I wonder if anyone's ever thought of paying a player extra via their wife/girlfriend/brother-in-law/mate and not telling the RFL about it? Maybe even through a different company?

If the team isn't liable for any debt then seriously what's the problem?

Because, whether the club is liable or not, there are better things for the money to be put towards at this point in time? First and foremost, a proper reserves competition!

Yep. A proper reserves comp. Training and pitch facilities for those reserves and academy (something often overlooked). But also, vitally, youth and junior development beyond the reserves and Academy. Since it's now the responsibility of the clubs. I bet it doesn't get funded to anywhere near where it should. Most clubs seem to think sending a couple of players to an amateur club a couple of times a year is junior development.

I've posted this on the Saints Forum, but I'll curse you all with it too.

I get what both people are driving at.

Koukash wants to increase big names in the league.
Mac wants to help the national side by giving allowances for club grown players.
The Cap wants to stop clubs spending beyond their own means.

In a way they all pull in differing directions. Now I'm not sure what the Marquee descriptor is and that does need to be nailed down. Otherwise it's just more money for some average Joe.

But I could see a way to combine all 3 elements.

1. Protect clubs fiances with a cap
2. Allow 'Marquee' signings
3. Keep clubs focused on the long term of player development for international games

Whilst Big Mac's proposal is laudable it does hand an advantage to SL incumbents. They have had more time to hold their own players. Naturally clubs lower down will have had pressure from above clubs to sell on their players. So any new club to the league would be at a disadvantage for a long period and may not survive long enough to get to a point where their junior set up matches long standing clubs.

I would not allow any player to be completely exempt from the cap. But newer entrants to the league could have say a higher Marquee player ratio.

Set the Salary cap at £2million.

Your Wigans/Saints/Leeds would have the ability to have 1 Marquee player only cost £100,000 on the club accounts. They would also be allowed to have say up to 10 club grown players cost again only £100,000 on the accounts.

This encourages teams to develop their own players.

However brand new entrants to the league would be allowed say 3 - 4 Marquee players again only costing £100,000 on the club cap as it is unlikely they would have 10 academy players at the very top standard on entry to the league.

But their Marquee allowance would drop by one player every 3 years. So by year 10, they would be at the same place as other mature clubs, developing their own players and not just buying in.

Going to either extreme gives too much to short termism or too much favour to the incumbents in the market place.

However, I still maintain that the overall club cap should be limited to £2million and any additional payment to a Marquee player or an academy grown player that goes over this £2million figure would need to come from outside the club accounts. Whether that be sponsorship, or owner payments.

So Koukash could have 3 marquee players currently. The Salford club would pay £100,000 of their wages, the rest comes from elsewhere. But the Salford club could not pay over £2million in total for the squad. In another 3 years they would be down to 2 marquee players, then 1 three years after that.
In the mean time they would need to build up their own academy players to replace these marquee players.