Smokey ta talking about the needs of the rfl to be transparent....priceless

The purpose of the cap is very muddled and makes several claims:

1. They claim its supposed to equalize competition. For me, this hasn't worked, even if you agree with the motivation. I also have a problem with the whole concept of 'equalizing competition' anyway, because whilst generally desirable, its VERY hard to do it in a way that doesn't simply drag down the best clubs and create a talent drain. It's easier to get right when there's a ton of talent around, but we don't have that luxury.

Its also very naive to think of talent drain just in terms of top players going off to RU ( there aren't that many after all) - the real talent drain is the much more serious - but hidden - drain that starts with youngsters wondering what sports to try. Sports with glamour, fame and earning potential have the ability to attract more youngsters. Not *all* youngsters of course, but no one sensible can deny that the profile of a sport affects the level of junior interest. It doesn't mean we need to aspire to football style WAGs, etc, but its a issue nonetheless. The drain I'm worried about is the one that starts before a kid has even touched a rugby ball.

Solution: The problem with Wigan in the 90s wasn't for me about the first team, but the fact that the whole squad swept up the best talent in the League, so you had internationals on the bench that would have been better off (for the game of RL anyway) playing first team at another club. All we really need in terms of ensuring a reasonable spread of talent is hard squad limits, kind of like the 20/20 rule, although I'd be more aggressive and go for 13 'stars', 7 'sub-stars' and the rest juniors. That would *force* a spread of talent - if you're the second best scrum half (say) in the League, you're simply not going to be signed by the club with the best one - there's no room. In fact the 15th best scrum half in the country (who therefore is probably quite good) will be gracing a Championship side ... hopefully to take them to *promotion* ( another issue ! )

2. The cap is supposed to protect clubs. This one I'm not sure about -again, it doesn't seem to protect anyone in practise, and besides, why should the sport interfere with a clubs finances? Clubs don't *want* to go bust, but if they do, so what? 6 or 8 point deduction then someone, hopefully more financially savvy, buys it from the administrator. Shame on the clubs management who've got the shareholders or whoever to apologize to, but that's their problem really.

Scrap it.

I would agree that the call for fewer teams was inevitable due to the ‘protectionism’ however it was also necessary to force clubs to get their houses in order in relation to youth development. The argument was that a 19 year old kid with no experience was never going to be better than a 32 year old Aussie with 150 NRL games, however that same 19 year old kid, could, and likely should, be better at 24, with 100 SL games, than the import coming in to replace the outgoing Aussie. That would increase the quality in the league. Not necessarily now, but in 4/5 years. Which it is why it is clearly the right decision to stick with 14 clubs. If anything, we should only increase the number of clubs in the league (obviously not now, but in maybe 3-5 years). I think the quality of youth coming through now, is as good as it was 2000-2003 and better than at any other time in the last probably 15 years.

The problem with the cap is it tries to do too much, it tries to stop wage inflation, it tries to distribute talent, it tries to stop the stacking of talent, it tries to stop clubs overspending. In reality, there is no need for it to do so.

A franchise system where you are in until it become obvious you aren’t going to get it right, would mean clubs would constantly be evaluated and the over-spending part would be monitored and specific to each club. It would be a much better way of stopping clubs over spending.

To stop clubs stacking talent we just require a pretty simple limit on the number of players a club can bring in.

A hard cap does stop wage inflation, but you have to wonder how fair that is on our players and that needs to be looked at. We need to make sure we are balancing the rights and fairness to the players (10 years of the cap not rising isn’t fair on the players imo) who have a short career and don’t always come out of it healthy, with making sure the clubs aren’t forced into paying wages they will never afford.

Talent distribution is another matter, the cap fails miserably to do this. The mechanism for talent distribution can be completely different, but its something very hard to get right, very hard to be fair, and very hard to prove it is fair. Its also very difficult to do because quantifying talent is pretty much impossible to do, but I would be clear in that salary probably isn’t a very accurate measure of talent.

Don't we always?

The point about the flat cap not rising for so long is a good one. But as clubs don't seem to be much better off for it, it has to be about continuing poverty (whatever its cause) rather than growing unfairness.

I think the RFL has to pick some priorities (and by definition de-prioritise some issues) and create a strategy based around achieving certain goals.
Some things might be highly desirable (regularly beating Australia for example), but barely realistic within a sensible time frame (regularly beating Australia for example).
Once we've decided what our priorities are, then policies can be selected accordingly. It might be sensible to retain a salary cap or it might not.
There's a reluctance to make hard choices it seems to me, so none are made and we just drift along rudderless.

More than either of us seem comfortable with

I think there are some things we don’t need to aim for. Things like winning the world cup, regularly beating Australia, winning 4 nations etc etc, come as a natural by product of getting our house in order. If we can get in front of our issues we can put in place virtuous cycles, if we carry on being so reactive we will continue to struggle to break the vicious ones.

Agree 100%

Like most ' rules ' introduced by the RFL , they are so badly thought out ' if at all ' that they are easily abused, hence why they need constant adjustement, about time they got a few ' poachers turned gamekeepers ' in to highlight the frailties before they implement them

Remember when Hull FC won all 26 league games in 78/79 and won promotion? - Their backers spent big on Knocker Norton, Sammy Lloyd etc. Remember Ernie Clay at Fulham spending big on a top team around Reggie Bowden and won promotion in their first year 1980/81?

I know there are still serious potential financial backers out there. With serious money to spend and with the clear understanding that you don't put money into sport to make a profit. I know one who is really enthused having found Rugby League (a bit like Bradley Wiggins has described is own experience).

What such a backer wants is to start a new club probably based on a big RU club - so the infrastructure is there along with a hard core potential existing support to build on. What they want above all is to have a winning team from the off. They would be happy to enter the league at Championship 1 level. They want to know they can 'buy a team that will the league' and earn promotion. Then add higher level players and do the same again the next season and then aim to win promotion to super league.

In the first two years, if all goes to plan, yes - the competion will be uneven if they do win every match - but it's a big pay day for home clubs when the new club plays away and takes supporters to swell the crowd. There's nothing like winning every match to get a new club off the ground - even if initailly at Championship 1 level.

These financial backers who could spread the game to new areas by creating new clubs backed by big money won't emerge though until the stucture of the game in this country is changed. Why?

The Salary Cap and no automatic promotion and relegation between the leagues means they have no chance of doing a Hull or a Fulham. So they don't bother. They don't want their success or failure to be decided by a handful of officials in a room at Red Hall, Leeds.

It is well known that the structure for RL in this country that I advocate includes scrapping the salary cap and having automatic one-up, one-down promotion and relegation between the leagues. I don't really want to get into details until/unless the high level structure is changed. But in terms of who gets promoted - how about a club only getting promoted if it both finishes top of the league AND wins the play-offs Grand Final in the same season?

I think you just made that up. I doubt you have any contact with any potential backers.

It's quite different from my own experience of new clubs entering or not entering pro RL. Actual experience that is, not just something made up about massively wealthy individuals who want to buy their way to sporting success and are hiding in secret anonymity just waiting for the RFL to abandon the salary cap

the salary what?

Scrapping the salary cap is needed (in conjunction with automatic one-up, one-down promotion and relegation betwen the leagues and penalties for insolvency events including relegation to the bottom league if a club goes into liquidation).

On the question of who goes up; concensus seems to favour the team finishing the season top of the league, rather than the grand final winner (or there could be a requirement to win both in the same season in order to win promotion).

Even where a club wins the right to promotion, it would be open to the directors of that club to opt to stay in the division they are in - in which case the bottom club in the league above would not need to be relegated.