Yes. Because what we really want is for half the clubs in the league to be rendered uncompetitive, reducing their fan bases or worse still, have owners who live beyond their means and turn their club into Bradford Bulls.

you have created a false dichotomy. THere are a million and one options we could take. It disappoints me the lack of imagination we approach it with .

^Exactly this^

Reforming the way we control the risk of overspend doesn't have to have anything to do with 'equalizing competition' ( the merits of which people have different views on anyway )

Separate the issues and we might get somewhere. People insist on assuming that anyone talking about cap reform MUST be talking about scrapping the cap completely and allowing completely uncontrolled squad limits so that Wigan (or in reality more likely Salford!) just buy anyone with talent and destroy the game.

So why was the Cap introduced in the very first place?

Was it to stabilise clubs in SL or to even out the competition? Genuine question.

Because if it was to even out the competition - what possible gain or advantage would it make that if a club wants to spend over the cap they also have to invest further into the club?..... You'd end up with rich clubs and poor clubs (a bigger gap than now) and a competition that doesn't interest the public because only a select couple of teams win everything.

I hate all this, flippin money.

was looking a r.union forum, them talking about non-rugby football stuff too. flip, I'm such a socialist.

Good question, and I think the answer is that at the time it was justified as addressing both those problems. As Smokey has pointed out, they're different problems and so it's not at all obvious that a single solution can deal with both.

For what it's worth, I repost (with a minor edit) my suggestion below. I'm sure it's full of flaws and would need lots of smart people to work on anything like it for a while to create a workable set of rules along those lines. But that's not really the point - the point is that there's a ton of ways to address issues - it's not just cap vs. complete free-for-all.

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No cap, just controls on not spending what you haven't got, i.e. limits on debt. Equity investment fine, spend it how you like...BUT...no more than 13 players on more than 50k (maybe a bit more, not sure).

This makes it interesting. You can't just hoover up all the talent, you can't even hoover up more than one world class player for each position without leaving yourself short of a star elsewhere. Koukash can thus pay 13 'Harlem Globetrotters' whatever he likes without inflating the price too much for others. He might have the best scrum half in the world, but the second best one can only get what the next richest club will pay because Koukash can't carry two 'stars' for that position without losing another star berth. This goes on down the chain of wealth. Even the poorest club will, at worst, have access to 12th best scrum half in the country.

Moreover you'd better have a damn good development squad, because there is no way on earth 13 star players will get you through the season. On any given day you need 17 of course, and you'd be lucky to have more than 9 stars fit on the same day. Big rewards for being good at developing up and coming talent.

[iClubs with less money therefore still have a viable strategy for doing well.[/i

Your development squad is almost guaranteed to be UK ( or France ) bred too, because although the money is OK, it's not enough to attract second rate Aussies.
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