And there have to be clubs in existence or the game will whither and die. Maintaining the number of clubs and paying a reasonable level of income is far more improtant than worrying about losing a few of the absolute best players or not bringing over players who would never come here anyway.

Increasing the salary cap will only encourage club owners to overspend. It won't improve the competition at all

As I asked earlier should the salary cap now be reduced then ? Just because some clubs are poorly run and loss making shouldn't mean that those that are run well have to struggle to attract and retain the best players (young or overseas) for their customers/sponsors/revenue providers to watch. Incentives for nurturing young talent in terms of salary cap enhancements is the way forward otherwise it will be pointless nurturing anything.

I said that there is a self imposed reduction in spend by some teams so, no, I don't think it needs to be reduced.

How much do you think it should be increased by and what do you think would be the benefit? Maybe you could tell me which top class aussies would come over or how many world class players England would likely produce in the next 10 years as a result? Or which of our better players would rather stay in the North of England than live in Sydney given the choice?

Do you think sponsorship and TV revenue would increase if we had 2 or 3 rich clubs dominating the competition and hammering other teams most weeks?

The only benefit I could see is that rovers may go pop but it seems even they've seen the light and are reducing their spend on players

i dont see the massive issue with people thinking all our best player will go over there, the aussies pride themselves on bringing through there own young players and the depth they have is huge, also english players may not want to go over yeh its an attactive place to go and play rugby but alot of players have familes ect and may not want to go over anyway many players like long and cunningham had offers to go over but dint want to.

there should be a incentive to bring through player even if its say 5% of a club trained player dosent count on the cap or something along those lines but for me anyway i think the rfl should make it 6 non british born players you are allowed then over 6 years bring that down to 3 or 4

There is an incentive to bring through club-trained players... the 8 club-trained player rule, which is actually pretty massive. The only way you can have any sort of depth to your squad is if you produce players.

I'm not aware of any other sport doing anything on this scale.

That actually suggests evidence against your argument of a cap increase meaning more clubs going under. If they're being smart enough now I don't see why they wouldn't continue to be so. What would more likely happen is that the gap between the clubs spending the cap and those not would widen, that's all.

I do think we need to look at a cap increase and some sort of incentive for promoting youth. As said, SL needs some star imports, it's starting to suffer from the decrease of them IMO, so we need to do what we can to bring them back. The RFL just need to be more inventive with possible ways to apply the cap to try and prevent dominance of a few emerging, such as a percentage of club produced youngsters not counting on the cap, or a marquee player system.

Not every club is spending to the cap but if the cap increases then there will be pressure on all clubs to spend more because salaries on offer from some clubs will be higher, increasing the expectations of everyone else. It's exactly what happened when SKY pumped a stack of cash in. The players now are no more skillful than they were pre SL. They're fitter and stronger as a result of full time training but we are probably producing less world class players in this country now than we were 20 years ago.

SL has had hardly any "star" players from australia since it started, but has had plenty of journeymen from other countries earning significant amounts of money that would be better spent developing British talent.

The game in australia is a completely different kettle of fish to here and trying to compete financially with the NRL will lead to financial ruin for many clubs.

Don't see why that has to happen. With the penalties for admistration it's still not in clubs' interest to take the risk. Also, those clubs who can't afford the full cap will hopefully be pushed towards youth development as a result. The expectations will already be increased anyway because of the NRL and Union now, imports of any half-decent quality coming over will be wanting more now, and the top players here will be wanting near parity or they'll just switch codes.



Not sure how producing more world class players in the pre salary cap days is an argument for not increasing the cap TBH. Plus it's at least partly down to the fact that League used to be able to cherry pick from Union but that has now been reversed due to the money in Union combined with the cap in League. Suggests we need to do something to keep hold of those we do produce to me.



Think it has had quite a few, personally. I'm not arguing it hasn't had too many journeymen, but the point now is that we're probably going to be looking at the journeymen and slightly better being the norm and the real quality a thing of the past.



It's not about competing with the NRL overall, we never will in total and regardless we won't attract plenty purely because it means giving up representative rugby. It's about putting ourselves in a position to make sure the players that do come over are of good quality and not just those who can't get a decent deal there. Good players coming over are a vital part of our game for the fans, sponsors, and the youngsters who can learn from them.

Fact is that paying players more will not make them better players. We will still have overwhelmingly the same players. My point about the pre SL days was showing that more money doesn't mean better players. The potential benefits of hanging onto a few players who may go elsewhere are far outweighed by the downsides of increased financial pressures and the potential for a small number of clubs to dominate, having a detrimental effect on attendances and sponsorship.

As you say, we can't hope to compete with the NRL for salaries so will only attract players by paying over the odds.

