what is needed is more bigger games in the SL.

Take a look at the end of the eason Wigan played Leeds in the CC final, a week later played Wire which more or less decided where the shield went. not to mention stains twice with a match against Cats and crusaders. That is tough, take wire who didn't have a match during cup final week so they had two weeks to prepare for the shield match than also had a further weekend off when they won their play off match. In theory they should have won against leeds and in the past few seasons the team in that position has been fairly succesful.

Unfortunately the teams such as wigan, leeds, stains and wire the teams that make up the large proportion of the national squad only play a big game once or twice a month. The knock on effect is that when these player play in big games they can quite easilly as the week before and the week after the played London, Wakey, Cas. And use these matches as rest periods and just go through the motions.

Two easy steps would be in the play offs no fancy gimmicks. Keep it 8 teams but a straight knock out structure. Using the 2011 season table Wire would play Hull, Wigan v KR, Saints v Catalan and Hudds v leeds. Winners would go through to next round and the team who finished highest in the table would be at home. So in essence the two teams you would have expected to be in the GF would have been Wire and Wigan.

The second one would be introduce a state of origin tournament. Lancs, Yorkshire, Cumbria and rest of the country. Then when players start coming through at London and other expansion areas in the UK where they could field a team that could at least put a performance in then let them form one.

Also I would like a pathway for a player in the lower league to be able to progress into a superleague team. Instead of a team bringing in an ozzie or another foreigner why not bring a player in from the championship? a simple solution to this is if a player has been brought into a sl team from a championship team and if they have never played in the sl then they are exempt from the salary cap for the first year.

It may be true that they don't, but no mega-rich fan is going to invest to change that, because Rugby League doesn't want their money. If you want rich people's money, the only way they'll spend it is via a club, where they can feed their ego by trying to build a great team.

There are plenty mechanisms you can put in place to stop one team taking the p**s. Tough squad limits for one. The reason Wigan dominated when they outspent everyone was less to do with the 1st choice XIII, than it was the size of the bench. Not only did it mean Wigan could replace a missing international with another one, it meant other clubs didn't have the players to compete, because they were in Wigan's reserves. That can be fixed.

You can also 'tax' cap overspend to ensure rich investors money has some other benefit to the game.

Increasing the intensity of our game is the only way and I think we're seeing it, no matter what the naysayers keep saying. Our game has improved immeasurably over the past ten years but people keep forgetting that as our's increases so does the NRL.

I'm not so sure about that. The current cap, where we can guarantee a limit on player salary expense, that there will never be a race away of player salaries and we can put a fixed number on the expense needed to be construct a competitve team, is more likely to attract investment than discourage it.

Wiganers seem to be obsessed with raising the salary cap as they perceive it is "holding back" Wigan, with their sort-of rich backer, from buying up all the best players and dominating the game like what they did back in The Golden Age.

My club could legitimately outspend Wigan, and the rest of the league, if they chose. But I'd rather they didn't as it isn't in the best interests of the game for Leeds and Wigan and the Wire to hoover up all the best players in the league leaving the rest of SL a moribund mess. But then Wiganers never seem to consider anything other than the small-minded interest of their own club.

So a hint: what's "good" for Wigan is not necessarily what is good for the game.

I like the idea of the salary cap but do think it is too low at the moment. In real terms RL wages have seen a big decline in recent years and even if RL's salary cap had increased in line with inflation it would be above £2 million now. Bearing in mind increasing SKY money, season tickets, crowds, RFL profits, sponsorship etc have all gone up in the time then where is all the extra money going? As far as I can tell no chairman seems to be in favour of the cap rising but at the same time they want all the kudos of owning a SL club without any expense.

I dont think that raising it, say to £2 million will make the league any less competitive but it will do an awful lot towards keeping not only our better players but also our younger players in the game. If clubs cant be trusted not to go bust cap it to £2 million and link it a percentage of revenue. Even this increase of £400,000 is only like 10 senior players getting an extra 20K and 20 lesser payed players getting another 10K. There are young, talented players, 17 and 18 year olds, who will be great players if they stay in the game, who are getting paid peanuts. Likewise there are young SL regulars who are getting less than 30K a year. Going forward the game has to offer more to not just these young players but potential players of the game.

