Further to the Joel Tomkins transfer to Saracens the Wigan club have been in talks with the RFL with regard to the salary cap and help with keeping our top players ( and Sam Tomkins in particular) in Superleague. The following is a quote fro the RFL web site

"The Rugby Football League are sticking with a £1.7million ceiling but clubs are to be given permission to make allowances for long-serving, marquee and home-grown players in an effort to prevent a drain of talent to Australia and the 15-man code."

So which of our players fall into the categories that attract allowances? and what if any extra headroom will we have to the salary cap ceiling?

I'd personally go with the following

BJB - home-grown
Hardaker - home-grown
Hall - marquee
McGuire - long serving
Burrow - long serving
Sinfield - long serving

I dont think the others would be courted by raa raa

Probably whoever's attracting most interest from union. In the short term that's probably Ryan Hall.

McGuire, Burrow and Sinfield probably qualify under all 3 headings, and Hall under at least 2.

As for "home grown" it needs definition. Does it mean "UK trained" or does it mean trained by that particular club? If the latter, Hardaker wouldn't count.

The Leeds CEO will be loathing this concept.

He's not forced to adopt it. He could retain the existing salary structure. Our players would be no more exposed to union's temptations than they are currently.

Our success over the last decade has been that we are a team which is greater than the sum of its parts. We would survive the loss of any of those players. Sinfield is the biggest key to what Leeds do, and he would be our most unreplaceable, but as he is entering his more senior years we will have to start to think about life without him anyway shortly.

I don't think for one second that he would adopt it but I still believe he will be loathing the idea that others will.

how wrong is it that the cap has been changed to suit cheating ba$tards Wigan.

I'm already looking forward to Leeds' carefully crafted press release in response to this RFL led initiative.

At least this is interesting unlike the Wigan tie-up with their latest Union beau.

To be fair, it's being changed to suit Rugby League in general and the retention of outstanding young players rather than to suit Wigan in particular. It does happen to suit Wigan at the moment though.

If Hetherington would rather lose Hall or a more developed Hardaker to Union than pay near market rate for their services (provided Leeds could afford it notwithstanding the cap) then that's not very good for Leeds or for Rugby League.

I don't believe for one single minute that any union club would touch Sam Tomkins, or were ever in for him. And personally I think that's why he agreed a new deal at Wigan.

I don't want to be snobby because it's one of the many reasons I can not abide by the union game. But I can't deny that in union they have a certain "hooray" class about them. I can't recall anybody of such a low life personality ever playing in the union game. His brother is a completely different personality to Sam.

With regards the cap, I don't see any confirmation there that the RFL have amended the cap. The long serving rule has been there for years, with a 50% of salary increase to cap, to a maximum of £50,000.

You don't remember David Bishop.

He was already union, and they are a different breed now in that excuse for sport.

That rule was brought in AFTER Andy Farrell went to Union to allow RL to reward it's longer serving players.