Most likely. If we increased the cap we'd see a big few open a more consistent gap on the rest, but just looking at most seasons it seems like some clubs just don't spend as much, and 'mid size' clubs tend to get lucky with players or they are unlucky (lucky and unlucky could equally mean badly managed) and don't tend to stay at the top for long. What Leeds are showing is that with the cap acting as a very hard limit, its really difficult to swap out a lot of players in one go. It will have taken us two off-seasons, and even then the squad for next season probably isn't exactly what Smith (or any other coach) would want.

I'm no expert on the cap but if you have homegrown exemptions, marquee etc doesn't that raise the cap significantly?

They have built loads of exemptions into it and over complicated it to the point where for me they should just raise the cap.

These policies must suit the whole game and not just Leeds of course, but there’s no point encouraging clubs to develop young talent if they just get cherry picked off by richer competitions all the time.

We could have spent hundreds of thousands invested in Newman and as soon as he strings some consistency together an NRL club offers to double his salary and poof.

In theory you could spend any amount on your marquee allowance, but that doesn't raise the wage of the average player. I would think Wire and Catalans probably outspend everybody else, but even they wouldn't be spending over 2.5 million.

Cas deserve to go down if they've broken the cap paying that lot!

Just being realistic Arthur.
The table doesn't lie.
And looking at how recruitment is going, I expect much the same next year.
Eseh will go to Saints. Why wouldn't he?

I'm not a season ticket holder, but I go to about 10 games a season.
Haven't really enjoyed any this year (apart from maybe Hudds at home)
So I probably won't go next year.
The club will survive without my money, but I doubt I'm alone with my sentiments.

Next season is different. It’s highly unlikely we’ll lose both starting half backs and starting full back, centre, prop and marquee forward all at the same time again.

We don’t know the relative quality of our 2024 squad compared to 2023 but we have clearly had huge disruption through injuries and weird departures and fall outs.

A few more smart signings and I think we should be reasonably confident of a top 6 finish next season. If we don’t get the next few signings right then yes we might struggle again.

I believe we have a clutch of future first team players coming through the system now: who knows which will make it but some will be knocking on the door even next year.

I think you're being overly pessimistic. Four, maybe more, signings of the right quality could make a huge difference. I wouldn’t get too hung up on Eseh. He's a good young prop but we are well stocked in that regard. I'd much rather have a proven senior prop, and as referenced at yesterday's presser announcements could be fairly immenent. I'll see what they come up with before writing them off as a bad job. Hopefully they do get it right, the team is competitive again, and you get tempted back to going to games again.

I’m just going on Friday to enjoy Headingley and a game and spend some time with the boy. It’s great if we win but that isn’t the main reason to attend for me.

Don’t get me wrong it puts a downer on my weekend if we lose but the club is overall sound - I do think GH’s time over the rugby operations might have overrun by 5 years but we have lots of good players and support staff.

It might not look like it after shaky performances this season but I do think we’re going in the right direction overall.

Heavy caveat to this: if we make 3-4 good quality signings now.

The problem with the likes of Wakey and Cas is the salary cap money is spent on ground staff and admin staff not on players. Time to introduce a minimum spend on the playing squad - if you can't spend to that limit then move over.

I agree I would probably go as far as to say the cap HAS to be spent and on the playing squad only, I wouldn't bother with a minimum requirement.

If you don't have a minimum doesn't that have the same effect?

One thing's for sure, we rally need IMG to magic up some extra money for the game as a whole.

What I mean is the clubs would have to spend whatever the cap is i.e the caps minimum is also the maximum