But all the evidence is to the contrary - money pours into the premier league despite the fact that you'll basically lose your shirt investing in Latics, Wolves, etc. I shouldn't have used the word 'invest' - the reality is that most rich people that put money into sport ( perhaps nowadays with the exception of the very top premier league sides ) do so more in hope (and for their egos) than expectation. Same in Union. But that's their fault - you can protect the sport without turning away their money.

Put it this way, if I won the Euromillions, I'd want to get Billy Slater, etc. to Wigan. I'd even sign Johnny Wilkinson - not for the sake of a player, just to get my club on the front pages and make people take notice of WIgan and Rugby League and shove one up the RaRa press. Now, if I was given free reign, it might screw the sport up, because in trying to make Wigan the greatest club bar none, I might fill it with Aussies and put the next best 50 players in the world in the reserves.

So I'd need some rules to stop me doing that. But in devising rules to stop *that* happening, you don't need to throw the baby out with the bath water and insist on a hard, and too low, cap.

Limit the squad, limit the overseas players, set a soft cap, where overspend is taxed and given to grass roots, and set another hard cap which is based on an independent auditors opinion of 'can the club afford this'.

The biggest problem is two fold, we have a salary cap which is not keeping pace with outside influences in Union and NRL. More potential England players will migrate to the NRL and to a lesser degree Union, It's possible around 50% of the international team will never be seen in Superleague, this means Superleague will be saturated with more average overseas players taking up most of the salary cap.
We have clubs with 8 to 10 overseas players, for me this is where the RFL fail miserably, we are no closer to accelerating home grown youth than we were 10 years ago.
For me Superleague has very little value in the sporting world in both sponsorship and investment and can,t compete in the market place.
The only way RL can increase in stature is if Football and Union overprice themselves and implode, but I don,t think I will be holding my breathe.

It is not a question of not keeping pace with RU and NRL salary caps, it is simply the cap reflects the TV deals the respective sports receive.

If the next round of negotiations get another £0.5/1 million, I am all for lobbing that straight on to the cap. The reality of the situation is; any increase in the cap has to be tangible and sustainable. Emptying the coffers of a benefactor to artificially increase the cap isn't a long term solution, and I say that as a fan of a club of a very wealthy, very generous 'Sugar Daddy'

You need to go back and check your facts bud. IIRC this year's Grand Final featured more homegrown academy products than any other.



Basically what you're saying there is that we have no control over our own success. How is that so? Football and RU can do what they want but ultimately we have control over our own destiny as a sport. Growing this sport is not out of our control and is something that we have continued to do despite people believing that we couldn't and can't.

The "evidence" consists of one single unique sport. Union has no more in the way of investors throwing money into its pit than RL.

If I won the Euromillions, I'd want to benefit and develop the whole sport. I could do that by investing in training facilities, coaching, coach education, junior clubs, and the amateur game.

Of course you could use your millions to get Rihanna and Black Eyed Peas and Metallica to play the half time show every week. That would get publicity

But we only have 3 or 4 clubs producing home grown talent in the way OZ and NZ do, thats why Leeds contribute half the english team. Won,t be happy until we can select an english team with depth from ALL the superleague teams and not short fix like Hull KR do.

In comparison to Football and Union we have no control on selling the game to the media, investors, blue chip sponsors, if we all turn off our Sky TV and don't read Rugby League Express/Weekly this Superleague game doesn,t exist in the global world of sport. This is where the RFL should be literally spending millions of pounds on advertising and hyping the game up over 1 to 2 years and not 4 to 6 weeks before a major event.

You should have put currently in there. There is more talent coming through now than at any other point during my lifetime. That it isn't 100% and perfect does not mean that it's not happening. It is happening but doesn't happen overnight.



The only way to grow the sport is to continue to make it the great spectacle that it already is. Build it and they will come. Yes we need to promote and market the game but the most important aspect is continuing to build on what we already have done. When you have people talking about the sport on social media like Twitter it indicates that people are learning all the time about how great a sport rugby league is. If we can continue to present our sport in its best light it will grow. People in the UK have disrespected our sport for too long but in this age of more accessible media that opinion is changing. Perhaps it might not be on the high streets of Letchworth after a Friday night game but people's perceptions are changing and our sport is growing accordingly. We need to be patient and build which we are doing. You only have to look at the difference in the sporting venues at which our teams now play on a weekly basis to understand that this sport has control over its own destiny.