Is it?

How many players who have gone to the NRL or Union have said publicly that money was the key motivation?

In any case, how many players are we talking about here? There are a handful playing in the NRL, and probably only two in Union at the moment who would be stars in SL (Burgess and Eastmond, one of which had already left SL before he went to Union).

The whole idea of a "player drain" is an absolute myth, and the idea that you have to revise the rules for everyone to deal with a small number of cases is madness.

Even Nicholas Cage doesnt publicly state its all for the money.

If players don't go to the highest bidder, why are we worried that one team would dominate?

And yes, we are talking about a handful, we are only ever talking about a handful. The very best are always just a handful. But the next time that England lose to Australia and New Zealand and we complain about why we have Matty Smith at half back we know its because one of the handful is playing a different game, and when we agonisingly lose by a few points and wonder why we just can't find that player with the x-factor to finally get us over that line, its because Sam Burgess is playing RU. And when Saints lose 39-0 against souths and we wonder why there is such a gap, we know its because they got George Burgess, we got Atelea Vea, and when Wigan get beat by an 11th place side from the NRL, its because they got Sam Tomkins, we get 100 year old matty bowen. They keep Gareth Widdopp, we bring in a string of never quite made its like Luke Walsh, Travis Burns, Michael Dobson.

St George had great success against wire with clever, well placed reverse kicks, Wire couldnt defend them. They couldnt defend them because they very rarely see them in SL, They dont see them because only a handful of players can pull them off well, regularly. None of whom play in SL. And we will continue to create hard working, willing, skilled, underpaid young men who simply arent given the tools they need to fulfill their potential and win but hey, we wont have changed the rules to accommodate those with the talent to demand it, and we wont call it a player drain because only the very best are going.

Yeah, increase the cap so teams can sign more average overseas plodders

The cap isn't the problem and never has been, teams spending the space on players not worth half of what they get is, however.

Raising the cap is only useful if we can attract more top players from overseas.

This is impossible, as the NRL cap is 2 million more, if a few teams in the UK could get to about 5 million for their squad then their overseas signing would be pretty remarkable.

If my aunti had a penis she'd be my uncle.

Clubs are paying what they can afford. No club is pocketing millions in profit every year.

5 clubs voted to be able to spend more for this season, Nigel Wood himself even said "Our elite teams need to be cut loose to be internationally competitive"

We ignore those in the game who say we need to pay more, we ignore our own experience that where pays the most, we are most likely to go, we ignore the players who move on and get more, we ignore our own history of tempting players across by paying more, we ignore the RFL telling us that we should pay more, we ignore the very obvious logic of paying more, getting better.

We ignore all this and who do we believe? Those who have a vested financial interest in paying less.

There are a few people on this thread who i would like put in touch with my uncle, the Nigerian General looking to move some money out of the country.

If you could DM your phone number and bank details im sure we could come to a mutually beneficial arrangement.

This.

If you got rid of the salary cap tomorrow, SL clubs would still not be able to compete with the NRL other than by bankrupting themselves in the process.

If a young English player gets an offer to go play in Australia that is at least comparable financially to his current contract in SL, I'd be worried about his ambition if he didn't at least want to go test himself over there for a few years. The game in the UK cannot compete with the game in Australia on so many levels, only one of which is the financial aspect.

Would SL and the England side be better with Sam Burgess and Kyle Eastmond in it? Of course it would. Is the salary cap directly responsible for them playing Union instead? Is it cobblers.

If Souths, with all the attraction of Sydney, the increased cap in the NRL and the glamour of the Russell Crowe connection couldn't keep hold of Sam Burgess, what hope would a SL club have had when the RFU came knocking on his door?

Then why stop them trying?

The propaganda has been swallowed so hard that getting rid of the cap will simultaneously mean clubs spend millions on players and also not be able to bring in any real quality.

