My point was that changing from a cash salary cap to a points quota system would not alleviate the problems that we have with differences in squad standards due to vast differences in income for different clubs. The cash ceiling as it currently stands fixes the average salary at £60k - £65K. Removing the cash ceiling would allow previously restricted salaries to climb above that. You only have to look at RL pre SC to see that clubs with larger turnovers will offer players more cash to price out competitors and that the smaller clubs will overspend to get players to keep up and will ultimately fail and go to the wall. Most of the SL clubs cannot pay full cap.

You are fooling yourself if you think that with only so many points to use and no rule to restrict squad salary that bigger clubs will say to their players "we can keep you here but your wage is limited to a certain amount" due to the points quota and that players will meekly accept. The principal deciding factor in player wages is what the player's agent can get any club in either code (or even AFL) to pay him. Agents will play off one club against another as they do in sports with no SC like soccer and as they still do in RL with the SC. The pay cut hits the agent as well as the player so he will steer his client into RU with the guarantee of the same salary if needing to.

The next Keith Senior or Martin Gleeson wil still require a similar level of salary to those two. A player getting representative honours will still demand a higher wage than one who hasn't played representative RL. Regardless of the number of points they have on their quota a club like Quins or Salford is still unlikely to be able to pay more than one top level player (if they can even afford to do that) without facing going out of business. There is also still going to be the type of Richie Myler situation, he was getting Rep honours at Salford but still couldn't wait to get away and join a bigger club with more hope of silverware. This despite Salford offering in their words to make him the best paid player ever at Salford. He still wanted to play for a bigger club over one of the smaller ones and other players will feel the same. You cannot force players to join any club against their wishes

Changing to a points quota will not solve any problems we have now, they will still exist. The only way the squad strengths will balance is by every club growing their businesses to a point where all are able to pay the same total salary (full cap ideally). Then a player will be able to go to any club and get the same wage and all clubs will have an equal chance of competing for honours by being able to pay players of the same standard as the other clubs throughout their squad.

Bringing in a salary cap floor at a low level initially and requiring all SL clubs to be able to prove they can pay that minimum amount to get a licence would be a way to work towards a truly even playing field. The floor could then be raised over a sequence of licence cycles. This would drive all clubs to grow their businesses and increase turnover to get in and would have more chance of eventually evening all 14 clubs than any points quota would.

Nop. Sorry, I've read this four times and still don't see the logic.

Quite simply, some clubs in SL cannot afford to pay as much in salaries for their squad as others. Salford for example do not have the resources of Leeds. Not all clubs can afford to spend full cap and so do not.

Changing to a points system rather than a salary cap to constrain club squads may mean that one big club will have to release a player to fit into the points quota (as they have to with the SC anyway). It does not however alter the fact that the smaller clubs cannot afford to pay these players so the top players will still gravitate towards bigger clubs with bigger turnover.

For the length of his contract probably, which isnt really any different to now.

In fact if they were able to negotiate a settlement with him it would actually put them in a better position, for instance, Player A has 2 years to run on his contract, they could offer to pay him 18 months of his contract off to leave, this is something they couldnt do in an SC world as it would count massively against one years cap

it doesnt need to. If Warrington want to go out and pay £1m a season to all 25 players on their books it doesnt matter, they will still have to create a squad of 25 players that dont break the points ceilling and would simply be massively overpaying some very average players, this wont make a club spending a reasonable amount any less competitive.

the issue isnt how much they are paying but the make up of their squad. The can only fit 6-10 top quality players under the ceiling cap, and the more of the 'top' players they have the lower the quality of the other players they would need to make up their squad, whether they pay them a million or a tenner they would still need to fall under the points value
no, im not. Im saying that it doesnt matter. If a club wants to keep a player, the wage demands are secondary to their points value. A club can negotiate with a player their wage however they like but if they cant fit them under the points cap they cant offer them anything. And they cant play one team off against another because only a few teams in each case would be able to offer each player a contract. All clubs would be forced to have a similar make up of squad, 6-10 top quality players (between 36 and 60 points) between 5 and 10 2nd tier players (between 20 and 40 points) and around 10 3rd tier players (about 20 points) how a club decides to do that is up to them but it limits the amount of players of quality each club can employ. Which limits the demand for tier 1 and 2 players, which limits their value stopping wages massively escalating

