well done on

a ) missing the point and
b ) getting your facts wrong.

Why would we become the SRU? where is your evidence or logic to show we would? and I havent advocated us spending money we dont have, i have said plenty of times that if we dont have it we dont spend it. What you are advocating is not spending money we do have.
The salary cap doesnt do these things. We can see from the past ten years of the SC it doesnt do these things, The league isnt more competitive, it isnt more secure, it isnt more balanced and the huge amounts of breaks of the SC we have had, have if anything, only served to undermine the integrity of the sport. If the SC did these things I would be in favour of it, but the evidence shows it doesnt.

Thats just ridiculous logic. If the SC works, the SC works, if it doesnt, it doesnt. The alternatives are irrelevant. Having and keeping a salary cap isnt the default position. Just like making all the players wear scrum caps isnt the default position. It would need to be justified.

It can be determined. It can be determined very very easily. If the SC protects clubs from going bust we should see either none, or a very very low amount of clubs going bust in the SC era compared to the pre SC era. But we dont. Therefore the SC doesnt protect clubs from going bust. It is a very very very very poor argument to rely on the fact that we could imagine other clubs, could maybe in a different universe, have gone bust, but maybe didnt because of the salary cap, but in reality we are just guessing and making it up.

Why would you think that? what is your logic for thinking so? How is it evidenced or are you just making a wildly speculative claim? Would you not agree that considering the amount of money put in to Wire and Hudds by Davey and Moran that Wire and Hudds would be among the clubs most likely to spend more than the SC, so the SC has actually hampered their ability to win things rather than promoted it?

No, it does as i stated, reflect the difference between the amount of points the top team conceded and how many they scored, which is a good measure of the competitiveness of the games involving them. Thats why we didnt take one example, but nearly 500 hundred. A large sample size would mitigate the effects of situations like this. Especially considering that both types of game would be equally reflected in both groups. Unless of course you are arguing that even though the difference in points scored is larger the SC era games were in fact closer and there has been a big upsurge in games where a team runs away with it in the last few minutes in the past ten years, and a similarly large drop in games where teams post big early scores?

Because what we see is subjective, it is affected by our own personal bias. If your argument was strong you would be able to evidence it.

The primary reason for the SC was to stop clubs going broke.
In that it has failed.
If we want clubs to remain financially solvent then the SL need to introduce a rule whereby each club has to break even over a three year period. If they do not then League Points will be deducted. Maybe for the next three seasons.

As for stopping clubs buying all the best players, introduce a points sytem.
100 points for the game 17. A club trained Intl like Roby, no more than four points, a bought in Intl like Shenton 16 points. You couldn't buy in a team full of Intls with just 100 points a game 17. Just a thought!
When the NRL found Melbourne had trashed their beloved salary cap Gallop admitted the SC had failed and suggested a points system. I'd hate them to bring one in and we be left with a useless SC.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree bud. You see the salary cap as hindering competitiveness whereas I see it as contributing to it. Neither of us are able to offer an empirical evidence because we both perceive things differently. We both want the game to grow and progress so I'm happy with that even if we disagree on each other's assertions.

After watching the failure yet again of England RL and knowing how massive for the game it could have been if we'd won I would suggest we:

Take the gloves off and let clubs sign any RU player from GB/Irelandand pay them outside of the salary cap. Clubs with plenty of money get to pick a new crop of talented players developed at the expense of RU, GB gets a decent team that might win a tournament and SL gets fresh talent to repalce the disappearing NRL players over the next few years.

If clubs go bust it's the there own stupidity, if 3 clubs dominate, what's changed?, it hurts RU (yippeee) and gives GB more hope of winning.

If it cost £250k to sign Joel Tomkins it's going to cost at least the same, if not more, to sign somebody who is capable of making the grade at the much more physically demanding sport of RL. Given that's likely to be the case how much more would a club get from investing £250k on its own youth development? You could get six, seven or eight excellent youth coaches (and maybe add in a couple more community development officers) for that kind of money and what kind of return would that give you in comparison.

Throwing money at expensive players, who are probably no better than what we've already got, is a recipe for going bust. We should be using our money to develop our own players rather than poaching others.

But we are talking about the clubs who already have 6,7, or 8 excellent youth coaches. There is a limit to how many players one club can bring through.

The fact is we dont bring through that many players of the quality of Joel Tomkins, thats why he would have been in the England squad, and it is why RU were prepared to spend £250k on him.

