and the Human league are at no1 in the charts

The cap allows a modicum of restraint set in place by the RFL. Not only is this good in terms of the game as a whole as Old Faithful IAKW alluded to but it means one club cannot dominate due to having a backer with the deepest pockets & ensures business viability rather than surviving on the never never as per most if not all professional association football teams.
This in turn protects the fans as huge increases in tickets prices & merchandise would ensure to try to battle the additional costs involved with a non cap situation.

As it happens off-shore accounts are an excellent way of avodiing taxation on ones portfolio, you just have to know how to do it properly (ask Roman Obramovich's accountants for advise specifically they are excellent

)

My opinion is RL is exactly like any other business, you spend what you can afford, if you overspend you die ala Leeds Utd
what that would do is get rid of dead wood in super league etc thats for sure .
whats the point in having a salary cap and then find some clubs are only spending half of that cap !! thus producing more often than not half the performance of everyone else!!

its a business first, sport second nothing more

it simply makes the lesser clubs climb the ladder a little and stagnates the bigger clubs...
bit like saying you can earn 100k per year but you can only drive a mini!!
if your sucessful where is the incentive in the cap to become more sucesful.. just stagnating tactics , but we all have our own opinions and the cap wont change any time soon

The likes of Salford, Wakefield, Crusaders, Quins, Cas would all go bankrupt if they spent the maximum cap, right now they hover at about 1.1m and make losses each season.

Either way it didnt prevent the likes of Quins, Oldham etc going bankrupt and others (celtic crusaders, gateshead) having major finance issues.

we will see clubs still go bump even with the cap in place.
if they dont employ the names to bring in the fans the revenue naturally declines as the results do also !!!
cap is not a club saver

I think your all missing a big point. Higher wages is a waste of money in the sense that it doesn't improve the quality of the game. The same players play the game, in business you would invest in a mass marketing campaign with a big budget for example but the rfl ensure the money is for development off the pitch so you invest in youth and community projects.

Without the cap there would only be Wigan, Bradford, Saints and Leeds (as was originally the case) with lots of cannon fodder in the other spots. Perhaps Warrington would be there because of their backer. The salary cap is a complex organism going hand-in-hand with the "quota" system and the franchise mechanism with the intention of helping us to have nore competition and develop home-grown talent. For their long-term ambition in this, I think the RL has to be applauded. It is clear that, at first there may be a dip in the overall quality because of the lack og British talent around but, as time has passed, we have seen quite a few starlets coming through the ranks at many clubs. Even now, the people with the financila backers can lure players away (a la Warrington and Salford). I personally am not interested in going back to the days when teams were made up almost entirely of overseas players with the top teams being able to afford the best and the rest only affording journeymen. The Football Premier League is a great example of how that works - a load of foreign players taking all the cash handed out by billionaire benefactors, four or five clubs with all of the money (but not from being viable businesses) buying up all of the youngsters and discarding them if they don't make the grade and sharing out the trophies between them year after year after year. At least the RL are attempting to give clubs the opportunity to compete.

Good post.

And to address the OP surely once the players are on the island all their accounts are then offshore ?

Sorry but I don't agree with you saying top clubs stagnate, the cap works in many differing ways and is definitely beneficial for the sport as a whole.
The cap is still relatively in its infancy and it is to give a level playing field for all clubs, top clubs dont stagnate they HAVE even more incentive to develop local youngsters because of the cap.
The cap forces coaches to use tactical nous and development of players (young & old) to better the opposition rather than just waving huge salaries at the top players to lure them to a club (which is what we had with Wigan previously)
IF we want to see a more even competition in the future (& this year has been great with Crusaders improving imeasurably) & certainly fewer & fewer drubbings (as 40/50/60+ wins on a regular basis isn't all that to watch as a contest even if it is us winning) then a set cap is the way to go.
Your analogy is incorrect anyhow in relation to how the cap works.

Yeah, what he said, I didn't plagiarise your piece btw

Agree with that but I do think that clubs that trade in the black should be rewarded with a larger cap than those who don't, that would then encourage a few clubs that are losing money and seem to be content to do so like Huddersfiled, Salford and Wakey to get their houses in order!

How many businesses can alienate their customers and still expect them to come back??

(Not including KC)



What a stupid comment. Sports are only businesses because of the thousands of fans that are prepared to part with their hard earned. If it wasn't for the love of the sport there would be no business. The vast majority of sport fans become disillusioned with clubs when they are seen as only a business that cares not for the fans.

