Hi guys i've never realli used the message boards properly but do troll through them regularly

...anyway as part of my A-levels im doing a EPQ project and have decided to look at the salary cap and its influence on the game. I've spoke to various people around the game but i thought it would be interesting to get some of the fans views on it. If any of you have any view points on it that you wouldnt mind sharing, such as 'good idea, bad idea, too low etc', it would be much appreciated!

Thanks in advance

First of all it's good to see a EPQ project about real issues. So some working points (which you might have already covered)
Have a good look at where the game was before Salary Cap and what the prognosis was for the game at that time.
What was the effect that the RFL wanted to acheive by SC introduction and has this worked.
(and how has it been tuned in following years)
Would the game's major sponsor, SKY TV continued without regular competative matches to show.
Without a SC would just 3/4 rich clubs (whatever their funding stream) be always at the top to the possible demise of the rest.
Compare and consider other sports (Rugby Union, Football) that do not have a salary cap particularly in respect to their alternative revenue streams.
Does a SC enforce some level of prudent financial management on a club thus making them more viable for their future.

Good luck with your project. I believe that SL would not have been viable as a competative league without the SC and SKy sponsorship withdrawn. That would have been a dissaster for RL
No doubt others will have differing, if not diametrical views, but hey - thats what you want to get.
Welcome to the message boards - you wont be short of opinions

Also look at the IRS initative into players image rights and undeclared payments which go against the spirit of the SC, that will have a bigger impact than the SC also the reduction of overseas players will also have an impact, so good luck factoring all those equations into your project

the only impact that the reduction of overseas players will have is a reduction in the overall quality of the league

The scary thing about that outrageous suggestion...is that it is right.

The salary cap has changed the game. My understanding was, that aside from imposing financial prudence on some unstable clubs, that it had two aims:

1. Make the league more competitive and to end the dominance of one or two teams.
2. Raise the quality across the board.

It has certainly achieved the first. Last season was the epitome of this - with just about anybody being able to beat anybody.

Unfortunately, I feel that it has done this by equalising everybody at around fourth or fifth place, so to speak. By this, I mean that the bottom clubs certainly have improved, but the top teams have fallen backwards slightly.

This year's Leeds team was comfortably the best in the league (and that hurts me to say it) but it would have been smashed by fifty points by the Bulls or Saints teams of the early part of the decade and the great Wigan teams of fifteen/twenty years ago.

I'm not sure that the financial prudence has even been that successful, looking at recent results, but this is, of course, impossible to quantify.

Has it? Only if you consider swapping a team to be significant... Why not look at the top two in the league and the Grand Final participants for the last 10 years, I think you'll find that list dominated by Bulls & Saints, and then Saints & Leeds; with the odd cameo appearance by another team from time to time.

IMO it has made the league 'more competitive' - teams now compete to be less mediocre than each other. I.e. a general lowering of the bar.

(If you hadn't guessed - I'm less than enthused with the SL product these days!)

Have to agree with that.
And with the blatent flouting of the salary cap that goes on, what's the point?

Well.....almost!
There is also the problem that the England players who are really good enough, you know, tho ones who would break into SL and the England team regardless of how many imports were playing in the UK, would be the poorer because they would lose the quality of opponent that improves their game.

The upside would be that all the players who aren`t, and never will be, good enough might actually get sufficient first team action to be good enough for a starting spot in NL1.

Not too sure what you mean by mediocre.

I can remember, before the cap, or at least, before it had chance to fully do its work, the Bulls beating Salford by around ninety points and Warrington by eighty odd. There were a few similar results around at the time. We, as fans, [iexpected[/i the team to win every game except perhaps Wigan and Saints, and even now we have fans who regularly, though quite unbelievably, moan that things aren`t like they were then. This was though, pretty mediocre entertainment, to be honest. For sure it`s better to win than lose but there has to be an element of doubt involved or it just gets tedious after a while.

Of course the change has come about by dropping the standard of the top sides to bring up the lower ones. The Bulls, Wigan and Leeds don`t have internationals in the A team like they used to and we now lose to Wakefield and the Crusaders and Leeds go to Salford and come out second best etc etc. I think there is a danger of mixing up being down because our club isn`t ruling the roost as it once did and thinking that the game itself has become worse. The cap has been very successful and hopefully when HMRC get to grips with all the image rights and Singapore parachute nonesense we will get a more level playing field and the game will improve again.

As a matter of interest, the Aussie league, which by general agreement, is the best league in the world, doesn`t have a big four, five or six. In fact it is often won by `mediocre` sides which were in the bottom half of the table the previous year. In fact the winner is often just making a `cameo` appearance. This unpredictability is one of its strengths not a weakness.

Spot on IMO

Did you actually read my post and the one that it was answering - you know, the one that stated that we'd miraculously broken up the top four? Yes, the one that I disagreed with. I.e. I'm all in favour of a BETTER competition, its what you define as better....

With regard to that then you have answered your own question and agreed with me"reduction in overall standards" - a levelling based on dragging excellence down into mediocrity. Ok, the scores are much closer whoopydo!

As for your point about the Aussie league I don't see its relevance as they do not have the same problems and constraints as RL faces in this country, e.g. limited player pool, media coverage (in fact they've recently had rather too much for their liking!), a long season, etc.

We are coming from the same area of viewpoint on a few things but I can`t really agree that standards have dropped because some teams aren`t as strong, vis a vis the competiton, as they once used to be. The self same number of top quality players is still there. They`re just not all playing for the same four clubs.

Incidentally, much as you`ve highlighted a supposed "quote" from me that "overall standards had dropped" that isn`t what I said. I actually said that the standards of the top had been reduced and the standards of the bottom had been raised.

There is actually no such thing as levelling up or levelling down; you just level. What we have is the natural consequence of that levelling, and much as the Bulls have probably suffered more than most in the process, for me it is undeniable that the league is actually stronger for it, and this is entirely due to its more competitive nature brought about by a more even competition. The fact that supporters of ALL clubs now go to games feeling they have a good chance of winning is something to be celebrated not denigrated imo.

You have touched upon the things which need addressing if we are to improve the overall standard, the player pool, for instance and the RFL have taken the first steps towards spreading the game wider, but clearly this will take time and, of course, may never work anyway. To be honest I give up on the media over here, though the now, apparently thriving, university league may go some way to redressing the balance. As a bare minimum the next generation of reporters should now have no excuse for ignorance.