And players that we would bring in from RU could easily be better than many of the players we have in our league. SL is filled with some pretty poor overseas players who cant even be called journeymen. You cant tell me that the likes of Banahan, Youngs, Care, Simpson, Foden, Ashton, Tuilagi, wouldnt be among the better players in our league.

Well spend it in other areas then e.g. community officers, marketing, conference & banqueting, getting into schools, free summer programmes, better stadium facilities etc. The list is pretty much endless and all are geared to generating more revenue so that they could build to put themselves in a position to purchase players.



It's an expensive risk especially when teams aren't splashing out that kind of money on proven RL players now. I would question the comment that RU players could easily be better than many of the players we have in our league and wonder how you've arrived at that assumption.

But they already have this money to purchase players. Thats what we are talking about. Clubs who have the money to spend on bringing in better quality players.

I think it would be naive to think otherwise. Like it or not RU is a professional sport now, they do the things that we do and in the main part, look for the things we look for, and pick the players we would have picked. The same reason a player like Robinson, or Ashton, or SBW or Tuquiri have been success in both codes is the same reason there are some players in RU who code be a success in RL. Its arrogant for us to believe there are no players in their code who would be success in ours. We have had a long long history of RU players coming over to league and being great success, why would we expect that had stopped?

They were saying the same about no talent in Union in the 90's yet it was the closest we got to beating Australia and we have the likes of Davies, Devaraux, Tait, Gibbs, Quinnell, Offiah etc etc padding out the GB team. I find it very hard to believe that in the entire UK RU scene there isn't 3 or 4 top talented players better than we have in RL. If Leeds or Wigan or Hull or Warrington want to spend 250-500k bringing them to RL then great, let them I say!

So i think were all in agreement that it should be abolished.

The problem is there isn't. I'm guessing you are not a RU fan so don't follow it, I do and RU players would not boost the England team now (of course if you signed the Wales RU players they would be better than the semi pros that play for Wales at league but that's a different story).

You aren't going to get any props, hookers or second rowers transferring from union to league because their specialist skills would be redundant and they wouldn't be mobile enough for league. From the forwards you could look at some union back rowers like Quinnell, the one I would look at would be Tom Croft who is quick for a forward but I don't see him being a better bet in league than the guys like Westwood, Ellis, Heighington and so on anyway.

As for the backs, if we could get Chris Ashton back he would be in the mix of the England side possibly ahead of Briscoe but Ashton can be flaky so he'd have to tighten up, he's the type of player the Aussies or Kiwis would target. But he is fast and a good finisher. I wouldn't bother getting Shontayne Hape back he is past his best. Matt Banahan and Manu Tuilagi are big guys and battering rams but they would be flat footed against the Aussie and Kiwi centres. They could probably have Super League careers but they aren't guys that would give us an edge over the Aussies internationally. Same goes for Delon Armitage he could make it in SL but would not be in the England team, he's nowhere near as good as Tomkins and I'd have Richie Mathers ahead of him as an England fullback in league.

There's a lack of talent at scrum half in union, as for fly-half this has been a problem since Johnny Wilkinson first got injured in 2003. I have no doubt the Wilkinson of 1999-2003 would have been a top player in league, he would have been GB stand-off for sure, his defence was well up to the job, he was like Andrew Johns for being a playmaker that could hit like a loose forward. He would have adapted his kicking game to league and he is the type of determined professional that would have been a success. Since he got injured the edge came off his game but none of the much hyped other pretenders ever managed to take his place hence Wilkinson has still been around. Toby Flood IMO is overrated he just doesn't bring anything special to the table. Danny Cipriani is a celebrity more than a rugby player (same goes for Ben Foden at fullback), if he came to league I expect there would be a lot of hype, he'd bring column inches to the game, he'd have some good games but erratic on the whole. Imagine Danny Brough with celebrity girlfriends and a load of Twitter followers, that's Cipriani. Would he be better than Brough in league....? Touch and go. Brough is ahead for me.

So yeah, some of these guys could come to league and they would get SL contracts and could hold down places in SL teams but they would not be automatic England selections and there isn't one union player that I can say would honestly give a boost to the England team. There aren't a load of amazing U21s knocking on the door either. Even back a decade ago when England were on their way to being the best side in the world I wouldn't have had any of their players other than Robinson and Wilkinson, England's success was built on having the best forward pack in the world and Wilkinson's boot, with big and capable backs rather than outstanding backs, kind of like Bradford dominating SL with guys like Naylor, McAvoy and Shane Rigon in the backs.

You are Bashar al-Assad, and I claim my £5