Yes, you want your club to be run well (like a business would be).

Also, if so why are Hull the only club in SL run like a business??

if its not a business then where do the profits go to??
a trust fund for retired players


if it is designed to make a prifit then it is a business in any guise you care to make it!!
but thanks for the insult , well done!!

Yes, I see no reason is principle why the cap couldn't be banded in some (limited) way. The main virtue of the current system is it's simplicity.

One problem though is that if a club isn't operating at the cap or the most obvious way to get their house in order is cutting the wage bill, a larger cap isn't much of an incentive. And if somebody is content to lose money - is that a problem? It's their money and the cap stops anybody distorting the competition too much.

Any business is only a business because of the thousands of customers that are prepared to part with their hard earned cash on their product. Without customers no business can survive.

Are they the only club in SL run like a business? What makes us run more like a business than Salford or Hull KR? Just because we're the most succesful at being a business doesn't mean we're the only one run like it.

And I guess that's where the Franchise system comes in. The "quota", cap and franchise are all inextricably linked.

I'm not sure I agree with allowing some teams in the black more money because then teams like Rovers (and indeed FC) when first promoted and Huddersfield who are striving to improve attendances would potentially be pushed that further back in their efforts to put a successful team on the pitch week in week out.

All the clubs are businesses, but the [urealistic[/u ambition for some is to make their losses manageable, rather than turn a profit. The pay-off, they hope is in intangibles like glory and excitement. Hull are more of a business because greater emphasis seems to be placed on profitability than at [usome[/u other clubs. Some owners would be willing and able to accept losses year after year, in return for trophies - that does not seem to be the case for Hull FC. Of course, profits and trophies are in no way mutually exclusive and a sound business doesn't necessarily disadvantage you on the pitch - but it can if, all else being equal, somebody else will dig deeper.

I don't understand what more the club can do though, we spend the full cap?

I don't want to come across as negative about Hull FC - there is much to admire in what has been achieved by them. I'm going to use Warrington and Saints as comparators and that is setting the bar high.

Would Hull pay a big transfer fee for a young player like Myler? It doesn't have to be Myler, if you don't rate him - the point is paying a premium for top young talent.
Would Hull pay whatever it took to get a coach like Tony Smith? Again, it doesn't have to be Smith.
Do Hull spend as much as Saints developing young players, with all the associated benefits that success in this area brings?

I suspect the answers to all three are 'no'. I'm least certain about the last, but a 'yes' would beg plenty of other questions. If they are all 'no', there is [unothing[/u wrong with that - there is great value in prudent sustainability. But, it gives clubs like Saints and Wire a competitive advantage from a sports POV.

We paid a fee for Tansey (albeit not a massive one), we also tried to sign Myler numerous times which I'm sure would have involved a fee.

Who knows if we'd pay what it took to get a coach like Smith? Perhaps we'll see in the future, in the past the club has been more inclined to promoting from within but I'm sure it's because they felt the person was the best man for the job and TBF in the last 5 years we've reached a CC final, a grand final and won the CC so we've hardly been baron in terms of success.

The youth point is an interesting point and like you I'm unsure about how much Hull spend relative to Saints or indeed any club so wouldn't like to speculate.

But who is "Hull" in this question? Is it a benefactor that? Because if so, quite frankly, we don't have one. Hull are doing what they are doing on a sound financial basis (according to people more informed than I am on that subject) rather than on relying on someone's deep pockets. So, the business model seems to be going alright so far and it is probably one of the reasons that Richard Agar is still at the helm and why we are prepared to offer players over 30 more than a one year deal. I'm pretty sure that St Helens' gates and merchandising alone could not have supported their on-field success over the years - I suspect that someone has been helping out. As for Warrington, it is more obviously the case there.

Wasnt there a fee for Jordan Turner as well?

The business is successful, absolutely. My point is that benefactors helping out... well, help basically.
A benefactor [umight[/u make you a less successful (profitable) business, while making you a more successful sports club.

It was claimed at the fans forum the other week that we did agree a transfer fee to sign Myler, but he chose Warrington instead. We have tried to sign him a few times in the last few years I do believe.

The only times we appear tight is with the strict 'limits' we set for wages (such as not signing Dobson, not paying Cooke what HE thought he was worth) and also the head coach situation...but apart from that they have splashed the cash when required. Berrigan, Crocker and Long won't have come cheap.

where Hull really excel is off the field, I honestly believe we have the best merchandising outlet in SL and our sponsorship deals are at the upper end of the league too.