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

There should be a £5m salary cap. A perfect compromise. A cap to keep those who want to keep the little clubs happy, whilst allowing the richer clubs to use their chequebooks a little more freely.

This would also allow us to compete more fairly with union.

We need more covenants though...

- Academy trained players under 21 should not count on the cap
- Welsh or French players should not count on the cap, to encourage development of their national sides.
- England players should count at 25% on the cap, to encourage development of our national side.
- Academy trained players under 23 should count at 50% of their salary
- Other players count 100% of their salary on the cap
- Australians count 150% on the cap
- Australians over 28 should count double on the cap.
- Clubs need to prove viability and availability of funds to comply with the above. Setting a %age of income is not an option because this does not take into account a rich businessman, for instance, injecting funds into the club in order to improve turnover/profit in years to come.

To be fair we only need another 5 millionaire owners pumping money in to Salford, Bradford, Wakefield Castleford and KR and we'd be fine.

Wire, Wigan, Leeds, Hudd, Bronco, Hull FC, Saints, Widnes and Catalans are either doing well, have good financial structure in place or have a rich despot in charge.

Crap.

No directors loans or borrowing? How is the club meant to stay in existence, never mind grow for the future without any facilities?

Clubs are businesses like any other.

Quote: Horatio Yed "To be fair we only need another 5 millionaire owners pumping money in to Salford, Bradford, Wakefield Castleford and KR and we'd be fine. Wire, Wigan, Leeds, Hudd, Bronco, Hull FC, Saints, Widnes and Catalans are either doing well, have good financial structure in place or have a rich despot in charge.'" KR have a millionaire backer, it's why we've been able to run at significantly losses for the last couple of years. www.parasolgroup.co.uk/about-us/ ... ment-team/ www.silverlinesales.co.uk/about/

Quote: Horatio Yed "To be fair we only need another 5 millionaire owners pumping money in to Salford, Bradford, Wakefield Castleford and KR and we'd be fine. Wire, Wigan, Leeds, Hudd, Bronco, Hull FC, Saints, Widnes and Catalans are either doing well, have good financial structure in place or have a rich despot in charge.'" KR have a millionaire backer, it's why we've been able to run at significantly losses for the last couple of years. www.parasolgroup.co.uk/about-us/ ... ment-team/ www.silverlinesales.co.uk/about/