in your attempts to defend the indefensible you are not making much sense.



I don't think any club owner of any RL club would ever buy into a RL club because it was a profitable investment. Even in football, which is awash with money there aren't many examples of club owners actually making a profit (Martin Edwards at Man U is probably the only good example I can think of). RL clubs are trophies for business people to play with not businesses, that's part of the problem.

But in any case, your argument doesn't work, because if profit making were enough of an incentive then clubs would have grown their revenue and we wouldn't be having this debate! They haven't done so, that is clear (the anti-reform people posting on this and other threads constantly remind us that most clubs can't afford to spend any more at present).

What we need is a declaration of intent from the RFL to raise the cap and for clubs to start to behave a little bit more commercially (and for the RFL to regulate them properly).

It's not going to happen overnight and we can only expect a small rise in the SC in the next 5 years but we must change things.

And most teams still aren't spending full cap, therefore the incentive of a cap higher than you can pay doesn't seem to be working does it?

Nice try Phuzzy but there's not enough envy or bitterness in your proposal and too much common sense. Even though the cap is failing to prevent clubs going under it is essential that it is retained for its prime purpose of holding back the cream so that the rest don't have to try too hard.

Quick question, has Wigan become a better and more stable club under the cap, or before the cap when they were losing money hand over fist with a mammoth wage bill?

Do you think the cap has held Wigan back?

Why focus on Wigan? I never mentioned them. Have Wakefield or Quins become more stable under the cap?

Because you specifically stated that the cap's prime purpose was "holding back the cream"; I assume you weren't referring to Wakefield or Quins as "the cream"?

I think you are probably correct.

Certainly in Hetheringtons case he actually called for it reducing a couple of years back. I would guess specifically on the basis of what you mentioned, that youngsters get dispensation and that would have benefitted Leeds greately at the time, followed since by Wigan and Saints.

It would be interesting to see how clubs turnover has altered over the past twelve years, to keep up with inflation, it would have had to increase by 30% to stay in line with inflation.

Of course not. I was referring to all of the top clubs, yours included. However, it's good to see that you only seem to think of Wigan in that way.



My use of Wakey illustrates IMO that the cap in it's current format doesn't bring stability to a club. In our case, that stability is down to IL. If the cap reverted back to its original intent of linking expenditure to income instead of trying to level the playing field perhaps Wakey's predicament wouldn't be so precarious. To me, the cap as it stands is the product of envy and lack of ambition. As Phuzzy asks, what is the problem with a player earning extra income from outside his club? I'll tell you. Clubs like ours could attract/retain the better players and that is what the cap is trying to limit, nothing else.

For example, we could sign Inglis with the help of a sponsorship deal and let Carmont go to Bradford. We gain, Bradford gain. It's not rocket surgery.

it did do for a time when we had a sugar daddy like Wire now have.

Simple yet flawed unfortunately.

It would be relatively easy to work around this. e.g. "Lenegan Paint Strippers sponsors Sam Tomkins".

Obviously the schemes wouldn't be that obvious but I'm sure you get the point.


Much better to scrap the CC completely and, if the intention really is to ensure the survival of the clubs, ensure that a MINIMUM amount of revenue is available to finance fixed outgoings.

"Spend whatever you like guys, attract the very best talent that you can afford to pay, pay the players what they deserve, just ensure that you have enough put aside to cover the essentials of running a club"

But you know full well that the majority of clubs wouldn't go for it as it would lessen the "competitiveness" and we'd go back to the situation in the 90s that the SC was introduced to try and stop. At the end of the day, there are only a small number of clubs who could afford to pay players whatever they wanted and unfortunately as with things like this it's majority rule.

A salary cap can of course work, we only have to look to the States to see that. The NHL, NBA, MLB and NFL (current labour dispute notwithstanding) to see that players can still be paid what they deserved within a set of constraints.