Or keep jammer.

Everyone is talking about the fight to keep players from union IMO the nrl will be the biggest threat to super league in 2013 when they put the salary cap up!

It should be ONE player per team and that player must come through the clubs academy. Roby at Saints?

Or if we want to be really adventurous that ONE player could be a Rugby Union "convert"
That would set the cat among the pigeons.

*some* clubs cannot afford to do so.

How do clubs get more money? Sponsors and TV rights. What attracts sponsors and TV rights? Marquee players. The money available to the game and cap have a complex relationship. Set the cap too low and you create a situation where 'not having enough money' becomes self fulfilling, because you can't attract the players (and thus sponsors) in the first place.

I think the people that run the RFL are fools, have done for years, ever since Wood was in charge...BUT, even I get some hope from all this and say 'well done'. I truly thought they'd just plough on with their idiotic strategy of waiting for Wakefield to 'catch up' ( if their own town doesn't want to watch them, its not like they haven't been given enough chances, bring back relegation and give Championship clubs a reason to excel). I hope this is the start of new dawn of sanity at Red Hall. Let's see.

Have the RFL clarified if it is only for 1 player per team? I sincerely hope so.

What if a club produces 3/4 top class players? They would then only be able to have one as their "star" player and would be punished for going with youth as other teams would take them.

I still think the idea of home grown players salary not counting 100% on the cap would be a better way forward. Example - home grown players salary only counting 60% on the cap.

That way teams will invest in youth more.

Pete you know that is something I've advocated for many years, and had a few arguments against (on here) particularly from Mike McClennan (a poster whose opinions I respect, but don't always agree with ) who argued that it would give too much advantage to some teams as they have better resources and therefore are able to invest more in their academy infrastructure.

When these smaller clubs produce a player of Sams quality then they can maybe have grounds for complaint.

Whilst they're filling their squads with 15 Aussies though they won't get much sympathy off me.

We need to build the game up not dumb it down.

Keeping a player like Sam Tomkins in this sport is far more important then keeping teams that aren't bringing anything to the table happy IMO.

And how do you know they are not doing? Tomkins received a nauseating level of hype during 2011 to the exclusion of every other potentially gifted player in the league. That's because he's at a big club with money and mouth. But there is, say, Dan Sargison at the Broncos who apparently is a genuine talent. Will he get noticed in the same way? Will his team get the TV attention and media hype that Wigan got with Tomkins? Will the team he plays for ever be in a position to showcase him in the way Wigan can showcase Tomkins?

Fully agree.

Having it as one homegrown player that wouldn't count punishes teams like Wigan and as a great example Saints.

With a rule in place where homegrown players don't count fully on the cap we'd really encourage clubs to produce more of their own. It would also allow Saints in the future to keep their Grahams and Eastmonds or more importantly their Roby's, Lomax's and Foster's.

Exactly my point and I know n agrees with me on that.

Sam gets hype because Sam is the finest back the country has produced in the superleague era and not because he plays for Wigan. He is world class and should be the lad we build the game around.

If any club produces a player as good they can pay him in golden nuggets for all I care.

As for Dan Sarginson he's a classy young player and if he produces magic like Sam his hype will go through the roof. A southerner playing rugby league to the level of Sam Tomkins would be simply sensational.

This is long overdue and if it keeps players like sam in RL and in this country, then all the better

Sorry, who do you support again? Sam needs to work on his goal line defence before he can claim to be the finest anything the country has produced in the superleague era. He's terrific in attack but he still has a lot of development in defence yet to do.


Saints already did. They lost one of them to Union and one to the NRL, without so much as a blink from the RFL. Thankfully, Roby stayed but Roby would have stayed anyway.

He only recently signed a five year deal and now gets an extension to it after what can only be seen as holding the club to ransom.

And not just the club. All clubs now have to deal with the possibility of one or all of their players thinking they are the marquee signing who can fook the salary cap. I bet the other clubs are just pleased as punch at this development. It makes their negotiating so much easier. Not.