This was England's best chance for decades , the Aussie team definitely doesn't look as scary as any previous sides . Maybe Super League and the salary cap has been a dramatic failure and the quality of players has reduced globally . We have teams who are better at looking good on paper with tackles, metres gained , turnovers etc , we have just forgotten how to play rugby . I dont think many players for either England or Oz would make it into the 1994 sides.

Disagree. The Aussie team is definitely as good as ever in my view. The depth of players available in the NRL and the fact that players with islander heritage now make a larger proportion of them means we now have more tier 1 sides. The loss on Saturday was by the smallest of margins. No need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

The Aussies haven't been great. They were very lucky to beat New Zealand and they weren't in control of that game like they usually are. They will batter Samoa of course, their final was against England and they will have been enjoying that all week.

Not throwing the baby out , but the standard of rugby in my opinion seems to be dropping across the board , England dont have much competition for places , most of the side picks itself . I think its time to scrap the cap and let the sport grow. In my opinion there is no way on earth this Oz team would beat the 1994 team . They have always had multiple players who are impossible to deal with , I just dont see that in this side . GB also had players that were impossible to deal with like Offiah , Robinson but we are having to look back 20+ years .

Wasn't the cap meant to improve things?

It was and would have done if the sport and the clubs had the right management. Remember that the NRL has a salary cap as well.

The cap needs to stay unfortunately, but in a modified form. Something like your own youth players don't count on the cap at all (All French players for Catalans), five marquee players that you can pay as much as you like, of which three can be overseas players. Maximum of 28 senior players, with the remaining players capped at £2m.

That way clubs are incentivised to produce their own players (All clubs mandated to have academies), they can keep their own players once they've developed them, they can compete for stars from the NRL (which improves the product) and the big clubs wouldn't be able to stockpile players as you'd only be able to pay 5 domestic players not from your youth system at the highest rate. It'd bring an element of survival of the richest back into the sport, which isn't really a bad thing.

The salary cap was a good idea in 1996 but it's not kept up with inflation.

It now really impacts youth development as the prospect of leaving a job on more money to train full time for a young person isn't that attractive. Plus at the top end the standard of superleague is slipping and we can't attract Union players like we used to.

Get rid of it and offer England players a £1M bonus each for winning the next world cup. That's the carrot.

If they don't win the next world cup they have to play for free the year after and/or one of them is chosen at random and sacrificed.

We do lack some obvious once in a generation talents like Offiah and Davies. But they came from rugby union and that avenue of player talent has been removed for some time. Even without the cap you'd be competing with professional union teams - not the case in 1988 and 89 when those players switched codes.

If you scrap the cap you'd need to put some other measures in place to ensure that clubs are still made to ensure they have pathways in place for talent so that one club doesn't hoover it all up like what happened when Wigan dominated. The reason we struggle to compete isn't because we don't pay players enough it's because we don't have enough players participating and so we have a smaller pool to pick from.

Those two things must be linked however.

Would suggest the problem isn't so much the cap as it is a lack of money in the game as a whole. Would removing the cap suddenly attract wealthy individuals who want to spend more on players and development of the game to get more participation? I'd love to see some evidence for that. I've yet to read of all these millionaires that are turned off by the salary cap.

This is my point , we are on a downward spiral . When Wigan dominated it was pretty much that they were the only profesional club who had the infrastructure , they all have this now , with the cap in place , potential players are choosing careers in the police and other sports etc , the game isnt growing . I hated Wigan dominating but you have to look back and think the game was played way better back then , we poached players from union , we attracted the kind of players you just don't see these days . If one club did dominate then other clubs have to compete to get better , some will overstretch and make bad decisions , but we have the RFL micro managing clubs into some kind of socialist nightmare where we are in steady decline . I was well in favour of the cap when it started as it was painful going into a pub in Wigan as a Leigh fan , but I was wrong . We are going to continue as a minority sport were the standard will continue to decline . Also the pathways for talent would sort itself out , if wages where lucrative , more people would be attracted to pay the game and the standard would grow and hopefully the fanbase . I also don't think Sky are helping , they are keeping lots of fans at home and could decimate the league if they wished , but obviously everyone is attracted to money upfront so we have become their bitches .

