I would go with the 50% income rule (or whatever value is deemed sustainable) This both encourages building facilities and not players, and rewards successful clubs

The current cap does neither.

10 out of 14 clubs are losing money, some significantly so. Why are these great businessmen as you seem to think they must be not turning around the fortunes of the clubs to make them profitable? We have only one control in place to A) stop the league becoming a 2-3 horse race and B) Stop clubs killing themselves, and you want to take it away so 1 or 2 rich guys can throw money at some Union numpty?

By what measure?

Average attendances for 'regular season' (league) games .... over 63,000 per game!

Using the same measure with similar leagues to ours it gets interesting:

SL gets about 10,500 per game; NRL gets 17,000, so you'd think they'd have c70% more spending power - they have 100% more....but Aviva Prem (Union) average is only 12,000, yet their salary cap is near 300% of ours .... and this is where the RFL should hang it's head in shame re marketing our game.

Two codes, similar fan base, similar TV viewing figures, both very regionally biased (check the locations of RFU Prem teams - only Sale are north of Birmingham!), yet one has generated enough money to give annual handouts to each club the size of our clubs total revenues!

Firstly, 10 of 14 isnt 80%. Secondly, operating at a profit isn’t always the aim, of all companies, at the same time. it is pretty naïve to look at profitability as the only measure of financial health.

St Helens don’t operate at a profit, they have posted some results which in isolation look pretty bad. But they have a huge shiny new asset which not only increases the chances of profitability for future years, but is a big shiny asset on the balance sheet on its own. Leeds as well, don’t look to post huge profits, with ‘management fees’ and loans to Carnegie often bring down the amount they show as ‘profit’. I have no doubt other clubs will have similar set ups. So again, it is pretty naïve to look at profitability as the only measure of financial health.

St Helens don’t operate at a profit, they have posted some results which in isolation look pretty bad. But they have a huge shiny new asset which not only increases the chances of profitability for future years, but is a big shiny asset on the balance sheet on its own. Leeds as well, don’t look to post huge profits, with ‘management fees’ and loans to Carnegie often bring down the amount they show as ‘profit’. I have no doubt other clubs will have similar set ups. So again, it is pretty naïve to look at profitability as the only measure of financial health.

Considering the salary cap has done neither of those things, it is pretty ridiculous to keep it in place, it hasn’t broken the stranglehold of the big clubs. Its just that one of them has been run poorly, and we have had three more ‘rich guys’ join the party. I find it strange that you argue so much on the financial prudence needed and how all clubs need to only spend what they have because were that the case, your club wouldn’t be in SL.

Without looking into the parallel universe where SL ran without a salary cap, we can't really be sure how well the SC has worked.

Nobody can be sure the Salary Cap hasn't adversely affected RL in this country.

I believe it has been a disaster for RL in this country (as has there being no automatic one-up, one-down promotion and relegation between the leagues) and I'd scrap it immediately in conjunction with introducing my other proposals for the structure of the game set out earlier on this thread.

My changes could all be introduced at the next meeting of the RFL - and as soon as they were announced would create a massive, overnight, boost for the game in all respects.

If my changes were introduced before the start of next season, I would allow a period of transitional arrangements - just to allow all clubs to honour all existing contractual commitments to players.

we can because the aims of the salary cap are measurable, it was put in place as a talent distribution mechanism, we can safely say it has failed this respect due to the concentration of success, it was put in place to stop clubs going bust, it has failed in this respect because clubs have gone bust, and it was put in place to stop wage inflation which it has been massively successful because our players are sadly earning less now than pre-salary cap. We can measure the wc om its own merits and we don't need to draw a false dichotomy arguing the only option is this specific form of cap or no cap at all and measure the caps successes only relative to a hypothetical world with no sc at all

not wanting to sound condescending but some of the smaller clubs need to merge in order to compete with the big clubs. some clubs are located in areas with relatively low population levels and will never get the 10k+ gates that is needed to have the financial clout of the likes of wigan & leeds etc regardless of having a salary cap or not.
but who would merge with a neighbouring rival.
the only way to level the field would be to lower the cap to the poorer clubs level, but that would lead to an exodus of our better players to nrl or union.
keep the salary cap and somehow allow the clubs in the bottom half to sign 1 young player per season on a two year deal from a top half side, with the club who first trained them having first dabs on them after the 2 years. no top half side would have to provide more then 1 player per season.
a bit like american footballs draft

I wouldn't scrap it, I would enforce it from the bottom end. Probably only 50% of the superleague clubs, with the exception of London your top 6 finishers in the league are the full salary cap ones.
The lower clubs don't have the support or revenue streams to spend to full cap, these should not be given a license, sorry Salford and Cas fans.

So you have a 6 team league?