I'm sure this thread was nothing to do with cheating the salary cap, when I last posted.

Me thinks it has become derailed slightly????

Well not really, because if it was blatantly cheating the cap there would have been a specific rule against it rather than the 'catch-all' rule the RFL needed to use.

Wigan did nothing lots of clubs didnt do, how and why and when they did it was.

Yet the majority of the top clubs voted against it, go figure.

I suspect that is because it doesn't address the core issue within the game - a cronic lack of revenue.

I'm not a fan of this system by any means, but I think it does tip the scales even further towards the elite clubs.

Maybe they wanted that split.

You are running a lesser SL club, you have very little money to play with, you can’t make that jump to challenging at the top, you consistently spend £3-400k less than the big boys. You don’t have money to invest in your infrastructure, you are getting a little left behind. Look at the alternatives, franchising means huge demands are made for you to improve and some ambitious clubs knocking on the door and a possible cut in league size means you could very soon be in the lower leagues with no real plan for getting back in. A return to P+R would mean you started every season at risk of relegation and the hugely damaging drop in revenue and visibility that causes. You don’t have a safety net and there is a good chance that should the bounce of the ball go the wrong way all your plans will be torn up you will probably struggle to get back up, and possibly go bust.

For those clubs this structure gives them a softer landing if they do get relegated and makes no demands of them ala franchising. It means lower SL club A can cut the amount it spends on players by a couple of hundred thousand and all you have to do is beat 4 lower league sides a year and you are golden. Eventually when the gap between you and the top SL clubs becomes so big you get hammered every time you play them you can blame the big bad boys and when the inevitable ring-fenced 10-12 club SL comes in you can blame the RFL.

In other words, its creating SL1.5 so that teams who need to step down from SL don’t have to admit to their fans they aren’t big enough for SL.

Most of the big clubs, who aren't distracted with survival, are reaching the pinnacle of what is achievable as a club, and recognise it takes things outside of their control (ie other clubs) for them to grow further. If no club was guaranteed a playoff place year on year, the regular season would mean a lot more, people would be more excited and therefore more likely to go - result higher crowds (so long as the quality remained/ better)

As has been said, this system will just lead to the super 8 and some also rans meaning eventually the 23 games will become the season now, aka a preseason = lower crowds.

All speculation, nobody knows

Just like we all guessed that licencing would breed boredom , and that clubs would still overspend, maybe this time you'll be right

Football has the Champions league with extra games against bigger clubs with bigger crowds. Yet it still is not a closed shop. There is always another team pressing on that door.

If you want more customers then speak to more people........

Dont be stupid, its spend more money on players, everybody knows that,

Established long before Mr Hughes started bankrolling the London Club, its been the primary ' business plan ' for a hundred years, you'd have thought by now somebody would have figured it doesnt work

That sounds f**k all like socialism to me, but you carry on.

I thought that, it's hardly we're all the same system is it?