yes they will. they will want more money, the same as they do under the salary cap. However Richie Myler as a non-developed international player probably wouldnt get a gig at Warrington because likely couldnt fit him under the points cap. This would mean Salford werent in competition for Myler, very few of the big clubs would be, meaning Salford et al could offer him a lower wage, and he would be left with a choice to accept it or retire. If union came in for him, then Salford could either choose to increase his wage to compete or let him go, which is a better situation than now where they couldnt compete.
nonsense, there will always be big clubs and little clubs, it is naive to think otherwise. What you really mean is that when the SC is at the level of the lowest common denominator the top quality players will move around on 3 year contracts taking their success with them, as has happened in Australia. We will also lose a lot of the top players to other sports. A points quota evens the playing talent in EXACTLY the same way as an SC, it just allows clubs to pay players what they are worth, attract better players and compete with union if they so wish (no one is going to force them to do so)
no, it wont, you have already contradicted yourself by
using the example of Myler accepting less at Warrington, the same as Ellis did at Leeds, which shows that the big clubs will be able to attract the the better players on lower wages, a hard salary cap only entrenches that position

and you are still missing the point that the bigger clubs can only fit so many players under the points cap, they can only fit so many players of a certain quality under the points cap so all the players cannot possibly gravitate towards the bigger clubs because the bigger clubs cannot employ them whether the players are asking for £10 or £10m

I understand that a points quota would mean that a club could only have a certain number of players of a certain quality in their squad. I read the article and understand mathematics. I also understand that a club that can only afford to pay a lot less on their squad (because their income is a lot smaller) will not be able to pick up a lot of the players that the richer clubs are forced to release without going bust in the process.

The players that are in this situation have only a 12 to 15 year career and will want to maintain their wage level. Those with demands beyond the spending capacity of the clubs that can fit them into the points quota will go to RU to get that wage so the weaker clubs won't necessarily strengthen from the system changing. You could end up with the competition as a whole being weakened (just as with a salary cap).

Neither system is ideal and neither is likely to produce the desired outcome. The title of the thread posed the question "a better way?" I just don't happen to think it is any better at doing what it sets out to do than the current system.

But they cant do this anyway. If a club cant offer a player attractive enough wages because they simply cant afford them then they simply cant afford them, whatever cap system we use. And union isnt going to become suddenly more attractive to Player A at club A because Player B at Club B is paid more than him. Paying Danny Mcguire more doesnt make union more attractive to Stefan Ratchford, in fact it becomes less attractive as IF SALFORD WISH they can offer Ratchford terms to compete with union something that they cannot do now.

Im still curious as to how your logic has reached this point, i simply dont understand where you are coming from. I cant see how raising wages for some players will mean other players choose to go to union who wont now be offering more than they were previously because of this

I don't know where you got the idea about McGuire getting a pay rise at Leeds causing Ratchford to leave Salford. What I was saying that if Leeds are forced to release player A due to points quota and Salford (or any other club with enough points to spare) cannot afford to pay the wage that player A wants (he is unlikely to accept a pay cut to go to a weaker club) then player A is more likely to go to RU to get his current wage level. Nothing like what you seem to think I meant.

To clarify a point I don't think you understand SALFORD CANNOT AFFORD TO PAY FULL CAP SO DO NOT PAY FULL CAP. Changing the system from a squad salary cap to a points quota WILL NOT GIVE THEM THE MONEY THEY DO NOT POSSESS they will still not be able to pay for players they cannot afford now. THEY CANNOT AFFORD THEM BECAUSE THEY DON'T HAVE ENOUGH MONEY, NOT BECAUSE THEY DO NOT HAVE THE CAP SPACE. That is the reason they have been trying to move to a new stadium since well before they were warned about it affecting their licence. They hope that it will increase revenue to give them enough income to be able to have the same spending power as Leeds, Wigan et al so that they then will be able to afford the better players. Salford are not alone in this situation.

Implementing a points quota system in place of the Salary Cap with comparative club finances as they are now would have very little, if any effect on the balance of power and the spread of the best players. With a much smaller budget the likes of Salford (apologies to any City Reds fans, I do not mean to single out your club in particular) cannot afford to assemble a squad with the same strength as Leeds, Wigan, Saints. They may have the available points but it doesn't mean that they can use them any more than they can spend the full cap.

