According to Rugby League Week, the next version of the marquee exemption is to be voted on. The new rule proposed is:

- All NRL signings are capped to £200k on the salary cap, regardless of what they earn.
- teams can nominate a "homegrown marquee", as long as he is earning over £200k, and he will be taken completely off cap.

To be voted on in June - do you think it will get voted in by the SL chairmen? Does it go far enough to appease the "sustainable growth" chairmen? More importantly, will it work??

Quite simply, the teams that can afford to take advantage of it (Salford, Warrington, Wigan, possibly Leeds and Hull) will vote for it. The teams that can't will vote against.

Is it a good idea? Well it might stop a couple of young English stars going to the NRL/RU, and it might mean we see a couple of Aussie test stars plying their trade over here again. But there are plenty of things we need to prioritise over this to take the game forward.

Define work...

Is it better than what we had before? Yes. Will it help us compete for 1 word class player? Yes.

Are there a few problems with it? Yes (main two being why 200k? Seems pretty arbitrary. Doesn't seem to much of a point in that. Also the home grown one doesn't seem sensible to have that 200k cap. Wouldn't it just encourage a club who could possibly sign a ayer for 175k to nominate him as marquee and pay him 201k and have him off the cap completely? I'm not sure what these extra restrictions are actually trying to achieve )

Will it solve all our problems and immediately make everything brilliant? No.

Will people call it a failure because it doesn't solve all our problems immediately and make everything brilliant? Yes.

It's a start though. Hopefully see some big names and big stars come across next year. There are a few big names out of contract for us to attack. I'd also say a couple of teams might keep their powder dry. Next year is a world cup year. International rl has a bigger pull in a WC year. There will be a few Aussies and Kiwis who might want to stay and fight for a WC place next year that may not be so keen on whatever follows.

Personally, I would rather see a broader exemption / reduction for all "homegrown" players rather than an exemption for a single player.

No doubt that some chairmen will like being able to spend £500k to sign a Greg Inglis or Billy Slater, but long term I am not sure that this will help Super League to grow and develop over the next 3-5 years.

I can't imagine how it wouldn't.

If GI came over here it would be the biggest boost to RL'S profile and visibility in this country in my lifetime.

I don't think it could hurt though?

The way I look at the proposal is that it's an effort to keep our stars whilst gaining new ones. Something SL desperately needs is star players to get bums on seats & people talking about the game.


I think the £200k home-grown marquee player allowance is a good one. It's aimed at those top few players in our comp, who might otherwise be tempted by going to the NRL or Rugby Union. Obviously not all clubs will need it, but I'd rather it was available than not available.

Completely hypothetically, this rule if brought in a few years ago could have tempted Sam Tomkins to stay, Wigan don't tie up so much cap in one player & can offer him enough to make him stay. Saints could have had James Roby as their marquee player, freeing up cap to perhaps keep James Graham or going back even further, Eastmond. The rule could help Leeds keep hold of Watkins in the future. It's not saying clubs have to spend this amount of money, just that it's there should they need it.


The NRL player rule again is a good one IMO. The salary cap impact capped at £200k means that they can go out and sign one or two world class players, but due to cap constraints can't spend a fortune and have 5 or 6 internationals running about.

For me the homegrown doesn't go far enough. If Saints get Roby as they're "homegrown Marquee", it still offers no protection to the next generation (Percival, Thompson, Greenwood etc), who might take the crown from Roby ifand when he retires or starts his decline. As the Joe Burgess move proves, they're just as at risk as the very top players.

I quite like the capping to 200k of non-fed players (and I can only assume NRL players means non-fed, otherwise it would be quite unworkable imo), and 200k is probably quite a good figure in terms of balancing clubs cap. You can just bring in 5 superstars and hope the rest of the team just turn up, but with careful precision you might fit 2 in...

I agree in large part with Smokey. It doesn't solve all RL's problems but it allows clubs to be competitive with the NRL and Union.

