And where is this money coming from to pay for us to compete for the very best players in the world?



We have it and it works so why does it need to be justified? Surely to even challenge the salary cap you need to have an alternative that survives close scrutiny first or else you change to something that might not work which would be suicidal.

What do you mean? The game is awash with surplus money.

Wherever it wants to. If it comes from outside investment great, if it comes from inward investment great. If it doesnt come from anywhere clubs dont bring in those players and we are no worse off.

The salary cap stands or falls on its own. It has to justify its existence like every restriction we have has to justify its existence. It is wrong for us to apply restrictions to clubs just for the sake of having them. The SC doesnt work, it clearly doesnt work, every single criteria it is sold to us on it fails to meet. It doesnt stop clubs going bust as the myriad of clubs who have gone bust under the SC era will testify, it doesnt 'even out' the competition, Leeds have won 5 of the last 8 grand finals, only 5 clubs in the history of SL have contest a GF, and one of them only once, the clubs who have made the jump from 'smaller' to 'bigger' clubs havent done so on the back of the SC, they have done so on the back of massive investment from their owners. The SC right now, is achieving nothing.

Costs of abolishing it altogether outweigh the benefits, IMO.

The league would become very lopsided. We had a lot of blowouts as it was last year - and they'd become more common. Rugby isn't a sport that lends itself to giant-killing acts. And sport needs competition. I'm far from convinced that there is a lot of unspent revenue to either. Supposedly super-wealthy Hull have rarely made a 6-figure profit, iirc.

The problem the sport has, isn't the cap, it is money.

But if you're going to raise it, just do it. The opaque, sliding scale thing they just brought in is a joke.

Finally - why should the rich clubs help the poor? So they have someone to play. I enjoyed HKR putting 70 on Wakefield last year, but as a novelty. It'd soon wear thin.

The levy system (eg paying £200 k above the cap, but having to put the same amount into a pot to subsidise the poorer clubs) would probably get support - otherwise, Turkeys don't vote for Christmas

Most are too young to remember those days, let alone the two seasons they spent in the old Div 2.

Club benefactors like Lenagan, Moran and Davey are not immortal, if they don't move on to other things first, it's a guarantee that they will die at some point. What happens to their money then?

Wigan can't flog their ground to Tesco anymore, they don't own it.

I like the idea of for every £ you over spend you have to put in to a RL pot.

So do I, so long as it is £10 you put into the pot for every £1 overspend

Well yes, but I felt that I should explain my stance rather than limit myself to monosyllabic responses.

So in other words, we don't know and we are assuming that the money is there when it might not be. I am not prepared to forego all the recent positive progression the game has made on the back of a whim, hunch or gamble.



That's all well and good but my point still stands about "you need to have an alternative that survives close scrutiny first or else you change to something that might not work which would be suicidal" especially because you also haven't made a successful argument against it.

You've said it hasn't stopped teams from going bust and then referenced a "myriad" of clubs which have gone bust without considering the likelihood of whether they would have gone bust without a salary cap and whether other teams would have gone bust if there had been no salary cap.

You mention the evening out of the competition without making reference to the increased closeness of results/league positions and public perception about this. You simply make reference to who has won and then suggest that that is the only measure of competition within Super League when it clearly is not. My own eyes tell me that the competition is getting more competitive e.g. Huddersfield (who hadn't challenged for anything in my lifetime before the cap), Catalans, Warrington winning two Challenge cups. I await next season with even more interest thanks to the arrival of Millward at Cas and the two new coaches at both Hull clubs. You may suggest some of these have made the leap to the big time via massive investment, however I believe it's more down to the appointment of good coaches i.e. Smith, Brown, Robinson.

I'm not saying there aren't have valid points about wanting to develop the game, however whatever points that are being made need to consider the context of what the game has, wants and can afford to be. Singularly throwing out points without sufficient evidence for them or ignoring the positive points of the cap to make a point is not the way to progress the debate.

