What exactly is the SC supposed to achieve, more teams winning trophies and less clubs going bankrupt was key objectives (I think).

Both have completely failed IMO.

SC drives less investment in the game which ultimately leads to star players leaving the SL. Get rid of it and let investors invest...

Agreed. Everybody knows that we need more money coming into the game. This self imposed policy restricts the amount of money coming in. How stupid can you get?

Just scrap the cap. Get relegated if you go bust (and lose the Sky money associated with the higher division). Let investors invest what they want in the knowledge of the potential risks.

The thing is. That isn't much of a disincentive to investors. Once they are bust they are no longer at the club. Why would they give a fig if it's then relegated or loses sky money? The people to lose out there would be fans and companies who don't get paid because they sky money doesn't come in.

You can argue either way. If 'investors' want a return on their investment, they'd be better served by running the business of the club in such a way as to not go bust, staying in the higher division and getting a return on investment over time via the higher Sky money and associated higher revenues.

I'd rather risk scrapping the cap (along with introducing related penalties for insolvency) than risk sticking with what we have.

If there was no salary cap, can you seriously see Mr Hetherington sending Leeds (and Caddick?) bust by spending way more than they can afford?

but this is true whether or not there are punishments for going bust.

no but again, that is because leeds are a well run business that makes money, has assets, and can continue to do so. I honestly dont think that a penalty for going bust would make the slightest difference.

All owners want their clubs to be a leeds, none of them want them to be a wakefield or bradford. All those at a less financially secure club are trying to make them a financially secure club not to avoid a penalty but because it is good for them to do so.

I would agree that we can't stick with what we apparently have, a paper tiger SC is the worst of both worlds. It has all the negatives of an SC with none of the positives.

i largely agree with this, but would point the problem you mention with licensing was weakness from the RFL. Licensing should have simply provided an environment for clubs to reach the levels they needed but vested interests demanded that these objective criteria were put in place when then created an unnecessary prescriptive environment, where things like 'suitable facilities' became X number of seats, x number undercover etc etc and the time frames put on it left some clubs unstable and focussed on meeting these checkpoints instead of using their stability to create the best business they could be. That was a failure of strength from the RFL


These however i dont think were examples of weaknesses. Both Leeds and Wigan in your examples had relatively strong arguments against what happened. The loans at Leeds were absolutely fine, the issue was the players training at Leeds facilities. Which is a silly thing to be an issue. With Wigan they found a loophole that not only left their actual guilty charge looking a bit unsafe, but it left their penalty unenforceable. I dont think either are examples of where we need more or less regulation, but very good example of where we need better legislation.

I don't think it's ok to rip stupid people off. I don't think they have been ripped off. I think they're morons and more than likely don't really understand the situation/are chancing their arm. For example of the former, we had one player (according to Koukash) who claimed the Club were unfairly docking his pay. In reality they were Child Support payments.

Re: salary cap. The biggest problem with the it is that it tends to cause the quality of the top teams to stagnate rather than raise the standard of the lower teams. We need to focus on ideas to raise the standard of the bottom clubs if we're going to impose a salary cap on the bigger clubs. As ever, the NRL does this better than SL.

2 Leagues of 10
SC's of 2.5 & 1.5 million respectively.
Clear pathway up & down 1 auto promotion.
Reserve sides 2 leagues of 10 & play curtain raiser before each weekly round.

My understanding of the Leeds 'loans', is that the players involved had actually transferred to Fev and Hunslet, and officially were nothing to do with Leeds. If they were just on loan, then actually I reverse my position and think £2k is a tad harsh - though iirc it is technically against the rules, I reckon a lot of similar things go on.

I agree that the RFL isn't strong, but I don't think it is in the sense of lacking character. They just don't have very much power. They don't seem to realise it though and are forever overreaching. People expect too much of them, but they raise those expectations with bold plans and endless tinkering.

Quote: Mild Rover "My understanding of the Leeds 'loans', is that the players involved had actually transferred to Fev and Hunslet, and officially were nothing to do with Leeds. If they were just on loan, then actually I reverse my position and think £2k is a tad harsh - though iirc it is technically against the rules, I reckon a lot of similar things go on. I agree that the RFL isn't strong, but I don't think it is in the sense of lacking character. They just don't have very much power. They don't seem to realise it though and are forever overreaching. People expect too much of them, but they raise those expectations with bold plans and endless tinkering.'" www.skysports.com/rugby-league/n ... ned-by-rfl No you are correct. The players were transferred to Fev and Hunslet on one year deals and yet still regularly trained with and had medical assistance from the Leeds club despite, allegedly, having no 'official' affiliation with the club at that time. Was fairly obvious what was going on so I think a £2000 fine was perfectly fine, even lenient.

