I think the easiest answer is that a marquee player is what each Club deems it to be. It could be an International, or a homegrown star, or simply a high wage earner. Let's take Clarke at Cas. If there was a marquee player in effect Cas could have made him it, got external sponsors to contribute and they could have held off bigger Clubs sniffing around, like Warrington and he'd cost less on the cap. All hypothetical but you get the idea. It could be used in a number of different ways depending on the needs of each Club.

Indeedy. The simplest solution is to just allow each club to identify their own marquee player who doesn't count on the cap using whatever criteria they want. This then frees money from the amount allowed under the cap to invest in, say, more young players.

However, until it gets voted in, the details will never get thrashed out.

Whilst I'm against marquee exemption at this precise moment in time (personally I'd give it a few years), I think rather than dictating who qualifies as a marquee, what could be better is declaring anyone can be classified as a marquee, but (marquee salary - 100k) has to also be put aside for youth development, community work etc on top of whatever is already spent in those areas - but equally then to sign a player on 500k (minimum to sign a better aussie who could still play nrl imo) - a club has to prove they can afford an extra 800k, which is a lot in anyones book...

I think the problem with this is that it would emphasise the divide between the haves and the have nots, because you're making the marquee signing twice as expensive. We need to completely separate the marquee signing from youth development (and I think McManus is being disingenuous by trying to somehow link them). Yes, there needs to be much more effort put in to bringing young players through, but I can't see why this should somehow be linked to a marquee signing. The incentives need to be defined separately, like specifying that a high percentage - 25% or more - of players in the first team squad should have come through the club's academy, for example. The only place where the two become linked is if the marquee ruling can be used to keep a home grown British player in the country and in the sport.

I think the two have become linked because it underlines two separate paths the sport in this country can take. Nobody in this country is in a situation to "have it all" in terms of signing in players and developing their own, so its a case of which comes to the forefront, and which is brought in later.

Incentives for youth production AND marquees should be brought in at some point. The strength the sport in this country would gain if the international team gained a level of success is on a par with individual teams signing a "marquee" (for what id believe to be reasonably achievable) - so theres balance in each of the advantages. The problem is its becoming more and more "youthists" vs "marqueeists" - by tying them together we might feasibly achieve a compromise which otherwise looks unlikely.

One of the big arguments from those in favour (and was made by yourself) is that it frees money in the cap for more youth players - by tying them together it just makes that a requirement as opposed to an option. OF course theres a million different ways to go about doing so. Another I just read on VT (and expanded upon) is the "level" of marquee off cap is tied into the academy grade (grade 1 academy = first 100k only counts on the cap, grade 2 = first 250k on the cap, grade 3 = 400k on the cap, grade 4 = 500k on the cap) - it would still allow someone with a grade 4 academy to sign inglis on a mill a year, but its to their advantage to improve their academy to limit his cost, and free up cap space going forward ... But of course I'm going to like that idea being a saints fan with a grade 1 academy

Teams wont vote in marquee exemptions without the details thrashed out, the powers that be wont thrash out the details until its voted in ... Good place to be!