It's all well and good saying Andrew John's sold out Warrington for 3 games.

However, we are not talking about a couple of games. We are talking signing on for a year or more. As a Saints speccy I would pop down to Warrington and watch Johns for an odd game. But I'm not going to turn up week in week out. I'd just turn up at the away fixture.

Also when you talk about Andrew John's making headlines, where exactly????

My point about Birmingham is that fine crowds at Warrington grow, but it does not break into anywhere else. It sells the local rag in Warrington, but would hardly be a blip on the landscape.

I've worked up in Preston only 20 minute from St Helens, less than that from Wigan. In the middle of Lancashire. Walk into a school and ask who is Cooper Cronk. I'd be surprised if you got one child who knew.

I have no problem there would be an upsurge in crowds in the current localities. But it would not solve the RL problems in the UK.
I would also argue that the growth in crowds would not match the outlay.
The Good DR was talking £1million for SBW's. Well as soon as the rule comes in suddenly he's gonna have to pay a lot more, as Wigan and Leeds and Saints would have to start moving with their big money people.

You may as well remove the cap and let clubs pay what they want. Then you will see a sudden turn around when those who have caught up due to others being restrianed suddenly find, oh they have buckets full of money and we can never match them.

Of course in the long run we would end up with clubs who have just managed to turn a profit. Losing it all on long shots. I'm not bothered from my own clubs perspective, I'm sure we would bankrupt ourselves as good as any other team chasing the dream of x player will win us stuff. Only to find that years later the money never came in like we thought and we are going to have to sell our ground to survive.

I'm not surprised others hold a different point of view as it's a very English disease to spend what we don't have and sod tomorrow. Bet it all on black and let the wheel spin.

I suspect it's very easy to get around the cap if you really want to, either via a loophole or by actually breaking the rules but in such a way that the chances of being caught are virtually nil.
Didn't Koukash once say he knew clubs were paying players wives to get around it? And that he would do the same. I don't recall anyone in officialdom pulling him up over it.

There's nothing wrong with paying players wives, it still counts on the cap for that player. But it can potentially be better for both player and club re income tax.

no one has ever suggested, even a little that a marquee allowance would solve all the problems the game faces. No one has suggested even a little that it would be some sort of panacea for the games ills.

It would solve one problem, thats it. Thats all it would do, and all it was intended to do.

What you seem to want to ignore is the inherent risks in your 'jam tomorrow' standpoint

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?

nothing wrong with the good Dr arranging a weekly poker school with 4 different players each time and lo and behold his dummy unconnected stand in fall guy off the street loses £100k each time and the players win £25k each time....this of course happens at a private table in a bonafide casino.....

I'm in a bit of a grump today, so sorry to be a bit negative - it's a decent enough idea in many respects.

I just fear that with these incentive schemes, that:
1. There's always the potential to exploit the rules - eg cutting prices to silly levels to boost attendances. Or juggling the numbers to record a profit.
2. It ignores why clubs don't always do things with the wider interests of the game at heart. Clubs will always pursue their own self-interest - it is a competition after all. Good of the game stuff that is vulnerable to short-termism if the clubs hold the power and take the responsibility, should be run from the centre with central funding ring-fenced for that purpose. Rather than trying to manipulate clubs into desirable behaviour, which is so often a losing battle, provide funding to people whose sole job and focus is to deliver the desired outcomes.

There are lots of ways around breaking the salary cap, all it takes is financial instruments. (And a mate who works at a finance firm down in London!)

It wouldn't be hard to outsmart the rfl, and send money through 5 different nations to pay a player directly - BUT if you do it so much people get fishy, you then have kpmg on you, and no one (in rugby league at least) would pull the wool over them. And where it all falls down, so the trick is to do it enough to pull in the best, but not so much people get suspicious

You could do that. Or you could pay his mate £10k to fix your bog seat.

Looking at the rules a while back, I noticed that it explicitly says that you can't de-register players to beat the overseas quota and non-fed rules. Without a RFL discretionary exemption, naturally.
It doesn't say anything equivalent in the salary cap rules. It doesn't say you [ican[/i, but my impression is that it is maybe possible to [ucarousel fed-trained players[/u. It was [isuggested[/i that Hull KR might have to do that to meet the club-trained minimum at one point. So basically, injured and well-paid unused players wouldn't count - unless you want them to, so you can tell the fans the club is spending to the cap.

Castlefords opinion of the matter: www.pontefractandcastlefordexpre ... -1-6466783

Castlefords opinion of the matter: www.pontefractandcastlefordexpre ... -1-6466783

seems a fairly over-written statement.

Surely "we couldnt afford it so didnt want others to have it" would have acheived the same thing?

Bit like the Bullmania thread. "We've gone bust. Deduct the points. Let's move on".

Is someone getting your coat?

If it's a company not connected to the club then that would be fine. But the moment that company is contacted by the club/owner then it is connected to the club and that money would count on the cap.

The not telling the RFL bit gets very sticky from a fraud point of view, same as Melbourne with the dual contracts. I'm not sure many clubs would be willing to take that risk, especially with RL being a small world in which people talk.

'strengthen the underbelly of our club' is strange phrasing. 'Foundations' would be better.

un·der·bel·ly
noun \ˈən-dər-ˌbe-lē\

: the bottom part of an object or an animal's body

: an area that is easy to attack or criticize

: a part of society, an organization, etc., that is hidden and usually unpleasant

As soon as a player plays 1 game for the club whatever he is paid for that year is counted on the cap. Otherwise, like you say, you'd have Sam Burgess for rounds 1-14 and then SBW for Rounds 15-27!

You can't possibly think it realistic that an RFL demand to see the books of Caddick Construction or SJM would ever be met with anything other than a howl of laughter

I always like a Cas press release. I wonder who does their PR for them.

Auditors can though.

no they can't. The Auditors wouldnt even get inside the building. These are companies turning over hundreds of millions of pounds, with hundreds if not thousands of employees, some of them are publicly listed.

They arent opening their books to an audit because Blake Solly asked them to.

Like Financial (Anything But) Fair Play, that would just lead to a 'rich get richer, poor get poorer' scenario.

I think the Golden Ticket idea isn't particularly very good but I do like the marquee player system. It doesn't even necessarily mean having to bring in a superstar. Wigan probably could have kept Tomkins and gone out to get another very good player if the system was in place.

I'm not sure that is the case, since we moved to the [ulive cap[/u system. There was an unusually intelligent and non-adversarial discussion between Rovers and Hull fans about this on their board a while ago.
What I took from it was:
You can't exceed the cap at any given moment - meaning you can't 'save it up' and use more later in the year, for example. Club's are not given an allowance at the begining of the year, to 'use up'. In those circumstances if a player moves mid-season it would be unreasonable for both clubs to have to count all of his annual wage.
So the cap is £1.8m per year, but also (roughly) £36k per week or just over £5k per day. It is assessed constantly for the top 25 [iregistered[/i earners.
As so often, the rules are a little opaque. So it is only really a theory. But for me it is one of the more rational (partial)explanations for how two clubs, both 'spending the up to cap', can end up with squads of quite different quality.

Many years ago I was in a Casino watching Roulette and actually saw an East Asian Grocer place £5000 on Black and £5,000 on Red. Red won and he then cashed all chips and asked for a cheque so he could declare as Gambling Winnings. Very clever eh?

Until it comes out green