Quote: Mild Rover "My understanding of the Leeds 'loans', is that the players involved had actually transferred to Fev and Hunslet, and officially were nothing to do with Leeds. If they were just on loan, then actually I reverse my position and think £2k is a tad harsh - though iirc it is technically against the rules, I reckon a lot of similar things go on. I agree that the RFL isn't strong, but I don't think it is in the sense of lacking character. They just don't have very much power. They don't seem to realise it though and are forever overreaching. People expect too much of them, but they raise those expectations with bold plans and endless tinkering.'" www.skysports.com/rugby-league/n ... ned-by-rfl No you are correct. The players were transferred to Fev and Hunslet on one year deals and yet still regularly trained with and had medical assistance from the Leeds club despite, allegedly, having no 'official' affiliation with the club at that time. Was fairly obvious what was going on so I think a £2000 fine was perfectly fine, even lenient.

So what was the "big story"? Or have I missed it buried within these 9 pages?

Regards

King James

they werent on loan, they did transfer with an agreement that if leeds wanted them back they could have them. None of that is illegal (and there isnt much benefit to doing it that way) The only issue was with them training at leeds facilities. Which is a pretty pointless thing to have a problem with. Its all a nonsense

I disagree completely. The one thing Nigel Wood has achieved well in his time, is somehow convincing people he isnt responsible for whats going on. The RFL do have power and they are the games leaders. They have to be able to lead. They are unfortunately, far too easily led.

There is very little strength from the RFL because they dont really have a vision. They dont know what RL is, what it can be, or even what they want it to be.

Its become somewhat de rigueur to portray the RFL as some powerless bunch of mandarins charged with some sisyphean task but that just isnt true. Nigel Woods job is no different to any other CEO in the world. He has to come up with a vision, execute it, and convince everyone else to come along with him. Something he is failing to do hugely. We can pay pay someone 30k a year and have them be an administrator telling the referees where to go and putting the fixtures together. We dont need a CEO if they cannot lead. We definitely dont need one who can't even ensure the rules are joined up, make sense and can actually be enforced.

it isn't a burning at the stake offence from Leeds, but if that is the punishment (half suspended, I've just seen), why even have the rule? Leeds would be happy to pay that every year to expand their farm system, I'm sure. And that's my point about over-regulation and under enforcement. They put rules in place and when they're broken do next to nothing. So nobody takes it very seriously and we get cynical.

One of my pet theories is that some clubs carousel registrations of fed-trained players to minimise their live cap liability. I don't know whether they really do, but one objection was that de-registered players wouldn't be able to train with the rest of the squad, because of this same rule. My response was basically that it is only a RFL rule and everybody knows they're often not enforced - and tbh, that's quite sad, that I honestly see many of the RFL rules as barely relevant to discussion of real world RL practice.

And the danger is that you get cheat inflation - if they get away with that, why shouldn't we do this? The line should be clearly defined.

On the RFL, you want leadership and they seem keen to deliver it. But IMO they're only empowered to administer and mediate. They're the piper, but (in different ways) it is the club chairmen and Sky who pay to call the tune. Not all CEO roles are created equal.

Let clubs spend half their income on wages. The more they make the more they can spend

If a rich owner wants to pump his own money into a club then he can only use half of the total income. No money from any source that can be traced back to the owner can be used or 'donations' from friends or family

Raise the cap to £2.5m and keep the marquee player allowance. If an owner wants to speculate and invest new money in his/her team then it should be a donation in the name of the individual(s) and not in the form of a loan liability to the club. Put an end to these widespread directors loans that just end up the long grass and discourage new investors wanting to buy a club and taking on the historical debts. Penalise all clubs with directors loans by reducing their cap allowance by £X for every £100K of loans. If an owner(s) then wants to spend more against the cap they will have to write-off some or all of their loans to the club. We have to find a better solution for protecting the future financial risks to clubs and to encourage more new benefactors into the sport.

Seriously who in the right mind would want to takeover a rugby league club with historical debts, little or no assets, and are non-profitable? This is before you’ve even thought about investing more finances improving the team with no guarantee of increasing income.