Agreed. The thing that's fairly obvious about Australian RL is that every time a superstar walks off to another sport for the money, another superstar appears to take their place. If they don't want to play RL (for pretty good money let's be honest) then it's no loss, there's plenty of kids who'll be just as good, busting a gut to take their place.

Did you enjoy that game?

The NRL salary cap isnt about saving clubs from themselves though is it. If melbourne hadnt been caught do you think they would have gone out of business of course not. The NRL cap is about an arbitrary limit suppressing a free market which is supposed to level the playing field. The unintended consequence of that is that clubs who are clearly entirely solvent and can more than afford to buy and keep stars are prevented from doing so and when it comes to a player with the selling power of inglis the NRL effectively and artificially prices itself out of the sporting market.

I thought the NRL clubs continually ran up losses every year? Bar a couple. Without a salary cap you will get the same 2 or 3 clubs winning every year in the NRL. In SL it would be Leeds.

RL in both hemispheres desperately needs a salary cap, it's not strong enough in either England or Australia to run like football in Europe.

Where all the top soccer clubs are run on solvent business-like lines!!!
& where the same clubs dominate in Spain, England, Scotland to name 3 examples that come immediately to mind.

Yup

If there was no Salary Cap, Leeds Rhinos could spend spend spend and win SL & CC for the next 8 years or so, get into financial trouble, sell the ground to Tesco and then play at Elland Road as tenants.

you could put out a back division of Byrne, Hunt, Inglis, SBW, Folau Barnes, Gower and aother of Rogers, Tuquiri, Gasnier, Tahu, Sailer, Paul, Harris who went and came back That would match any back division in the RL world today. That doesnt take into account the likes of Hape, Ashton, Estebanez, Thorne, Myler, MacDougall or Cross who would still get a gig in RL

Its pretty sad that some of the best rl players in the world arent playing RL

It is a shame when these players leave, but someone always comes along and gets a chance and is then the next big thing, particulary in the NRL

The problem with the NRL salary cap is if you have a wealthy fan with no connections to the club, he can give a player employment and pay him whatever he wants and the salary wont count towards the cap.

I think the SL cap is designed for the same reasons to try and level the playing field so that the smaller clubs can compete on a (more level) playing field