Any millionaire with a brain would be in favour of the cap , imagine any business with a maximum wage law , who wouldn't want that ? Doesnt mean its a good thing for the sport in the medium or long term . Imagine the RLF saying there is now a maximum ticket price of £4 , the fans would love it , but the clubs would suffer.

Where's the evidence that existing owners can or will spend more if caps are removed? Where's the evidence that there are people out there waiting for the cap to be removed before they get involved?

Unless there is evidence for that what's the case for removing the cap? We might manage to get the odd signing from union?

We need to run a salary cap based on a percentage of the mean number of youth players a club brings through as a multiplayer of their catchment area population. This will ensure we bring through more players.

Then, mid-way through, the super league competition should split into 3-team mini-leagues, comprising of 5, 4, and 3 teams, respectively. The loser of the top division has to play the second-placed team of the middle division twice and whoever has the best points difference by the end is liquidated.

Saints are only allowed to operate with 50% cap and the players are starved and fed restricted calorie diets until they fail to win the grand final. Once the hooter goes in the grand final, Brian Noble is splatted with a pie.

Sounds a bit far fetched that.

I'd just stick with the £1M bonus or one is picked at random to be sacrificed option TBH.

I love this, definitely marketable. I'd go even further and have Mayan-style sacrifices to the rugby gods (Saints) whenever a team was eliminated.

Well football is a good example , Boxing , NFL , Golf etc . I dont think its a coincidence that RU is getting better at the same time RL is getting worse and one reason might be is that they have a higher cap . Maybe the likes of Koukash would invest in Man UTD if they had a stingy salary cap , but this doesn't really tell us anything about the quality or vision of the current investors compared to future bigger minded investors who would come . On the whole crowds are dropping as well. A teams no longer exist like they used too , when i was in school I used to go watching Wigans A team games and they would regularly draw over 1500 people.

If the Premier league had a salary cap , do you think we would see Haaland playing over here ? Among many other 'superstars' .

Basically we have accepted that our chairmen are far too stupid to make business decisions , take risks and make investments , have a bigger pool of players , better competition for players in teams , most fans have also accepted that its bad for the sport that a team could have big investor who might spend a lot of money assembling a really good team and we need to share out the decent players among the teams so everyone is equally poor , along with players with short careers they also need to remain poor .

If your parents don't have deep pockets and a lot of time on your hands then you have way less chance of making it in RL , if there are any juniors who had a choice of playing football even in the 2nd division fro a financial pov choosing rugby is the wrong decision .

I think sky has created a 12 club showpiece league & marginalised all the other clubs. I think the way things are now has made a lot of lower division supporters lose interest in the game ,both the league & Challenge Cup.
Wigan did help to drag the game ,kicking & screaming ,into becoming a professional sport but some of the standards we see now are not much better than when players had full time jobs & were paid winning & losing money.

The game's problems have all been rooted in a lack of money in the sport and the reasons for that are complex. Removing the salary cap isn't going to solve all the problems and may have some unintended consequences.

Rugby union is hardly a picture of financial health and probity - having a higher cap hasn't stopped two top flight clubs from going out of business. The real problem is that there isn't enough money, fullstop.

Football outside the premier league isn't much better.

What the heck happened at Bradford Bulls? Yes the Cap System needs modifying. “Finite” should mean FINITE - no exemptions, no dispensations! It may then serve the purpose that it is meant to serve.

Super League has been a flawed product for a good while, not because of The Cap but due to its codicils. The only interesting season in recent years was when Castleford “did a Leicester City” (no, Bongser does not wish to see anyone present The Super League Show in their underwear!) SL even had The Tigers covered due to the idiocy of the playoffs. SkY introduced the system, SkY are paying less to RL; SkY should have less say in RL.

