Billy Slater has been on the slide for some time so he may be an option.
The chances of a player like Inglis moving to England for anything less then what he gets now would seem remote.
He would be on $1,000,000 a season with his personal sponsorship.

How do you have a marquee allowance AND promotion/relegation? The middle 8 is already a dicey concept in terms of disparity of salary cap without adding this to it as well.

I agree with Smokey to the extend of asking, what "problem" are we trying to solve here? If it is to attract and retain talent and prevent it from going to the NRL or rugby union, then it addresses just one factor among many.

We're in danger of assuming that players only head to the NRL or RU for financial rewards, which misses some other major flaws in our domestic game. Yes, both the NRL and RU offer financial benefits to SL, but they also offer so much more that SL, or RL, doesn't offer. The NRL offers a lifestyle that is massively appealing to 20-something lads and it offers strength of competition. RU offers a completely new experience, the chance to travel the world and play in front of 80,000 people for your country and greater endorsement opportunities.

Introducing a marquee player policy doesn't address any of those concerns, but it does create a few problems of its own - wage inflation being an obvious one. My concern is that we see such an idea as some sort of magic solution to some other very deep-rooted problems in the sport.

If passed, the same principle will apply to Championship clubs too, but the figure will not be £200,000 but £17.50.

Seriously, nobody involved in the proposal has given the new format and P&R point even a second's thought. But there is a solution, Championship clubs are allowed the same quota of 2 marquee players, but they are not their own players, the rule is any player deemed "marquee" must play on free loan for a Championship club alternate weeks

These are incredibly irresponsible proposals. The salary cap was brought in because Wigan, the sport's most famous team at the time, went bankrupt because they couldn't actually afford the monumental salaries they were paying.

Nothing has changed in that regards now. If we bring in exemptions like this that will enable clubs to spend whatever they like on players, it will massively increase the risks of club failures, which we are seeing anyway even without clubs spending more than the current cap.

Who could actually afford it at the moment? Salford? Yes, but only for as long as Marwan's temper holds, from his own mouth they are struggling financially and will be even more next season and onwards due to their stadium deal. His viability has to be questions given his unprofessional approach to the game and his dummy throwing whenever they lose. Leeds probably could, they are a well run organisation, as are Warrington and possibly Hull/Widnes but I'm not sure. Wigan couldn't, Saints couldn't, Wakefield, Cas, Huddersfield, Hull KR, Catalans couldn't. It's already unlikely to be passed.

The sport is constantly looking for ways to keep up with the NRL and Union, but it shouldn't. There isn't the money in the game over here to do that. Crowds are 5,000 down per game on average against the NRL and 2,000 against Union. We try to come up with initiatives to promote the sport, yet we've got an incompetent governing body who allow the TV deal to be signed for half it's value.

It's a balance between all out competition, which whilst desirable, RL just does not have the depth of clubs to be able to pile several of them up on the rubbish tip of sport.

If Football loses a couple of clubs to financial ruin there are 100's waiting to take their place. In RL if we lose clubs to financial ruin then it risks the sport to a much greater extent.

But then there is the issue with running at the pace of the slowest runner. Do other sports overtake us?

I do doubt the Greg Inglis arguement. If Saints signed Greg Inglis would it add that many more on the gate to afford his wages to make it a profitable transaction, would your man or woman in the street in Wimbledon care enough to tune in to watch him on Sky Sports?

How many more people watch RU now Burgess is playing?

I can see that this might well be counter productive, with the bruised egos of some players meaning they'd be prone to leave a club if they weren't deemed to be the "marquee" player.

There's No way Ian lenegan will vote for it, he must be the tightest cheap skate in wigan, that's why we only sign average players and youngsters he likes to run wigan on the cheap

Well there is a 50 odd page thread about him on here, full of people who actively hate RU telling us how they have gone out of their way to watch him play a terrible game.

Fair enough. GI probably a bad example in this context. However, we probably wouldn't actually be able to compete with the NRL and RU at that level of player.

Even with these exemptions, SL is still more likely be aiming around the 2nd tier of former internationals; so we are just likely to see wage inflation for the likes of Lance Hohaia etc... rather than attracting real marquee players.

Also, questions around where the money is coming from. Even if a club can sign GI and pay him £500k per annum (plus other costs), they will realistically need to attract 5,000 - 10,000 more people to every home game to cover the costs.

So comes back to what problem are we trying to solve.....Keep British players in the game? Increase the standard of SL by bringing loads of foreigners over? Keeping Dr Koukash quiet?

The home-grown marquee exemption could also create some silly but necessary (due to cap exemptions) wage rises within individual squads. For example Wigan make O'Loughlin their "home-grown marquee" player on 201k. The squad (not including the exempt O'Loughlin) costs 30k below cap and the next highest wage in the squad is 175k for Charnley. O'Loughlin retires so Wigan no longer have his exemption and have 30k to replace him with. A bought in replacement wont be home-grown so to be able to spend more than 30k on the replacement Charnley or somebody else home-grown gets a hefty wage increase (due only to O'Loughlin's retirement) so that Wigan can use the cap exemption. This could then cause resentment in the squad from other players who didn't receive any wage rise.

Would SKD, Shillington, Rapira fall under second tier of signings? These are the names currently being banded about, and I suspect that's some of the clubs being pre-emptive with the rules coming in (which is positive as it would suggest there is support for it).

I think the problem this rule addresses is simply the negativity surrounding English rl at the moment.

Have to agree with you here.

By exempting one or maybe 2 players from the cap, all this does is raise the cap and for the top 4/5 clubs this is ok BUT, the rest aren't capable of spending the full cap anyway, so a player exemption is irrelevant.
Surely the simple solution is just to increase the cap but, only for those that can afford it.

The exemption idea is yet another gimmick.

What we need to do, is make the sport more attractive to blue chip sponsors and then the whole game could benefit.

Those are the types of names that we have been attracting for years and that we will still attract, however instead of paying them £100-£150k, clubs will now be paying them £200k plus.

No they won't. Think about it, the demand for a player worth £150k isn't going up, there's absolutely no difference to those kind of players worth sub £200k. Their worth isn't inflated at all. What advantages would club get by doing that?

This exemption is aimed at the next tier of quality, and enables to pay say a £300k player exactly what they're worth. Only under this proposed rule, they won't have £300k of cap space taken up by one player, it'll be capped at £200k and therefore makes it more attractive in the interests of building a strong squad.