Your argument in most parts contradicts itself and in others is completely irrelevant, ill try and address them in bullet points so hopefully you can either follow the logic through or show where your logic deviates

If Salford cannot afford to pay player A then they cannot afford to pay player A. It doesnt matter what cap we use, even if we have a cap that they can afford to spend the full amount, unless they can make an offer acceptable to the player he wont play for them.

We are more likely to lose players to union with a monetary cap because we are limited massively in what we can offer a player. Under a points system a club could choose, if they wished, to offer a contract to a player which would compete or even beat an offer from union. This means we would be less likely to lose a player to union

A points system would spread the talent between the clubs more, as clubs wouldnt be able to have as many players of a certain quality on their books at anyone time, this would mean some players of quality would need to go to lesser clubs as they wouldnt have an opportunity at top clubs. This would keep the wages down as well as clubs are very limited in what clubs they can sign for.

You're argument against the above is that players are simply going to refuse to play for a lower team, this however contradicts your argument of needing a cap all clubs can spend. it also contradicts what we are seeing right now. Clubs are able to pay players now and the same players would still play for the same wages, with the points system meaning more quality players would be available affecting the price each player can demand.

yes we do need to grow game wide revenues but this is completely irrelevant to how we cap clubs hoarding players. Especially as we know players will accept less (meaning lower clubs need to pay more) to play for bigger clubs

It's pretty simple really, I don't understand why you can't see what he's getting at.

If we use someone like Robinson when he was at Wigan, or Calderwood when at Leeds. Neither club thought they were worth retaining for the money they were wanting, so both left the clubs they were at and joined 'lesser' clubs, probably on slightly less money than they were on previously, but because the cap restricted their wage at their original club it wasn't a massive drop.

Without a monetary cap, both players wages could have been much higher at the point their clubs decided they didn't want them. Huddersfield still couldn't have paid much more than they did in the original example, so the drop in wages is now a big one. Do those players still sign for Huddersfield or Hull if the wage drop is massive or do they look elsewhere? Do Huddersfield break the bank attempting to keep up with the wage inflation that [iwould[/i happen (for any doubt whether clubs would pay average players more money if it were available, where did all the SL money go? Certainly not into club development)?

The monetary cap means that wage differences are never that big, even if smaller clubs can't pay as much as bigger clubs, a points system with no monetary cap would destroy that.

this would only be the case if you were naive enough to believe clubs would suddenly start wasting money for no apparent reason.

the reason why clubs spend huge amounts of money previously is that they were in competition with each other for everyone of these player, and they believed paying more would attract a better quality squad. This simply cannot be the case under a points system.

Wages arent going to escalate massively, and where they do, it will only be for the very best, which is no bad thing.

In the case of Calderwood, Leeds did offer him a contract, Wigan offered more, im not sure why you think Leeds not being able to offer Calderwood a contract would mean the clubs in competition for him would need to pay more for him. Neither am i sure why you think a union contract of say £100k becomes more attractive than a league contract of £120k because the player previously had a league contract of £300k.

This system would have no influence on how attractive a player is to union and how much they are willing to offer him. If they are willing to offer him a contract higher than a league club is willing to pay then he will likely go to union, but having a points system doesnt suddenly mean a union club will offer more, unless of course you are thinking that a player will take a pay cut (from league to union) in a strange nose-cutting, face-spitting action because Quins arent able to offer him as much as Leeds. If not, then the clubs are in a position of more strength able to negotiate harder with players

It doesnt matter if the wage disparity is huge, a club cant be more successful simply by paying more money to players

And you call him naive

Yes, because history has told us they never, ever do.



So you think that under a points system clubs aren't in competition with each other for players and paying more than other clubs wouldn't attract a better squad?



If one club increases wages, they all have to. To think otherwise is incredibly naive.



I'm not sure where I posted those figures. Can you point it out to me? Otherwise, you might be better off reading what I have actually written.



This system is a waste of time and would improve nothing.



Is that why Melbourne Storm failed to win so many trophies? And Wigan in their heyday? Oh, they did win more than other clubs by paying players more. More money means attracting better players, to even attempt to deny that isn't naive, it's laughable.