If there are reasons outside of money, Why didnt we see the best RL players going to RU during the shamateurism era? Why was the flow the opposite way? They still had a far bigger international game, why did players only start going over when there was money available, and why are more players going over now RU wages are higher? Why didnt we see a tonne of players following Adrian Morley over? Sydney was still Sydney, there were still beaches, RL still had a bigger profile, the NRL was still the best league in the world. Why have we seen more going over now that the NRL SC is much higher?

If these chairmen and owners can't be trusted not to lose their shirts in negotiations with their players, how on earth did they build their businesses to start with? Is Simon Moran capable of dealing with Justin Timberlake and Ed Sheeran but he going to get taken to the cleaners by David Howes? Is Ian Lenegan going to get the millions he made in IT and Theatre production taken off him by David Riolo? After half a century creating a quarter of a billion pound construction empire is Paul Caddick about to meet his match in ShowmethemoneyUK?

I don't have a problem with trying to keep/attract star players. I do have a problem with across the board wage inflation for mediocre players, including NRL has beens.

If some billionaire gave every club an extra million a year we'd see extra NRL imports of slightly better quality and wage rises across the board for all players. Five years down the track we'd have virtually the same product. SL still couldn't pay enough to attract genuine Aussie stars in their prime, or union players.

Any increase needs to be targeted - at letting clubs spend money on - and properly benefit from - player development (i.e. allowances for players developed by clubs), together with some kind of marquee allowance to enable clubs to retain those few players that are targeted by RU/the NRL.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love all SL players to be paid more. But frankly right now too many of them aren't worth big rises, and the kind of money required to genuinely compete with the NRL/RU is way beyond most - if not all - clubs. Even Leeds or Wigan couldn't actually spend enough to achieve parity with the NRL cap, let alone the RU one without taking a massive financial risk.

It's always about the money. Even when people say it isn't.

And clubs main source of income, is central funding, which is basically TV rights.

A different way of looking at the salary cap, is at a proportion of central funding.

In super league, the salary cap (this year) is set at 112% of what the clubs get from central funding. (purely because central funding went up)

Does anyone have the basic guaranteed income an NRL club or RU club gets for their share of tv rights? as a proportion of their salary caps?

You see i dont get this, i dont understand why we are so desperate to protect clubs chairmen from themselves, why we feel the need to put the responsibility for the games well being not on those with the power and control to change how the game is run, but on those who earn their living from it.

It seems entirely contradictory. You say that these players arent worth big rises, then argue that the SC is the only thing stopping them getting the big money. How can they be both not worth that amount, and have some one willing to pay them that amount.

I dont understand how people can be wedded to the cognitive dissonance required to see that a) our players arent worth more, B)that they are being offered more but we can't afford it c) that whilst they cant afford it, owners will spend more, D)that though they are spending more they wont bring any better in, e) any rise in the cap will be spent on paying existing players extra even though they arent worth it.

It just doesnt make sense. A player is worth whatever someone is willing to pay him. If Dr Koukash wants to offer some championship level plodder £1m a year, that player is worth a million pounds a year. Thats how a market arrives at a value. We seem to have decided that a player isnt worth what an owner is prepared to pay for his skills which is self evidently wrong.

I think you have hit upon the greatest dissonance within the SC. That Leeds/Wigan with turnovers £8M-£12M turnovers cannot afford to compete with salary caps that are £3m/£4m so should have limits placed upon that spending at £1.8m. Yet Cas/Wakefield et al turnover circa £4m can spend £1.8m, and any promoted clubs who will be in an even worse situation will be allowed to spend the same. Thats clearly not true. Thats clearly an issue with the SC and why it doesnt work, or do the things people suggest it does, and why the results wouldnt be as the perceive. The SC actually has the square root of fsk all to do with affordability. Its less than 20% of Leeds turnover, close to 50% of Wakefields,

a couple of things about the 'targeting' of the cap, firstly things like developed player exemptions sound good in principle, and they do reward good work. However they also have the unintended consequence of keeping the status quo. A club can't salford, even run perfectly as Koukash's critics would love, is at least 5/6 years away from reaching parity in terms of spending power under the current cap rules. That is absolutely mental. Especially under a P+R system, developed player exemptions simply make things far easier for the big clubs, and nigh on impossible for a smaller club.