I understand the point about homegrown players and don't see why we can't have allowances on the cap for homegrown players, anything to encourage the use of them must be good. But I don't have a problem with a club trying to sign a Billy Slater or Greg Inglis, that's exactly who we want from overseas and we should do everything we can with the cap/finances to encourage the signing of top quality players from whatever source.
The problem is the signing of large amounts of average aussies/kiwis/islanders that represent risk-free short term gain for clubs rather than investing in youth. It's getting a bit better (despite the bizarre increase in the non-fed trained quota by the RFL) but still not where we should be in terms of numbers of homegrown players and certainly not there in terms of quality.

Billy Slater has been on the slide for some time so he may be an option.
The chances of a player like Inglis moving to England for anything less then what he gets now would seem remote.
He would be on $1,000,000 a season with his personal sponsorship.

How do you have a marquee allowance AND promotion/relegation? The middle 8 is already a dicey concept in terms of disparity of salary cap without adding this to it as well.

I agree with Smokey to the extend of asking, what "problem" are we trying to solve here? If it is to attract and retain talent and prevent it from going to the NRL or rugby union, then it addresses just one factor among many.

We're in danger of assuming that players only head to the NRL or RU for financial rewards, which misses some other major flaws in our domestic game. Yes, both the NRL and RU offer financial benefits to SL, but they also offer so much more that SL, or RL, doesn't offer. The NRL offers a lifestyle that is massively appealing to 20-something lads and it offers strength of competition. RU offers a completely new experience, the chance to travel the world and play in front of 80,000 people for your country and greater endorsement opportunities.

Introducing a marquee player policy doesn't address any of those concerns, but it does create a few problems of its own - wage inflation being an obvious one. My concern is that we see such an idea as some sort of magic solution to some other very deep-rooted problems in the sport.

If passed, the same principle will apply to Championship clubs too, but the figure will not be £200,000 but £17.50.

Seriously, nobody involved in the proposal has given the new format and P&R point even a second's thought. But there is a solution, Championship clubs are allowed the same quota of 2 marquee players, but they are not their own players, the rule is any player deemed "marquee" must play on free loan for a Championship club alternate weeks

These are incredibly irresponsible proposals. The salary cap was brought in because Wigan, the sport's most famous team at the time, went bankrupt because they couldn't actually afford the monumental salaries they were paying.

Nothing has changed in that regards now. If we bring in exemptions like this that will enable clubs to spend whatever they like on players, it will massively increase the risks of club failures, which we are seeing anyway even without clubs spending more than the current cap.

Who could actually afford it at the moment? Salford? Yes, but only for as long as Marwan's temper holds, from his own mouth they are struggling financially and will be even more next season and onwards due to their stadium deal. His viability has to be questions given his unprofessional approach to the game and his dummy throwing whenever they lose. Leeds probably could, they are a well run organisation, as are Warrington and possibly Hull/Widnes but I'm not sure. Wigan couldn't, Saints couldn't, Wakefield, Cas, Huddersfield, Hull KR, Catalans couldn't. It's already unlikely to be passed.

The sport is constantly looking for ways to keep up with the NRL and Union, but it shouldn't. There isn't the money in the game over here to do that. Crowds are 5,000 down per game on average against the NRL and 2,000 against Union. We try to come up with initiatives to promote the sport, yet we've got an incompetent governing body who allow the TV deal to be signed for half it's value.

It's a balance between all out competition, which whilst desirable, RL just does not have the depth of clubs to be able to pile several of them up on the rubbish tip of sport.

If Football loses a couple of clubs to financial ruin there are 100's waiting to take their place. In RL if we lose clubs to financial ruin then it risks the sport to a much greater extent.

But then there is the issue with running at the pace of the slowest runner. Do other sports overtake us?

I do doubt the Greg Inglis arguement. If Saints signed Greg Inglis would it add that many more on the gate to afford his wages to make it a profitable transaction, would your man or woman in the street in Wimbledon care enough to tune in to watch him on Sky Sports?

How many more people watch RU now Burgess is playing?

I can see that this might well be counter productive, with the bruised egos of some players meaning they'd be prone to leave a club if they weren't deemed to be the "marquee" player.