Well then, we should follow their lead: Drop to 11 a side, make the ball round, ban handling, etc etc

Increasing the cap is a no go. Not even half the clubs can spend the full cap without running in the red as it is.

Removing the cap is a no go. As it stands, no-one could compete with Wire, Leeds, Wigan and Hull unless Sheikh gets bored at Man City and buys Salford for giggles.

Decreasing the cap may bring the top clubs back down closer to the poorer sides in the competition but I don't believe this should be the case as they should target to increase their business to compete with the top sides.

So therefore, I'm happy how it is. Whether its possible for all teams to increase their revenue to spend at or near the cap level in the next 3-5 years without running at a loss in a 14 team competition, that's another question.

Backed up by huge sponsorship deals, high ticket prices and super-rich owners. Not to mention all the people who've fallen away from going to matches over the years because of ticket prices, the drop in atmosphere/enjoyment and the increasingly detached lifestyle of players and managers who couldn't give two hoots about the supporters. Not to mention that there's only a handful of teams who can ever win anything and a hell of a lot of teams have gone to the wall after chasing the rainbow. Yeah, modern football is such a wonderful model on how to run things.

A potential wealthy financial backer will not buy an existing RL club or establish a new one unless there is no Salary Cap - so he knows he can spend enough on players to guarantee promotion to and then be successful in Super League.

What? Like Dave Whelan?
Yeah and that's kind of the point of the salary cap, so that an owner can't artificially distort the competition by simply buying the best players whilst neglecting other areas of the club. Leading to the club having to deal with huge debts. Like Leeds & Wigan did.
If a wealthy owner wants to guarantee doing well in super league he can spend the full cap, spend whatever he wants on back room staff and facilities and the rest of the club, and make good decisions regarding player and staff recruitment.

Sounds a much better bet to me than trying it the Premier League way where you can only succeed if you're one of the richest people in the world and prepared to lose billions. Even then Chelsea finished in the same position as Hull FC did in SL.

I agree, the current SC encourages teams with little revenue to spend money they can't afford 'chasing the rainbow'. It also penalises those clubs who do generate enough total revenue to afford a higher SC from attracting better players from (or losing existing ones to) RU/NRL.

Would it be too simple for the RFL to say SC for the season is capped at 50% of the previous seasons revenues (with details to be agreed eg - 'revenue' does not include obvious 'owners one offs', and debt repayment/tax commitments must be accounted for FIRST!!!). If they insist on having a cap, maybe limit total salaries at 300% of lowest club in SL.

If Wigan, Leeds, Saints, Warrington, Hull .... or any other club that can market themselves properly can generate £10m/p.a. from tickets, merchandise, sponsorship etc, why should they lose players because others can't generate £2m in revenue?

I still think any cap is a badly thought out (stupid!) way of effectively discouraging clubs from reaching their full market potential - why bother bringing cash in if you can't spend it... may as well run on borrowed money ... oh look; some clubs are!

Why people are so wedded to this version of a salary cap I have no idea, there isn’t one positive in its favour, it isn’t transparent, it isn’t simple or clear, it hasn’t made the league more competitive ( I find it quite strange that people claim Hull and Wire can now challenge because of the SC, like Simon Moran and Adam Pearson are short of money) it hasn’t stopped clubs going bust, and it has meant that no club in the league can compete for the very best players in Rugby.

I can see why people may be in favour of a cap, I cant see a single reason why someone would be in favour of this cap.

So, you should have no objection the following simple structure for the success of RL in this country:-

1. Scrap the Salary Cap with immediate effect
2. All clubs to submit audited accounts made up to 31 December each year to the RFL by the following 30 June. Failure to do this = 6 points deduction
3. One-up, one-down automatic promotion and relegation between the leagues
4. Go into Administration = 6 points deduction
5. Go bust and transfer club to a new company = relegation to the bottom division
6. Minimum of 13 of the named 17 for any match to be EU born or trained

How many wealthy financial backers have you spoken to?



You might guess from my sig that I'm fairly close to some recent activity around pro RL.

It shouldn't be done away with but it does need changing to a percentage of your revenue in order to protect the smaller clubs and to try and kick their marketing teams into action.

I'd agree that ideally it should be, but it then gets very tricky. For instance what percentage should it be set at? Some people on here and other boards have said in the wake of the Bradford administration that the 50% rule should never have been done away with, but that wouldn't have altered anything at Bradford, nor any other club as I would imagine every club gets more than £3.3m income (or near enough).
Also it then gets into details such as do you include the £1.4/5m each club receives from the RFL in the income figures? What about director input? Or any type of loan?

Just scrap it.

If any club wants to spend a fortune that's fine but they had better beware my other rules including:

- Go into Administration = 6 points deduction

- Go bust and transfer club to a new company = relegation to the bottom division

- One-up, one-down automatic promotion and relegation between the leagues*

* Note - we have three divisions - SL, Championship and Championship 1. There is no such thing as a 'full-time league' - any club in any division can offer any type of contract it likes e.g. full-time, part-time, match terms only etc.