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rlrl

I never understand this “they’re just buying their way into SL” or similar arguments were levied at Warrington trying to “buy their way to a trophy”.

Every club is trying to buy success. It’s simply a case of where each club thinks it’s money is worth more in achieving that end goal.

The difference between Warrington, spending the cap and having 2 marque players and Toronto is that Warrington are competing with the top sides in SL and probably not spending massively more than the other top spending sides in SL.
Toronto, on the other hand, are spending so much more than any of the other sides in the Championship, it takes away any meaningful competition, notwithstanding the fact that they have lost once and had a couple of scares along the way.
The disparity in spend within the Championship is already a bloody joke, with the top 4 getting 4/5/6 times more in funding than the rest but, Toronto are probably spending 2 or 3 times as much as any other club.
Sorry "Him" but, this isn't sport but, in RL, we no longer care about that stuff.

What is taking place is slightly surreal, a Canadian club, competing in what was a European competition, spending X times more than anyone else, playing a mere 7 games at their home ground etc, etc.

It just feels like RL has sold it's soul.

Of course there is interest when they play in England and so there should be but, is this really the way forward for RL.

It's a bit like Dubai as a tourist attraction, millions of tonnes of concrete poured onto the sand, al shiny and flashy but, not quite real.

More of a case of what each club can afford. Make no mistake EVERY club would be splashing cash like Warrington have and Leeds are beginning to do if they could. So basically any complaints about teams spending money is saying our more financially better clubs should be kept at the spending level of the weakest links in a division. Can you imagine Man City, Liverpool and Msn Utd being told they should only spend the same as Brighton, Burnley or Huddersfield?

Sports succeed when money is spent and for too long RL hasn’t. Interesting this week that Leeds apparently made an offer of £500k for Jake Connor and it was mostly shouted down as way too much money to spend on one player. 22 years ago Leeds spent £330k on a player, that over 2 decades later a club attempting to spend £500k is deemed silly money says a lot about our sport right now.

You do remember why the game switched from being a winter sport into being a summer sport dont you ?
RL was brought to it's knees by free spending clubs at the top of the old first division, when high transfer fees were the norm, especially when enticing players from Union and free spending Widnes and particularly Wigan brought the professional side of RL to within a whisker of going bust and Uncle Mo brokered a deal with sky which only became known halfway the season in 1994 ??
Wigan consequently moved in with their footballing namesakes and we all started to get used to summer rugby.
As part of the rules of the summer sport, a salary cap was introduced to prevent those very same clubs overspending and to bring some stability to a sport which was financially out of control.

So, why shouldn't clubs be able to spend whatever they want, why indeed.

If our sport was awash with the crazy money that exists in football, things could be different.
However, apart from 5/6 premier league sides, most of the cash in football is from TV revenue.

Although the salary cap hasn't worked 100% and there have still been casualties along the way and there should have been year on year increases, it has brought a level of stability to the game and it has also allowed for a more "even" competition, something which should be seen as a plus but, despite having a competition where almost any side can beat any other, "we" still cant sell the game as one of the most even, exciting and unpredictable professional sports on the planet.

That’s because the Salary Cap has been used to drag down the best clubs to lower clubs level.

If the likes of Man City and Liverpool were only allowed to spend as much as the likes of Burnley or Brighton do you think they’d be as huge an interest in the Premiership? Look at La Liga and the gap between Barca, the Madrid teams and others? In tennis, in the women’s game for years apart from Serena who couldn’t really call who would reach the last 4 of a Grand Slam. In the men’s game it was always usually Federer, Nadal, Murray and Djokovic. The next 100m final at the Olympics will probably be much tougher to call than the last 3 but I bet it doesn’t get the same hype and eyes watching it as when everybody tuned in to see Bolt win as expected.

Don’t confused a more even playing field with being better.

We’ve spent too long holding back the bigger clubs so the smaller ones could try and play catch-up and that’s hurt our sport as your best teams/players are what drive your sport forward. Did Tiger Woods dominating golf hurt it?

Really the salary cap in SL should have hit the £3m mark by now but we’re still stuck around £2m because some clubs can’t even manage that.

I'm not using a more even field as an example of "better quality" however, it certainly makes for a better competition.

However, what I did point out is that some of the bigger clubs of the 80's / 90's, although packed with "star" players, took the game to the cliff edge and a sustainable competition beats boom and bust every time.
You and your ilk bang on about the smaller clubs "dragging the game down" and "holding it back" but, it wasn't the smaller clubs that almost killed the sport, was it ?
It was THE biggest club in England that forced Uncle Mo to broker the deal with Sky. Not from a position of strength but, in desperation, to save his beloved Wigan.

Having said that, the professional era has seen the players become faster, fitter, stronger and quickened the game up, theoretically making it more attractive to watch.

As for the cap, with the addition of the marque player, we may well be close to the £3 million that you suggest but, as you rightly point out, it's immaterial, as we only have 4 ? clubs capable of spending this amount.

It's interesting how some clubs spend their money though and the solution is to throw even more money at overrated Aussies and this will continue for the next 10/20 years as no matter how many Toronto's or New York's we throw into the pot. RL in the UK will still languish behind both the Australian game and in this country, Union.

The expansion dream is, just a dream and regardless of how many N. American sides we throw into the mix, without a substantial addition to any TV deal, which looks way, way off happening, all that their inclusion will actually do, is to stoke wage inflation and reduce the "quality" in the UK.

*checks Wolfpack season ticket package* 10 games plus playoffs at their home ground.

Which 10 games are they ? are you including pre season games ?

No pre-season games here.

Starting this weekend:
Swinton
Bulls
Dewsbury
Toulouse
Fax
Fev
York
Rochdale
Barrow
Leigh

Plus playoffs

I agree entirely on the salary cap front. Though think there may be a better version of it that can be used.
It’s certainly spread the talent across the competition. This is no disrespect to Wakefield but the fact they’ve kept hold of Fifita and Johnstone are evidence of that and it gives them an opportunity to progress as a club if they can now keep hold of players such as them.
I think we’re getting to a stage, or will be soon, whereby the salary cap will have to be increased but that should be done steadily and with plenty of notice. There should be a 10 year plan showing the progression of the salary cap so that clubs can budget and plan accordingly.
We’ll also get to the stage where the salary cap and relegation don’t work together. If we’re at a stage where the cap has effectively spread playing talent across the league then you’ve got a league clubs who are all pretty close in terms of on-field ability. At that point relegation becomes even more of a negative to the league as you’re not relegating a club that clearly can’t hack it, you’re relegating a club that’s probably been a bit unlucky in it’s signings or it’s injuries. I don’t think that should be a basis for relegating a club.

I still don’t like the “[insert club name] is just buying success”. Every club is doing or attempting to do that. With a salary cap it doesn’t overly distort the competition so it’s not an issue. The only thing that overly distorts the competition is clubs spending money they can’t afford to lose. Which is why the penalties for going into administration are there even though I still think they should be harsher especially with regard to the individuals involved in running clubs who end up in significant debt.