Long, KC, Lyon and Scully were all very good indeed, the best going when they played together. Trouble is that if we are to have a top quality comp then the top teams have to have far more than four top class players.
Of the four three qualified for GB but KC hardly played Intls.
Whether it's current teams or those within the past number of years we have been short of quality players in numbers. That is the problem and you can't pay eight - ten quality players the salaries those four were on when they were at the top of their game. Not under the SC you can't.
Saints, Leeds, Wigan, Wire all need a massive number of GB qualifying players if we are to compete Internationally either at club or nation level.
We need bigger squads with the best youngsters we can find and bring them all through to play SL with a view to them all going to Intl level.
It can't be done with just £1.65m to spend.

There will always be players better than others. Some players will always be paid more than others, if all clubs had four top class players we'd have a lot closer a competition.

We could raise the cap to £4million tomorrow, all that would mean would be that average players would get paid more. It would not raise the standard of play whatsoever.

Whilst there is truth in that argument, our youth teams were regularly trounced by the Aus youth teams, now they compete and often win. Youth development [ihas[/i improved in RL over the last 5 or 6 years.

I'm not at all convinced by the suggestion that there is a clear link between the salary cap and restriction of youth development. There is nothing in the salary cap to prevent clubs investing in their youth setups (in fact, part of the original rationale behind it was to encourage clubs to spend less on mediocre Australians and more on youth development).

If it got to the point where clubs were having to let genuine top class British players go to rugby union because their salary cap was already choc full of top class British players then you'd have a point, but the reality is that none of our clubs are in this situation, and all of our clubs spend a considerable amount of their salary cap allowance on foreign players. This is something the RFL are trying to address with their adjustments to the quota system, and I think we're seeing some positive results from that already.

Removing the salary cap would IMO be disastrous for youth development, for the following reasons:
- Clubs would be more inclined to hold on to their fringe players, which would decrease first team opportunities for youngsters.
- Clubs would just chuck money at Australians.
- As Billinge Lump says, everybody's wage demands would go up, so you'd potentially end up with the same quality of player knocking about but taking more money from the clubs. Something has to give, and clubs would, I suspect, divert funds away from other areas of their organisation like marketing and youth development.
- The SC makes young players an integral part of every club's squad - they provide cheap alternatives to expensive fringe players. Remove the SC and you remove a significant incentive for clubs to invest in them.

The SC doesn't have an impact on how many kids play the game at the weekend, and that's what we need to work on improving if we're going to produce enough top class British players.

A couple very pertinent points worth commenting on there.

1) is simply not true. The cap is so low in comparison to most big clubs turnover as to have little bearing on their ability to successfully trade as businesses.

2) Is true and a direct result of the cap. It shouldn't have escaped any reasonable person's notice that we had many world class players in the game pre-cap and moreover, were able to attract the cream from Australia (something we are largely unable to do anymore) and Union (something we aren't able to do at all and, worse still, a trend that has now completely reversed). Given the game is still played in the same areas, with some good inroads into the South, Wales and France to boot, the only difference between then and now is the money available to spend on players.

I'm not saying the cap didn't have it's place, neccessarily. Just that it was, and is, badly implemented and kept in place in it's current form by self interest rather than in the interests of the greater good.

1) The cap expenditure is only a part of a club's turnover. If the cap is so low, where are clubs other expenditure that cause them to lose lose money every year?

2) Nostalgia is a wonderful thing. We had a handful of genuine world class players within the game, no more. As for the top Australians; short term deals when our season's didn't coincide was the reason for their appearance over here. Nothing else.

If the author of this thread is doing a piece on the SC - the first question you should address is this - is the salary cap legal under EU law- a case could be made by any player that it might constitute a restraint of trade .

theres plenty of pluses and minuses been debated on here but if someone did challenge i cant see how any sporting organisation can mount a robust enough defence- personally my view is that no one in any industry should be subject to such specific restrictitions - and lets face it theres no SC at Red Hall !!!!!

If we are asking has it improved the quality of rugby? Then no it has not at all!

How many painfully poor players do we see in super league now and how many overated imports?

I don't think it was ever intended to actually improve the rugby, just level out the playing field so we didn't have another 10 years of dominance from one club.

The cap is primarily to save the clubs. People on this thread have said thats wrong as clubs turnover a lot more than the cap limit. Yet they all lose money, so raising the cap would only further increase those losses.

The sport doesn't have enough money, it's as simple as that.

It hasn't brought Super League into profit but it has prevented many clubs from going t*ts up!

I believe it is legal because it is part of a "league arrangement / agreement" as opposed to the governing body having it as a rule; it is therefore an agreement between the clubs that participate in SL. The other thing to bear in mind is that there is no limit on what a club can play a player. In thoery a club could pay all its salary cap to one player and have the rest of the squad on no money.

So there is a limit.
As PK says it would never stand up in court of law.

Let me guess, you don't have a degree in logical thinking?

The club could pay a player £100M if it wanted to, but it would be subject to fines and points deduction etc from SL.
Its nothing at all to do with a players contract; so no limit on that contract.
Limit is club's not players limit.
Limit is SL's not RFL's.
Of course it would stand up in a court of law - why wouldn't it? The club pays the player what it can afford and what it thinks the player is worth. End of.
Nada to do with players contract.

there is no limit on what a player can earn though.

any club can pay any player upto £1.6m per annum, plus an unlimited amount extra through 3rd party agreements such as that used by Gillette/Saints for Scully.

why has no-one challenged it in a court of law then???