Quote Damo-Leeds="Damo-Leeds"Wigan don’t have all the money now a few clubs have a bit of money. Its just that the money is been restricted from been spent because we want a ‘level playing field’.
If we want a level playing field should we just scrap the league table and just have friendly’s?
Leeds, Warrington, St Helens & Wigan are a few clubs I can name who could spend more money than they’re doing at the moment without going into financial freefall.'"
You sound like a Goon Damo.
The 'communist cap' isn't unfair and it isn't levelling an otherwise uneven playing field. That theory is all nonsense.
As ever with salary cap discussions, the obvious example is Wigan. They weren't particularly successful but made the decision to go fully professional and spent a hell of a lot more than anyone bar possibly Leeds (Coming 1st out of 2 is not that amazing an achievement). Their success wasn't based on doing things better than other clubs, but purely on spending more than anyone else. They then got to the stage where buying the title year in year out wasn't sustainable and they went incredibly close to disappearing completely. Were it not for Dave Whelan's football team needing a 'multi-purpose' angle for his stadium planning application, Wigan RL would not now exist.
The proof of this pudding was the instant fall from grace Wigan suffered when SL began. Now they weren't able to spend way in excess of everyone else they disappeared off the map completely and the well-run clubs like St Helens, Bradford (Bullmania era) and Leeds came to the fore.
St Helens are loss making with the cap, so explain to me how they could spend more without going into financial meltdown? Don't tell me an extra 9,000 people would turn up to the mess of a ground we have now just because we had a few more star players???
If they removed the salary cap we'd see an enormous gap in quality at the top. Leeds, Wigan and possibly Warrington would be mega-teams and the rest would be scrapping for 4th from the go. The cap in this country is working, slowly. In a few years we will see the errosion of the 'top 2' as we have of the 'top 4' (Saints/Wigan/Bradford/Leeds) and we will end up with a competition where the team which develops their squad better that year and has most luck with injuries wins the comp, as it is with most of the clubs in the NRL.
The league now is basically organised by how well the clubs are run, with the youth development work done at Leeds and Saints the main reason they are consistently at the top and why clubs like Wigan and Warrington are consistently languishing near the basement despite their stature.
If you abolish the cap you are basically just turning the league into a 'Who's willing to spend the most?' list instead of a list of how well the clubs are run like it is now.
SL is fantastic, all we need is money. In this country money=hype and we have none.