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Not a question of breaking any laws its observing them and
Article 81 of The EU treaty to which the UK and France are signatories would question the voluntary argument, there can be no artificial ceilings, limits , restrictions or Cartels on competition - In terms of restriction that was part of the case that Bosman won on back in 95 ,Not the same ruling directly as his was freedom of movement within the EU for sportsmen but his earning capacity which had been severely reduced was a principal point of his case .

The EU does recognise sports " specificity" within the community but Bosman won , Kolpak won and we all know UEFA would love to put a salary cap on but darent .

there is no way that a player could prove that his earnings have been severly reduced due to the salary cap, as there is no restriction on what a player can earn.

UEFA would love to have a salary cap in place - the only reason they dont is that the big clubs would just walk away and set up their own independent Euro Super League.

Yes you do. Your employer will have an amount available to spend on salaries, all companies have restricted money available for salaries. What about companies that have salary bands? The Civil Service for example? Each grade can only earn up to a set amount. If you hit the maximum, you don't get a pay rise unless that maximum is raised, to get a further increase you have to be promoted. You have to change jobs to get a pay increase. Is that restraint of trade?

There is no restriction of trade, nothing is stopping that player signing a contract for the money the club wants to pay. The fact that they either can't afford to pay them more, or simply don't think they are worth it is not a restriction on trade. The fact that the player chooses not to accept a contract because he thinks he is worth more does not constitute a restriction on trade.

When Chris Moyles was offered a reduced salary for his new contract because the BBC were reducing their salary budget, if he had rejected it, would that have been a restraint on trade? No.

My opinions:

1) The SC has certainly 'spread' the best players around, too a degree.
2) It has stopped some clubs spending more than they could afford and may have stopped worse things happening...
3) To increase it, the game needs a significant increase in revenue.

Succintly summed up by the sad bloke in the corner. Argue all you want about paying players more, restirictions on trade, blah blah blah, but there isn't a club in the country who can pay more than the salary cap allows, whilst still staying in business. If union can pay more for the top players, then that is life, get on with it. Union is a vastly richer sport than league, to try to compete with their wages is folly, and will lead to major problems in the game.

only another 7 years to go then

There are restrictions of what a player can be paid in RL.
A player can't be paid £1.7m. Theory yes, he still can't be though so it's a restriction.
Clubs are spending monies on other things now they are not investing it in players. As mentioned Leeds turnover was £10m with a cap of £1.65.
Of course they can afford to spend more than £1.65m on 25 players.

how can they afford it if they only made a slight profit by selling assets? hardly longterm thinking. If a club can make a profit through "normal" business then they may have a case for raising the cap, but any that do barely break even.

What was their profit though?

If their turnover is £10 million but their costs are £10 million, then no they can't.

My wage bill is approx half of my monthly costs, and I don't run a labour intensive business, I sell goods rather than services. However, a rugby league club needs a lot more staff than just the players - it needs to staff the whole infrastructure, they also will have a high cost of maintaining their premises and I would assume matchday itself is rather expensive in terms of staffing/organising.

Where did you hear this? In terms of a balance sheet, that statement is a bit of an oxymoron. Fixed assets or current assets?

it was on here or the VT when all the clubs released their accounts, leeds sold a peice of land to put them in profit

Then that's a nonsense - unless they sold it for more than it was valued at.
Your Profit & Loss report doesn't care whether you've £XX worth of cash or £XX worth of fixed assests.
An accountant (which I'm not) may talk about [icash profit[/i or something like that, but i think that's more for monitoring your company's postion than end of the day profit.

It isnt voluntary, the RFL (or Super League ltd) impose sanctions for going above that level.

If it were a case where all chairmen had simply decided to pay up to £1.65m then you would be right, but it isnt. They are forced to do so.

And a player would simply need to prove that his earnings were limited by this to have reason to challenge it. I doubt it would stand up