Andy Greg was poor as he turned his back to pass

If you take the twelve teams who were in SL last year, they are all playing better rugby than last year except Leeds, Bulls and Wigan. If you mean that SL is worse because other teams have improved, then fine. In fact, the salary cap bitterness is misleading, because you have probably assembled the most expensive team in SL, because you buy in. Not many other teams could have bought Barrett, Fielden, Gleeson, Tim Smith. The only way the Salary Cap has hindered you is that you don't have all the other stars playing in your reserves and have to play teams that can put out good home grown squads.

Your season this year is nothing to do with the salary cap. The best purchases this year were Mick Potter, Nathan Brown and Tony Smith. There's a clue there.

Another self-righteous pro CC muppet who misunderstands the points being made.

what I do undetstand is that Wakey have no money and are skint. We couldn't afford any of your players and are 6th place. It is nothing to do with money. The so-called lesser teams are all playing better rugby, which is again nothing to do with the salary cap. The salary cap is just as much of a risk to us as our limited income limits our ability to pay wages, but the finances of the clubs seem to be in better shape than before it, because no club seems at risk of going bust.

There is better quality of rugby being played this year. I accept that a Wigan fan wouldn't see that, as it has mostly been played at places other than JJB. If you were top, I don't think you would be bleating, and you are 10th for reasons other than salary cap, namely that teams with less expensive players than yours have beaten you.

Nobody is talking about a Wigan POV. This 'better rugby' that clubs are playing is sh*te compared to the rugby that was being played pre SC and is why GB/England are going backwards.

Didn't know that!

Don't confuse the poor lad with facts.

Average growth in attendances for the two leagues over the past six or seven years has been near enough the same, something like 6.5% for Super League and 7% for the RU Premiership. Their average attendance figure is approximately 1,000 per game higher. I don't know what's happened to the average attendance figures for the Welsh or Scottish leagues.

I'd have thought it would have been much higher what with the nationwide media coverage and all.

We didn't buy Barrett or Tim Smith.

Add that to a six nations campaign played in Rome, Cardiff, London, Paris and Edinburgh and Dublin with regular attendances we could only dream of for international games they are streets ahead of us in every aspect.

Also add the televised TWO European cups that have also been created in the past ten years and it’s sickening to even think we come close to RU.

RL is a quality game run by Muppets like Hetherington & Hood who don’t have on fifth of the vision Maurice Lindsey had for SL back in 1992.

Instead of listening to him he’s hounded out by supporters or Wakey and Castleford etc who can’t see that for the good of the game they would have had to join. We’d be in far, far stronger position now imo if necessary cuts like that would have been made at the start.

SL has a been a wasted opportunity imo……

Despite what some would like to believe, it's not all roses in the union garden. The Celtic league, Australian and New Zealand leagues are nothing to shout about attendance wise.

Having small attendences is better than having none at all imo.

Super League doesn't run our international game.

and?

It will be much, much higher in a few years time, simply because many RU clubs play in front of full houses every week and have yet to expand their stadia to cope with the growth since their game turned professional in 1996.

Just to take one example Leicester play in front of a sellout crowd at every home game at the moment. Once have completed their stadium expansion and are playing to 30,000 crowds every game the differences in attendances will be even more marked than they are now.

I'd like to see a SL where Leeds and Wigan and others played in front of 20,000 plus crowds every week. It won't happen as long as ambition is stifled by the CC.

Correct and Wigan and Leeds have the potential to do so. You could say Hull and Hul KR to as the latter has 2.3 billion at Craven Park.

No but the two are so intertwined one can’t live without the other.

The stronger SL is and the more top quality players it produces the stronger our international games becomes.

A weak SL produces a weak GB team as they aren’t playing against good enough player’s week in week out.

SL is weak at the moment imo and not as strong as it was say even five years ago. If you want proof look at the (GB/England) team then and now;

Raders
Carney
Senior
Gleeson
Pryce
Harris
Long
Fielden
Cunningham
Morley
Peacock
Farrell
Sculthorpe

Anderson
Newton
Mcdermott
Hock, Lockers, Wellens, Burrow, Deacon etc.

That team would butcher the last England world cup team as EVERY player there, Harris apart, is hands down better than the England player of today.

??

You say it's nothing to shout about but at least they can say they've successfully gone into the Irish, Scottish and Welsh region for a prolonged period of time and been a success.

You could argue RU is the top sport in Ireland and Wales as well as the 2nd top sport in France and Scotland.

25,000 Lions fans at the game in South Africa yesterday. Time to stop peeking through the window at the neighbours and get our own house in order, and that starts by getting rid of the robotic nature of SL and start encouraging flair players and characters back in to the game; they're the ones who put bums on seats, not completion rates or back-to-back sets.

I wouldn't call crowds of around 3,000 a success. Two professional teams in Scotland with one already having fallen by the wayside.


Did I?

The Magners league has an average of about 8k which is about 2k off SL but out of that league they are managing to sustain three good international sides.

Like i said it's not great but it's a foothold in the country which we don’t have apart from Celtic.



My fault it should have read 'you could argue that' rather than 'you argue that'

Just on the subject of crowds, Super 14 RU averages over 20k (bigger crowds than the NRL), the Magners League 8k, the NZ RU comp 7k, the SA RU comp 11k and the French RU 14k. These are league attendances only, obviously the Heineken Cup gets huge crowds, the big Irish and French sides often getting 30k+ crowds, with Leicester having to use Leicester City's ground due to demand for tickets.

The thing with the Magners league and the Super 14 is that each team covers a big, sometimes huge area with huge supporter bases.
The two teams in Scotland represent the two most populous areas there and still struggle to get half the average for the league.
Rather than just paint over the whole competition, look at individual cases and you'll see it's not perfect.

I have to admit i don't mind RU as much as some do so I guess some will see me as biased.

But when I look back at the time RU turned professional and the way it decided not help out or maintain clubs such as Orrell etc I can’t help but wish RL would have had that sort of vision or balls.

Orrell failing was a by product of them not being able to produce the stadium, it’s own players or having good enough attendances to be viable with out a Whelan type sugar Daddy owning it. It suddenly found itself at odds with the new professional RU environment and simply couldn’t keep up.

How many teams in SL could you honestly look at and think the same about. Teams that don’t produce enough good players to have a massive impact on the game, don’t have good attendances, play in tin pot stadia, moan about the big clubs and keep the salary cap intentionally low in the name of fair play. (I’m not talking about producing one or two young players btw, I’m talking about producing 5-10 players a season who can go onto play at some level of professional RL like Saints, Leeds, Hull and Wigan do)

Nor is this a salary cap rant of any sort it’s a rant at the teams that hide behind it and use it as tool that it wasn’t created for. It was created to keep clubs afloat not to give some clubs a free scope to cream off other teams academies and not invest in the future of RL in this country which, imo, some are guilty of.