What standards would you point too that are higher now ? I would say the grounds are better , maybe the safety and medical protocols on the pitch but I can't think of many more . But your right Sky have tried to create a 12 club showpiece but its kind of a boys clubs where we would absolutely favour the catalans over the likes of Leigh , Bradford and Sheffield . The later who won the CC and then was destroyed by the RFL to create a franchise system, that benefited nobody . I am not suggesting players go back to getting jobs and playing part time , that would be there personal decision , if they removed the cap they wouldn't suddenly pay every player a fortune , they would probably carry on as they are right now , but then start increasing there spend/risk to poach the right player and other clubs would do the same and the market would adjust over time , ultimately we need more bums on seats ( at games , not on TV) we need more superstars/personalities and I think we have steadily moved in the wrong direction

You seem to have picked my idea apart on the basis that Saints would benefit. Saints would benefit from the status quo and from that and from pretty much any other situation you bring up. Saints aren't successful because they've played the rules or manipulated them. Saints are just better than everyone else. Better at identifying talent, better at developing it and better at coaching it. There's absolutely nothing stopping the other clubs matching Saints. You'd have to ask Wigan, Warrington, Huddersfield, Hull, Leeds etc why they aren't doing what Saints have done. Having exemptions for your own produced players is important in the cap I think as it encourages clubs to develop talent. You are right it would benefit clubs like Saints, Wigan, Warrington and Leeds in the short term, but those are the clubs you want clubs to aspire to be like, or better than. What do you want to happen exactly? Clubs get a flat cap with no exemptions so they can sign players other clubs produced and so the competition just declines in quality each year? Which would benefit clubs like Leigh

Surely we want more clubs like Saints and Wigan? Don't we?

Before replying, Bongser would ask you (good evening Saddened! How are you? Well it is to be hoped) to answer some of the direct questions in yours truly's post prior to us accepting that your previous post indeed contained a genuine "idea".

Without the cap you might see Leigh at the top of the league ( highly doubt it , but its possible) Keighley had potential to be massive 20 years ago but they were massively shafted by the RFL , Sheffield could have carried on the growth . Bradford where run into the ground with a poor declining ground and what happened to them was probably fair , let that be a warning to other clubs not to do the same in future , its only unfair when you compare it to Harlequins , Catalans and the likes of Huddersfield being demotion proof for a good few years , they didn't need it , Sheffield was a bigger cub back then . Some dodgy back handers must have been taking place .

You do hit on good point though , our game is falling apart with youth and talent , but when you have cap in place and people want instant results your going to cut the cloth accordingly . It's becoming a competition where they are trying to remove as much competition as possible, a rigged system where the established top clubs benefit and they are the ones who won't argue to change it , very much like Westminster politics . Scrap the cap and I would also pull away fro Sky , there are many other options now like DAZN , prime , freesports , BT, premier sports . The clubs need to be more responsible for their marketing , there is pretty much zero outside of sky , all Leigh have done is swap a centurion's helmet for a leopard , ridiculous , if I didn't attend a match I would have no idea when the next game was . RL is the most physical game there is and it should be pitched that way , like UFC was, they have characters , stars and no cap and people want to watch successful people , this is human nature wit bread and circus.

Nothing prevents other clubs from copying the successful model of their strategy. Nothing but money and hubris. Money limits their options, and hubris makes them all-knowing and unwilling to copy someone else's successful strategy model.

Hmmm. There are other factors in play that contribute to the hegemony of two or three clubs, as you no doubt know.

Hubris? Bongser supports his birth town team (unlike many), a team that has not won serious silverware for four
decades. Perhaps you meant "humous"? Money & humous - it makes as much sense!

Welcome to RLFans, ShawnK. The more the merrier.