It doesnt matter if the money is there or not. There is nobody forcing anybody to spend it. If clubs have the money, then there should be a mechanism for them to spend it. If they dont have the money then it doesnt matter that that mechanism is there because they wont spend it anyway.

Thats just poor thinking. We dont have to justify not having an SC, it is the SC that needs justifying. If the SC cant justify itself we dont have it.

But you are just guessing that that is the case. And again your thinking is poor. It isnt up to me to prove that other clubs wouldnt have gone bust without the SC, it is up to you to prove they would have. Though I think it is clear you would struggle

And as i addressed, Huddersfield and Warrington didnt improve their competitiveness on the back of the SC, both improved on the back of massive investment from rich owners who would likely be among the first to spend more than the current SC. How do you think Warrington could afford Smith and Hudds Brown if not for their rich owners? It clearly has nothing to do with the SC. It seems strange that you are arguing in favour of the SC but saying that the improvement at Les Catalans, Warrington, and Hudds was down to the appointments of Smith, Brown and Robinson?
Your point about closer games and the results/leagues doesnt stand up. In 1990 Wigans league topping points difference was +350, in 1991 +339, in 1992 +338, in 1993 +417, in 1994 +377 and in 1995 +762, 1996 +494, 1997 + 397. In 2011 however Warringtons was +672, in 2010 +511, in 2009 +352, in 2008 +483, 2007 +361, 2006 +509, 2005 +491, in 2004 + 594. The teams at the top had bigger points differences (i.e the difference between what they conceded and scored, a pretty good indicator of 'closeness') post SC than they did pre SC. The teams scored more relative to what they conceded after we 'levelled the playing field'. That certainly isnt evidence of the SC narrowing the gap. If you have any evidence of the SC working how it is supposed to, I have yet to see them. Simply guesses that teams seem to be closer, and other clubs could have gone bust without it, which is the worst kind of evidence available

Smokey, how many years do you think we had all this money before we won anything, it didn't happen overnight.

Money isn't a sign that you'll win anything, if all SL clubs had a billionaire backer someone would still finish 14th.

Coaching>Money
any day of the week, in fact the majority of the Late Cullen early Lowes team did nothing then won 2 CC's on the bounce and a LLS with Smith.

Of course it does. The Scottish rugby union is £16m in debt. Is that a situation you would wish to see rugby league in because we try to compete when there's no 'gold standard' to back us up. We cannot spend what we don't have as a sport.



I understand that and partly agree but the ability to spend additional money should not be allowed at the expense of the security, balance, integrity and competitiveness of the sport.



Just because you don't think it needs justifying doesn't mean it does. There's been several threads on these boards justifying the salary cap and pretty much all of them have been successful. By all means go back and read them because I don't see any point in regurgitating them when the argument for something better hasn't been made yet.



Okay because we can't prove it means the argument about clubs going bust cannot be determined. Therefore the only thing you can say is that this part of the argument around the salary cap should not be included. I would suggest through logic and financial awareness than allowing clubs to spend beyond an agreed and regulated figure opens up greater possibilities for clubs to go bust. I would refer to sports like football as examples of where that is the case (and if they haven't gone bust they're millions in debt, which RL could not survive with).



What I would suggest is that it's a combination of everything, however I do think the salary cap has played its part.



Again that is just one way of measuring competitiveness. What about looking at medians and averages between all teams over a time period rather than just picking the top team? By just assessing against the top team you are effectively suggesting that it is representative and accurately reflects the experience of all fourteen teams in the league. How is that a good measure? Even then it is a still only a statistical measure and at times may not reflect what reality is e.g. I've just watched two games; One finished 24-20 and the other 30-20; The first game was 24-0 at half-time and remained so until the final ten minutes when four quick tries were scored; Second game had several changes of lead and was 20-20 until two tries in the final four minutes. The stats suggest one game was more competitive than the other when it wasn't.

What's wrong with using your own eyes to assess what's going in front of them? I see a game that's getting more competitive as I think a lot of people do. Throwing up stats may support or undermine that argument, however they should never be taken in isolation away from what we actually see ourselves.