Quote: TheButcher "Simply raising or binning the cap wont sort the discrepancies you highlight. It will just lead to a two-tier competition that will drive half your fans away from the game. The NRL has a lot of advantages over SL. National sport, investment, better media coverage, huge investment into grass roots, a massive player pool, and a sensible cap to name a few. We can't compete with that. The rise of the NRL has taken time and a lot of changes since they were second-class to the UK.
For SL to improve all over the park, it needs time and careful management along with investment and growth. SL needs to be competitive regardless of how you view the standard. The overall competitiveness of all teams with each other will then improve the standard. The standard can't improve unless that imbalance is addressed. How do we balance that? With the cap.'"
Interesting thoughts. I'd agree to a certain extent about the competitiveness of SL, but we have Saints who cantered to two hubcaps and really ought to have won the treble in the past two years.
I suspect that the salary will start to work against them, in that the players who have reached regular first team standard over the last couple of years, will ask for an upgrade in monetary terms once contracts are up for renewal. It's either find a way to say yes, by reducing the cap elsewhere in the squad if your maxed out, or the lure of Australia beckons. Also, there's still only four clubs that have won SL in how many years? Yes, were finding different clubs making the GF in recent years, but the quality of our product is really suffering, with the recent GB tests highlighting the problem. It's a long, long time since the NRL was second class to the UK, and I cannot see us getting anywhere parity for another considerable length of time.
The salary cap is part of the problem with the quality of our product, and this is the reason that SL is more competitive. I cannot see an way forward where we have both.