At the current salary cap level only a small number of clubs make a profit and, by and large, these are pretty modest. There is no scope to increase the cap unless more money comes into the game from an increased TV deal or a large sponsorship from somewhere. The only clubs who would benefit are those with a rich backer prepared to bankroll them and that is unsustainable in the long run as has been proven many times before in many sports

I disagree it would necessarily be the same players. If there are some exemptions for youth as I suggested, it would encourage clubs to develop them so there would be a shift towards trying to develop players better. It would also mean a slightly better class of imports for the kids to learn from as I said. SL pays over the odds for NRL players in comparison to what they'd get over there whatever their ability, a cap increase would just mean overpaying for a better class of player. So you'd still be getting say, £50k more worth of player.

As for the point about a few clubs dominating, it's not exactly a different winner every year now is it?

My issue is that whilst I understand that we can't have clubs risking their existence, I also don't think it's fair to effectively hold back the more successful off-field clubs so that the less successful ones have a better chance of keeping up. The RFL need to give them more drive and assistance where possible to improve themselves instead.

An increased salary cap would only be "affordable" by virtue of wealthy individuals propping clubs up. If you think that's healthy for the game then you have a different perspective on it than me. Clubs will be compelled to develop their own talent because even journeymen aussies will be too expensive

But a key area we seem to disagree on is the journeymen. You're saying an increased cap will mean the same class of imports demanding more money, I'm saying it would mean being able to offer more money to get better players, thus less average journeymen.

And that last comment is part of what I said, those who can't afford the cap would have to place more emphasis on youth development to save money.

Next year the NRL cap will be something like £5m from what I understand and there are potentially 2 new clubs. It is very unlikely that any players who are wanted in the NRL will come over here unless we pay a significant amount. I doubt very much that we can increase our cap enough to accommodate the likely cost of bringing over top class australians and the likely benefit of doing so wouldn't be worth the risk to the clubs. All that will happen is that clubs will throw even more money at average aussies than they do now and the standard of imports will be worse than it is now.

We can't compete financially with the NRL and shouldn't try. We should channel more money into youth development and make sure clubs are doing it rather than paying lip service to it. We need to take a longer term view than just increasing the amount we pay players

I don't think SL will attract the truly top class players for the foreseeable future, I agree. But the fact is that SL clubs will still sign Aussies, so I would just rather that SL clubs were able to offer a bit more money to hopefully get slightly better ones, to stop the standard of imports being average as you say.



I'm not saying the cap should increase just to try and compete with the NRL, I've never said that. It's also about trying to hold on to youngsters in the face of Union competition, as well as a way to hopefully increase the investment in youth. That's why I said about possible partial exemptions for club developed players. If the cap was increased but with the proviso that a certain amount of it goes on fed trained players and players under 23 it could only be a good thing IMO. That way, even if it's the same clubs producing young players, you'd get to a stage where they could only hold on to so many and others would have to move on. This would hopefully mean more players coming through but then a natural distribution of them throughout SL to keep a competitive division.

2 questions.
1, how long has the salary cap been set at the current level ??
2, why did the 50% rule get scrapped.

personally think the cap should be increased to 2m but the 50% rule brought back in...

union's cap has been about £4m for years and we've lost no one of note. If we stop bringing in so many comparatively expensive overseas players then by implication we would have more to spend on homegrown ones.

If we had clubs making £1/2m+ a year profit then I'd agree that we should increase the cap, but the fact is we're not and giving clubs the opportunity to overspend isn't a good idea IMO.

Would you have had the same opinion if we'd still got kath in charge and in all likelihood have ended up spending less on players than some of the other clubs

because it stopped people like Saints buying success with debts.

A flat cap is much easier to administer.
It should also even the competition, which is generally considered a positive thing as competition is what makes sport an interesting and entertaining spectacle. I've seen it posited that having big clubs and minnows gives things a David and Goliath type attraction. This generally isn't a view held by fans of the would-be minnow clubs. Fans of wealthier clubs, sick of being the defeated giant, tend to be keener.

A non fed place available also opens up a possibility of a cross code move for a union player does it not? Given their salary cap it wouldn't be a household name but there must be some good forwards that could be tempted. I wouldn't want an overweight front rower but many back-rows have the physique and pace to be props in league.

and no offloading skills, collapsing in the tackle and kneeling down in scrums.... no thanks.

Obviously getting nearer the time when he pulls on the black and white shirt



[urlhttp://www.radiosport.co.nz/SportsNews/spleg/Detail.aspx?id=203672[/url

He's looking a good signing as he's keping Saints signing, Hohaia, out of the starting 9 spot and when he does spell he's making lots of errors.

Hohaia has been playing fullback for the Warriors but has lost his place to Kevin Locke iirc.

Hohia's been inter-changing at 9, based on the NZW games i've watched over the last 2 months or so. That's after he lost his place at FB to Locke though.

Think it's a similar story to Seymour, started the season as first choice fullback but since signing for Saints there's been more focus on his replacement.