Id also ask what the difference is affordability wise in paying a kid you developed a million pounds a year and paying greg inglis a million pounds a year?

Marquee allowances, again there isnt any difference affordability wise between paying inglis £1m a year, and getting 10 better players on 100k a year more. Whilst a marquee exemption is better than what we have, we should really look at what we want and then whether it is necessary.

The SC in my opinion isnt doing what it set out to do, it isnt achieving the things it was sold on and it has many negative consequences. So we should ask what it is we are actually wanting and whether there are better ways of doing so,

My opinion is fundamentally we shouldnt limit a players wages, if a mans skills are worth x amount to an employer, thats what he should be paid. Anything else seems somewhat exploitative.

Is the SC the best way of distributing talent? or would a draft or even squad limits be a better example of that? I.e a match day squad can only be made up of 5 players developed outside of SL/Championship and only 5 players who have played for another SL club? that would mean that a 17 man squad could only contain 10 players that had been brought in and 7 from your own backyard. Increasing the value of players you have developed to you, whilst somewhat limiting it to other clubs. (if you only have 5 places in a matchday squad, are you really going to waste that on some expensive average joe from another SL club?)

Is it the best way to stop wage inflation? Do we want to do this? it seems to me inflation isnt the issue, affordability is.

Is it the best way to keep things affordable for clubs? no, clearly not, multiple clubs have gone bust with it, it has no resemblance to an affordable figure for clubs, its a pretty arbitrary figure in terms of affordability. So it clearly doesnt do this. Is there a better way? well nothing is just as good as something that doesnt work. Chairmen are business men, and P+R is supposed to weed out the weak clubs, doesnt removing the salary cap do that in terms of weak chairmen?

Does it mean all clubs can compete? No it doesnt. In fact it has the opposite effect. Take Salford as an example, as a club not expected to challenge they have to pay extra to get the better players. A player with an offer of £100k at Salford for a mid-table dog-fight, possible relegation and cancellation of contract, or £100k at leeds for likely tilts at the title, finals, and near certain lack of relegation and cancellation of contract, who are you going to choose? Some clubs are playing catch up and for them it may be the right choice to spend more on players.

Everything that goes with moving to the NRL or RU, trophies, standard of living, more exposure, world cups etc. they are all miles behind money when it really comes down to it. Every player is a mercenary.

I have a good job, the money is good, I enjoy it and I work hard when I'm there. But if someone came to me and offered me exactly the same job but with a 20k pay rise I'd drop my current job like a stone. 99% of the population would do the same, and in a short career like rugby league its probably even higher.

Everyone wants to play at the highest standard they can, and win things, but it's far less important than making a good living.

Agreed, look at the amount of Prewmiership footballers (and those in other leagues too) who are prepared to sit and warm a bench all season for a huge salary, you get young players going to Arsenal, Chelsea, Man City, Barca', Madrid, Bayern etc, knowing full well they will never play for the team, but theres triple the money on offer.

Shame isn't it that most players say between 30 & 35 are finished after playing the game and will never work again.

30 years & incapable of doing nothing else before they might, if lucky, get a pension.

What Him said about broadening the breadth of RL in the UK is the only option.

More people playing and watching will increase the income naturally.

I find it bizarre in the extreme that people say there is not enough of a player pool in the UK. For a country with far more in terms of population, wealth and easy access to a European market of potential players over 100 million, yet our talent pool is smaller than that of Australia and New Zealand.

It's a bit of a poor excuse.

People are looking at the NRL today, but for years they have tightly controlled the NRL cap and concentrated on clubs have better balance sheets. Even when the SL took a couple of their players, did they change direction? No, they concentrated on the bottom line. We have far larger potential to grow in this country and growth of the game in terms of TV and attendances will be the key to bringing up both the cap and the quality of the game long term.