This is my point , we are on a downward spiral . When Wigan dominated it was pretty much that they were the only profesional club who had the infrastructure , they all have this now , with the cap in place , potential players are choosing careers in the police and other sports etc , the game isnt growing . I hated Wigan dominating but you have to look back and think the game was played way better back then , we poached players from union , we attracted the kind of players you just don't see these days . If one club did dominate then other clubs have to compete to get better , some will overstretch and make bad decisions , but we have the RFL micro managing clubs into some kind of socialist nightmare where we are in steady decline . I was well in favour of the cap when it started as it was painful going into a pub in Wigan as a Leigh fan , but I was wrong . We are going to continue as a minority sport were the standard will continue to decline . Also the pathways for talent would sort itself out , if wages where lucrative , more people would be attracted to pay the game and the standard would grow and hopefully the fanbase . I also don't think Sky are helping , they are keeping lots of fans at home and could decimate the league if they wished , but obviously everyone is attracted to money upfront so we have become their bitches .

Any millionaire with a brain would be in favour of the cap , imagine any business with a maximum wage law , who wouldn't want that ? Doesnt mean its a good thing for the sport in the medium or long term . Imagine the RLF saying there is now a maximum ticket price of £4 , the fans would love it , but the clubs would suffer.

Where's the evidence that existing owners can or will spend more if caps are removed? Where's the evidence that there are people out there waiting for the cap to be removed before they get involved?

Unless there is evidence for that what's the case for removing the cap? We might manage to get the odd signing from union?

We need to run a salary cap based on a percentage of the mean number of youth players a club brings through as a multiplayer of their catchment area population. This will ensure we bring through more players.

Then, mid-way through, the super league competition should split into 3-team mini-leagues, comprising of 5, 4, and 3 teams, respectively. The loser of the top division has to play the second-placed team of the middle division twice and whoever has the best points difference by the end is liquidated.

Saints are only allowed to operate with 50% cap and the players are starved and fed restricted calorie diets until they fail to win the grand final. Once the hooter goes in the grand final, Brian Noble is splatted with a pie.

Sounds a bit far fetched that.

I'd just stick with the £1M bonus or one is picked at random to be sacrificed option TBH.

I love this, definitely marketable. I'd go even further and have Mayan-style sacrifices to the rugby gods (Saints) whenever a team was eliminated.

Well football is a good example , Boxing , NFL , Golf etc . I dont think its a coincidence that RU is getting better at the same time RL is getting worse and one reason might be is that they have a higher cap . Maybe the likes of Koukash would invest in Man UTD if they had a stingy salary cap , but this doesn't really tell us anything about the quality or vision of the current investors compared to future bigger minded investors who would come . On the whole crowds are dropping as well. A teams no longer exist like they used too , when i was in school I used to go watching Wigans A team games and they would regularly draw over 1500 people.

If the Premier league had a salary cap , do you think we would see Haaland playing over here ? Among many other 'superstars' .

Basically we have accepted that our chairmen are far too stupid to make business decisions , take risks and make investments , have a bigger pool of players , better competition for players in teams , most fans have also accepted that its bad for the sport that a team could have big investor who might spend a lot of money assembling a really good team and we need to share out the decent players among the teams so everyone is equally poor , along with players with short careers they also need to remain poor .

If your parents don't have deep pockets and a lot of time on your hands then you have way less chance of making it in RL , if there are any juniors who had a choice of playing football even in the 2nd division fro a financial pov choosing rugby is the wrong decision .

I think sky has created a 12 club showpiece league & marginalised all the other clubs. I think the way things are now has made a lot of lower division supporters lose interest in the game ,both the league & Challenge Cup.
Wigan did help to drag the game ,kicking & screaming ,into becoming a professional sport but some of the standards we see now are not much better than when players had full time jobs & were paid winning & losing money.

The game's problems have all been rooted in a lack of money in the sport and the reasons for that are complex. Removing the salary cap isn't going to solve all the problems and may have some unintended consequences.

Rugby union is hardly a picture of financial health and probity - having a higher cap hasn't stopped two top flight clubs from going out of business. The real problem is that there isn't enough money, fullstop.

Football outside the premier league isn't much better.

What standards would you point too that are higher now ? I would say the grounds are better , maybe the safety and medical protocols on the pitch but I can't think of many more . But your right Sky have tried to create a 12 club showpiece but its kind of a boys clubs where we would absolutely favour the catalans over the likes of Leigh , Bradford and Sheffield . The later who won the CC and then was destroyed by the RFL to create a franchise system, that benefited nobody . I am not suggesting players go back to getting jobs and playing part time , that would be there personal decision , if they removed the cap they wouldn't suddenly pay every player a fortune , they would probably carry on as they are right now , but then start increasing there spend/risk to poach the right player and other clubs would do the same and the market would adjust over time , ultimately we need more bums on seats ( at games , not on TV) we need more superstars/personalities and I think we have steadily moved in the wrong direction

You seem to have picked my idea apart on the basis that Saints would benefit. Saints would benefit from the status quo and from that and from pretty much any other situation you bring up. Saints aren't successful because they've played the rules or manipulated them. Saints are just better than everyone else. Better at identifying talent, better at developing it and better at coaching it. There's absolutely nothing stopping the other clubs matching Saints. You'd have to ask Wigan, Warrington, Huddersfield, Hull, Leeds etc why they aren't doing what Saints have done. Having exemptions for your own produced players is important in the cap I think as it encourages clubs to develop talent. You are right it would benefit clubs like Saints, Wigan, Warrington and Leeds in the short term, but those are the clubs you want clubs to aspire to be like, or better than. What do you want to happen exactly? Clubs get a flat cap with no exemptions so they can sign players other clubs produced and so the competition just declines in quality each year? Which would benefit clubs like Leigh Surely we want more clubs like Saints and Wigan? Don't we?

Before replying, Bongser would ask you (good evening Saddened! How are you? Well it is to be hoped) to answer some of the direct questions in yours truly's post prior to us accepting that your previous post indeed contained a genuine "idea".

Hmmm. There are other factors in play that contribute to the hegemony of two or three clubs, as you no doubt know.

Hubris? Bongser supports his birth town team (unlike many), a team that has not won serious silverware for four
decades. Perhaps you meant "humous"? Money & humous - it makes as much sense!

Welcome to RLFans, ShawnK. The more the merrier.