Phil Gould is someone I've had little time for in the past because of his apparent antipathy to all things British. But he's gone up a lot in my estimation after making this impassioned plea for the NRL to introduce salary cap modifications that will allow clubs to bring players through their own ranks without financial restriction, and ultimately to pay them what they are worth. Something I've been saying for a while. Great minds obviously think alike. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post this link. If not, I'm sure the mods will delete it - but if you guys could allow the rest of the post to remain. It's an excerpt from The Footy Show currently circling on Youtube, and is well worth looking for. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz5TEw9-jrI

Phil Gould is someone I've had little time for in the past because of his apparent antipathy to all things British. But he's gone up a lot in my estimation after making this impassioned plea for the NRL to introduce salary cap modifications that will allow clubs to bring players through their own ranks without financial restriction, and ultimately to pay them what they are worth. Something I've been saying for a while. Great minds obviously think alike. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post this link. If not, I'm sure the mods will delete it - but if you guys could allow the rest of the post to remain. It's an excerpt from The Footy Show currently circling on Youtube, and is well worth looking for. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz5TEw9-jrI

[iGus Gould's editorial to David Gallop regarding the Melbourne Storm Salary Scandel[/i

That's the thing with Gould. He'll spout pure pish for hours then come out with a gem like that.

he certainly was pasionate about it. good to watch

Its not easy to disagree with what he says.....

Love him or hate him Gould is as knowledgable about this game as anyone.

that was brilliant and 100% spot on.

why should the storm lose players they have raised from being kids.. same goes for any team who puts the time and money into youth.

Gallops response was a joke. just like the RFL over here its all about helping the weak compete.

well done Mr Gould

phil gould is very knowledgeable,but also speaks with a forked tongue.if this had happened at the back end of the season,would he still have the same views about the storm.in 2002 when the same thing happened to the bulldogs a good half way through the season no one gave a toss about them.i have been watching the aussie nrl shows for quite a few years now yes they know there rugby but sometimes phil comes out with a load of tosh.allowing home grown talent to be exempt from the salary cap and been doing the rounds over here for years great idea.

It's interesting that he cites the loss of players to other sports as being a major problem for the game.

That's something we've said over here, but have always been shouted down about by those who believe the cap doesn't need any change at all.

It's alway baffled me that any RL fan is prepared to see us lose our best players in pursuit of some unrealistic fantasy that we can create a perfectly level playing field. And when that involves penalising those who have developed star players for the sake of those who rarely develop any, it really is rewarding mediocrity.

Its frightening when you think that both governing bodies have there heads in the sand when it comes to this.

how the hell a team with a top youth set up can be punished like they are is one aspect of this game i trully hate.

1.6m salary cap over here when your taking youth seriously is a joke.

whatever the NRL salary cap is..i'm fully in support of melbourne in this.

Wierdly I was talking about this last night with a (soon to be converted

) football loving flatmate. I was talking about how bad it was that melbourne had an extra file in an office somewhere with other contracts in, he asked me where the players had come from, whether they where home grown or brought in and most of their top players are home grown, he asked why they should have to lose them. It stumped me.

I'd not thought of that before, why should melbourne be punished for working extremly hard to bring youngsters through in what is ultimatly an expansion area. It's like london producing absolutly world class players!

In a few years we could well find ourselves in this situation, will we really be able to keep Farrel, Joel and Sam Tomkins, Marsh, Walker, Ainscough and all the others coming through the ranks now?!

As things stand, no. Because the tail that determinedly wags the dog that is Rugby League will be demanding its three-yearly entitlement of young talent discovered and developed at other clubs.

Phil Gould ran an article in the SMH last week condeming the salary cap and did so around a couple of months ago.
The idea of exempting players from the cap that have been brought through a club's youth development system is superb and very, very obvious.
So why wasn't it done years ago?
Simple, in Aus Melbourne have the best youth system there is and the exemption suggested would mean that the following would not be included in the Storm's cap - Slater, Inglis, Cronk, Smith, White, Lima, Hoffman, Blair etc.
Something like 2/3rds of their players come through the youth system.
The other NRL clubs would never ever vote to give Melbourne that on field advantage.
Same over here, one club stands out from the rest with its youth development and the other SL clubs brought in all sorts of scams like the 20/20 and salary cap in an effort to get quality players out of that club. No guess for which club it is either! There are more players in SL from Wigan that any other club and by a long way too!
Phil Gould has forgotten more than most NRL or SL club chairmen will ever know about Rugby League and he should be listened to. He also won GF's as a coach and was the last NSW coach to win an Origin series.
The RFL should have got Gould to assist McNamara instead of Smith. Gould's won everything and Smith hasn't won anything!

Hit the nail on the head.

The salary cap (both here and in the NRL) is as much (if not more so) about the clubs that develop players having to 'donate' them to those who don't as it ever was about preventing the 'big clubs' from buying up the ready made talent from others.

Gould got it spot on, and it was great to see him put Gallop on the spot like that (and he really didn't seem to like it).

If they all turn out to be world class.there no way we will be able to keep them all..because rightly as Gould said they will want and deserve world class wages.

Can you imagine us having to decide which to keep and which to let the vultures eat up?

know not all will get to that level..but we should have the right and melbourne should have the right to keep them all and pay them what they want.

