wow......you found David Hughes business plan for London broncos RL......it's genius isn't it!

firstly, i dont agree that if we had more to spend on the cap, we wouldnt bring in more better players and be able to keep hold of more of the ones we have. I think its self-evident that that would be the case.

Secondly, dont the players deserve some of that money? We have apparently seen a 60+% rise in clubs distribution, why dont those who are out there putting their bodies on the line for the tv companies deserve some if not all of that money?

Thirdly, it isn the players job to subsidise poor management. We have decided now that clubs can rise and fall on their own merit. If those clubs make a pigs ear of it that club should suffer the consequences. Its morally wrong to be limiting the amount of money a player can sell his RL skills for so that money can be used to cover for the clusterfsks some chairmen will make of running the club. To paraphrase Ivan Drago " if they die, they die". Thats the brave new world we live in.

Is it?

How many players who have gone to the NRL or Union have said publicly that money was the key motivation?

In any case, how many players are we talking about here? There are a handful playing in the NRL, and probably only two in Union at the moment who would be stars in SL (Burgess and Eastmond, one of which had already left SL before he went to Union).

The whole idea of a "player drain" is an absolute myth, and the idea that you have to revise the rules for everyone to deal with a small number of cases is madness.

Even Nicholas Cage doesnt publicly state its all for the money.

If players don't go to the highest bidder, why are we worried that one team would dominate?

And yes, we are talking about a handful, we are only ever talking about a handful. The very best are always just a handful. But the next time that England lose to Australia and New Zealand and we complain about why we have Matty Smith at half back we know its because one of the handful is playing a different game, and when we agonisingly lose by a few points and wonder why we just can't find that player with the x-factor to finally get us over that line, its because Sam Burgess is playing RU. And when Saints lose 39-0 against souths and we wonder why there is such a gap, we know its because they got George Burgess, we got Atelea Vea, and when Wigan get beat by an 11th place side from the NRL, its because they got Sam Tomkins, we get 100 year old matty bowen. They keep Gareth Widdopp, we bring in a string of never quite made its like Luke Walsh, Travis Burns, Michael Dobson.

St George had great success against wire with clever, well placed reverse kicks, Wire couldnt defend them. They couldnt defend them because they very rarely see them in SL, They dont see them because only a handful of players can pull them off well, regularly. None of whom play in SL. And we will continue to create hard working, willing, skilled, underpaid young men who simply arent given the tools they need to fulfill their potential and win but hey, we wont have changed the rules to accommodate those with the talent to demand it, and we wont call it a player drain because only the very best are going.

Yeah, increase the cap so teams can sign more average overseas plodders



The cap isn't the problem and never has been, teams spending the space on players not worth half of what they get is, however.

Raising the cap is only useful if we can attract more top players from overseas.

This is impossible, as the NRL cap is 2 million more, if a few teams in the UK could get to about 5 million for their squad then their overseas signing would be pretty remarkable.

If my aunti had a penis she'd be my uncle.

Clubs are paying what they can afford. No club is pocketing millions in profit every year.

5 clubs voted to be able to spend more for this season, Nigel Wood himself even said "Our elite teams need to be cut loose to be internationally competitive"

We ignore those in the game who say we need to pay more, we ignore our own experience that where pays the most, we are most likely to go, we ignore the players who move on and get more, we ignore our own history of tempting players across by paying more, we ignore the RFL telling us that we should pay more, we ignore the very obvious logic of paying more, getting better.

We ignore all this and who do we believe? Those who have a vested financial interest in paying less.

There are a few people on this thread who i would like put in touch with my uncle, the Nigerian General looking to move some money out of the country.

If you could DM your phone number and bank details im sure we could come to a mutually beneficial arrangement.

This.

If you got rid of the salary cap tomorrow, SL clubs would still not be able to compete with the NRL other than by bankrupting themselves in the process.

If a young English player gets an offer to go play in Australia that is at least comparable financially to his current contract in SL, I'd be worried about his ambition if he didn't at least want to go test himself over there for a few years. The game in the UK cannot compete with the game in Australia on so many levels, only one of which is the financial aspect.

Would SL and the England side be better with Sam Burgess and Kyle Eastmond in it? Of course it would. Is the salary cap directly responsible for them playing Union instead? Is it cobblers.

If Souths, with all the attraction of Sydney, the increased cap in the NRL and the glamour of the Russell Crowe connection couldn't keep hold of Sam Burgess, what hope would a SL club have had when the RFU came knocking on his door?

Then why stop them trying?

The propaganda has been swallowed so hard that getting rid of the cap will simultaneously mean clubs spend millions on players and also not be able to bring in any real quality.

If there are reasons outside of money, Why didnt we see the best RL players going to RU during the shamateurism era? Why was the flow the opposite way? They still had a far bigger international game, why did players only start going over when there was money available, and why are more players going over now RU wages are higher? Why didnt we see a tonne of players following Adrian Morley over? Sydney was still Sydney, there were still beaches, RL still had a bigger profile, the NRL was still the best league in the world. Why have we seen more going over now that the NRL SC is much higher?

If these chairmen and owners can't be trusted not to lose their shirts in negotiations with their players, how on earth did they build their businesses to start with? Is Simon Moran capable of dealing with Justin Timberlake and Ed Sheeran but he going to get taken to the cleaners by David Howes? Is Ian Lenegan going to get the millions he made in IT and Theatre production taken off him by David Riolo? After half a century creating a quarter of a billion pound construction empire is Paul Caddick about to meet his match in ShowmethemoneyUK?

I don't have a problem with trying to keep/attract star players. I do have a problem with across the board wage inflation for mediocre players, including NRL has beens.

If some billionaire gave every club an extra million a year we'd see extra NRL imports of slightly better quality and wage rises across the board for all players. Five years down the track we'd have virtually the same product. SL still couldn't pay enough to attract genuine Aussie stars in their prime, or union players.

Any increase needs to be targeted - at letting clubs spend money on - and properly benefit from - player development (i.e. allowances for players developed by clubs), together with some kind of marquee allowance to enable clubs to retain those few players that are targeted by RU/the NRL.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love all SL players to be paid more. But frankly right now too many of them aren't worth big rises, and the kind of money required to genuinely compete with the NRL/RU is way beyond most - if not all - clubs. Even Leeds or Wigan couldn't actually spend enough to achieve parity with the NRL cap, let alone the RU one without taking a massive financial risk.