I doubt it, I'm under the (current) assumption that the marquee player would have to be produced by said club. That would make more sense, so it's probably the opposite of what they've done! The likes of Graham would have been your marquee maybe, now its probably likely to be Roby.



But will you still be making such a loss in your new stadium?

It's up to Saints to make a profit in order to benefit from the new rules, the new stadium is a massive step towards this, which is one of the main aims of the whole franchise system. I think it was an earlier post on here in which I said you shouldn't be dragging down the top teams to match the middle, Saints were slipping (in financial terms) towards being a middle team in SL, the new stadium should mean you jump right back up again.

no....cos wigan already have their marquee player off the salary cap

So if we assume it's one home grown player, what happens if Joe Mellor (Or whoever) comes through and plays like Alex Murphy next season? Does he move to Saracens or do Wigan apply again?

We then either have a smaller squad, or he goes to Saracens.

no......cos clubs now have extra cash to bump up other contracts

If you ask me the best the question is exactly who decides 'Marquee'.
As an example (please dont shoot me down as I know we(HKR) have to many Aussies) would Willie mason have counted?
It would have very likely have kept him away from Frence RU if money was no object!
The RFL have made the SC rules have fuzzy lines as exactly what is right and wrong IMHO.

the marquee player has to be english (or qualified for england RL) or else theres absolutely no point having it

So the RFL have changed the Salary Cap rules to allow clubs to pay extra to certain ' long serving , Marquee , home produced ' players

But they haven't actually announced it

Happened a few years ago, they had a young lad named Ashton (whatever happened to him

) who chased the cash.

What happened when he left, easy, they found Tomkins.


Similar to Saints losing Eastmond, replaced from within there own.

We shouldnt be having to have these payments/cap exemptions although i believe the make up of the cap should be looked at and certains concessions allowed for fully developed club players etc.



As for the central contracts, weve been down this road before, Saints go one for Cunningham, Wigan for Radlinski and Leeds, Bulls and Wire too IIRC, but once FC applied for one for Richard Horne , we were told they scrapped them

I understand a lot of the reasons for complaints about this deal, but Sam Tomkins is (like it or not) the best poster-boy RL has in England. Losing him would have been a major blow to the credibility of RL, with it increasibngly seen as a feeder to RU. This may not be the best long-term solution, but as a stop-gap to prevent him going, its a very good move.

We aren't like the NRL, we don't produce players of this calibre that often - someone mentioned Ashton, but Sam Tomkins is miles better than Ashton ever was (or is ever likely to be). We simply can't afford real stars to leave.

The difference between the Union and NRL defections is often positional. Union targets outside backs, NRL targets forwards. Until someone like Tomkins goes to the NRL and stars, I suspect no NRL club would look that seriously at signing any SL backs - at least not for big money. The stars who go to the NRL will be those that really want the challenge and are willing to take a pay cut (at least until they prove themselves).

They lost a winger and gained a fullback/stand off. In the 4 years between Ashton leaving we have seen Wigan employing both Amos Roberts and Pat Richards, as well as George Carmont, Cameron Phelps.

Yet next season we will see Tim Smith, Isaak Johns, Jarrod Sammut, Ben Jeffries, Brett Seymour, Sam Obst, Mick Dobson, Blake Green, Micheal Witt, Craig Gower, Joel Moon, Daniel Holdsworth, Anthony Watts, Brett Finch with SL contracts. We can talk about how we are replacing young English half-backs with the quality of Eastmond when we arent seeing a league that needs 15 of 26 halfback spots filled by overseas players.

Has anything new actually been announced or is it merely a newspaper getting carried away?
There are after all, existing exemptions for long serving and homegrown players in the salary cap rules.