Canberra are another club that are likely to 'be penalised' by the salary cap and start to lose some of the talent they've developed, e.g. Josh Dugan

I agree with everything that chap says he is absolutely spot on. I hope Ian Lenagan is reading this forum and is doing his best to get his message to the RFL.

David Gallop's response was that other clubs can't produce thousands of juniors - tough? Why should other clubs be punished? Why should we invest in our youth system for other clubs to benefit? We might as well just not bother.

I really feel that as supporters we should act as a pressure group and try to do something to campaign against clubs being forced to release their own homegrown talents which they have produced to other clubs who can't produce them due to the limitations of the salary cap.

By all means have a salary cap, but don't punish teams who invest in their youth systems who provide the stars of tomorrow that people pay their money to come and watch & who will represent the National side.

We have an awesome group of youngsters. Let's say that Sam Tomkins, Joel Tomkins, Lee Mossop, Shaun Ainscough, Paul Prescott, Mike McIlorum,Darrell Goulding, Ben Davies, Liam Farrell, Stefan Marsh, Joe Mellor, Josh Charnley and Ian Thornley all fullfil their full potential. Under the salary cap, I would say more than two-thirds of those players would have to be released, and not just to other Super League rivals, but to Rugby Union clubs as well.

Correct me if I am wrong but what gallop is saying is clubs should put time, money and effort into producing great young players but whan they turn 20 or 21 and you cant afford to keep them all you should give them to other clubs who cant produce there own so they can compete with you.

You're not wrong, and you put it more succinctly than Gallop did.

Yep, exactly what he said, and it's about time someone actually admitted that this is what the salary cap causes even if he didn't mean to. You only got one thing wrong - You said clubs who CAN'T produce their own. In some cases over here, the better word would be WON'T.

Yes that is what he is saying.

I think as fans we might need to voice our opinion on the matter to Ian Lenagan at the next fans forum meeting & hope that he can represent our viewpoints (which I'm sure he shares) when the cap next comes under scrutiny.

Otherwise these talented Wigan lads either on dual loan deals at other clubs or who are tearing it up in the Reserves while we deliberately avoid splashing out on the top names to give them a chance will end up at our rivals ripping it up against us or will fade away altogether to Union.

The big one is them going to union. If sl is full of world class Wiganers (and therefore the England side) then so be it. Id rather see that than them playing for Bath or Wasps for example.

But why would they when they're can do very nicely thank you by picking up players who can't make the grade or fit under the cap from the small number of clubs who develop their own players.

I don't see the current system changing anytime soon over here.

The RFL would argue that (1) we don't have a sufficient pool of players on a national level, (2) some clubs (like ourselves) have an advantage because youth talent (nationally) is concentrated in our catchment areas and (3) clubs in new development areas like the Crusaders or the Catalans are at a distinct disadvantage because they don't any pool of local talent to draw from.

It's typical of the RFL that they restrict clubs in (2) in order to "protect" those clubs who fall into (3). As one poster put it earlier, it's like the tail wagging the dog. Also, as Gallop pointed out in that clip, it ensures that the excess of talent produced at a small number of clubs is 'spread' through the competition (or go to rugby union).

Of course the main problem is (1) - the lack of sufficient RL talent at a national level to support the competition. And we'll never have that until ALL clubs are forced to invest a substantial youth programme (including links with amateur clubs, proper scouting system etc.)

In the meantime, we'll develop our own players at Wigan and do our best to make the club the kind of place where they wouldn't want to be anywhere else.

Should we look into this?

[urlhttp://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/nrl/new-salary-cap-plan/story-e6frexnr-1225860995509[/url

Harrison Hansen would count as a 10% discount with next year being 20%.
Sean O'loughlin would count as a 20% discount and in two years rising to 50%.
Joel Tomkins would count as a 10% discount.
Paul Prescott would count as a 10% discount with next year rising to 20%
Darrell Goulding would count as a 10% discount.
Next year Eamon O'carroll would count as a 10% discount.

What do people think?

There is no way that the RL is going to change the SC system if the changes would benefit Wigan, unfortunately.

In fact if we had a couple of seasons of success (possibly even 1 season) I would expect the RL to introduce some kind of compulsory transfer system to effectively force us to part with our home grown players even before they earned so much that we couldn't pay them enough to keep them happy. They'll find some way to hamstring Wigan so that we don't "win everything/destroy the game" etc etc.

The fact is that SC was never about a "level playing field", "fairness" or the development of the player base or the protection and growth of club's finances (the trojan horse when the SC was brought in was that it would stop financial mismanagement, which of course it didn't, and then of course the SC morphed into having a "level playing field" objective, as if by magic).

The SC was and remains about limiting ambition in the typically parochial, short-sighted and inept way of RL management and frankly about saving on wage bills, the part that makes me the most angry about the whole SC farce. Here's a predicition: no SC supporter will be able to justify the outrageous failure to at least link the SC to inflation (let alone average earnings). So much for "fairness"....

Agree with all of that.

Teams like Wigan and saints should be rewarded more for their youth development. All we get right now is an extra point on the stupid tick list for the entrance to super league!

RL would benefit as whole from change like this.

Cant believe Gallop tried to defend that crap, you cant defend the indefensible, He basically described it as a communist-cap with the sole aim of redistribution of talent. We need more people like Gould to start making noises



and even the points system does not matter to bigger clubs, Wigan and Saints are never going to be evicted from the SL under its current franchise format