I've viewed this from every angle and yes to a certain degree the cap does keep the game a little bit more financially safer but nothing will make it completely financially safe just look at Bradford Bulls. but on the other hand European Rugby League is now being left behind by Football,(Championship) Rugby Union, and even cricket. not to mention the NRL.
Now the RFL have to think properly here if they really want (MANCHESTER) to embrace Rugby League they need a top MANCHESTER team playing within its elite league, Salford propping up the table year in year out isnt going to entice people from either Salford or Manchester, Dr Koukash knows this and it's the reason he's applying for Salford to be given special dispensation for a couple of years to grow the game in the MANCHESTER area. Because let's face it Salford as a city isn't in the best shape at the moment and can't be used solely as the pool of people we need to get to games, manchester, Trafford, stretford and even Cheshire need to be targeted, these people are so used to sporting success within their areas such as Man Utd, Man City, Lancashire Cricket, Sale Sharks and even back in the days of Mancheter Storm ice hockey and Manchester Giants basketball all have edured championship success in their recent history and have all at some point had top draw crowds, now for Salford to do this we to have to be challenging and winning trophies too. To attract the bandwagon supporters which every top club ha, we need to be worth following and Koukash is putting over to the RFL a similar situation Melbourne storm have in Australia, a sporting club who are in a hotbed of rival sports the only way they compete is to be given an increased salary cap limit compared to other Rugby hotbeds like Sydney it seems to be working for them so I think the RFL should give Salford a chance to shine now it ACTUALLY has the ammunition to do so. It's over to the RFL to make the decision.

Excellent post. If RL wants a significant presence in Manchester, in London then provided somebody is prepared to foot the financial bill these club need to be given the freedom to make a significant impact.

Wire's financial stability has been applauded by the RFL as a sound business model - but it's backed up by decent crowds and the revenues from those crowds find their way to the players .... as it should. Relying on Sugar-Daddy handouts on the other hand, always ends in failure.

It's quite hard to miss a bright orange Lambo parked at certain SL games ..... but it aint a Wire one!

I would be astonished if this request was even put to vote, let alone clubs agreeing to it. Clubs will always vote based on self interest and things such as this or putting the game as a whole or the International team first won't happen.
Personally I think it would be a bad direction to go in because any big improvement or future success would be attributed to the special allowance and very few people would give Salford any credit. As I said yesterday there are ways around this cap such as providing a far superior working environment and providing the best coaching/backroom setup.

As other people have suggested a compromise or solution could be to allow clubs to have one or two highly marketable players excluded from the 1.65m salary cap. For instance what could a Sonny Bill Williams do for raising the profile of Superleague?

By raising the cap I think I would change our game to be almost football agent status with so called lesser players wanting more money.

All the more reason to keep the cap where it is but consider the idea of two 'elite players' per club being exempt. Elite players Superleague can't afford to lose like Tomkins or to help attract higher quality NRL stars who could put more bums on seats and enhance our competition.

If this was implimented an RFL panel could be set up to determine if a player or potential signing qualifies for Elite status. Otherwise clubs would just put forward their highest two earners to allow them to spend more money on non elite players. The criteria for ‘Elite Status’ could be the player being under a certain age, having International experience and having a very marketable profile. etc.

Not sure where I stand on this to be honest, my only question would be who is it down to to decide who's an 'elite player'? There is also the risk of it causing dressing rifts with non elite players who are performing better than the supposed elite ones but getting paid much less.

Why would clubs need to name and make public the elite players? Let people presume who's elite or not and allow the RFL to police it privately.

That's always been the case.
Forget the term Elite player for a moment.
Go back to David Watkins,he was paid more than the rest and I bet there was some resentment with his team mates.
It's the same in any walk of life,the politics of envy.
The best way to deal with this is to let your highest paid player,or two perhaps,be exempt from the cap.
The other players would be in the same position as they are now.

Think he was meaning 'What are the criteria for a player to be labelled Elite? How do you measure a players ability to give them a label? Are they simply good or great? And one man's villain is another's hero. People constantly disagree on players ability from Chairmen to the terraces.' How do you make that decision?

Would the 'other players' agents view it this way? In their eyes each club would then have potentially an extra say £150,000 to £300,000 available to spend on the cap and this could lead to agents trying to get their mitts on some it when their players contracts are up for renewal. By keeping the elite player status private the agents would be left guessing if a club has extra money to spend under the cap.



I mentioned some criteria in a previous post.

That's what I was saying,just allow the Clubs finance people to exclude the two top earners.
No one will know who they are,any more than they do at the moment,but money will always come out in the dressing room

I'm with you now. This way you wouldn't need an RFL panel to determine if a player qualifies or not. Even better idea.

Sorry about using the term gift earlier on. I know it's not a financially accurate description. But a financial gift would be a debt converted to shares in the case of a sports club.

The debt is not held against the club and so a capital injection of £1million each year, converted into shares to fund the extra player money needed is for all intents and purposes a gift of £1million as the club will never have to repay it. Only a new owner would need to buy the shares and they would pay the going rate for those.

That is what I meant by a gift.


The alternative is a loan from the Dr. which would require Salford to grow it's revenue. Whilst not impossible. My point was Salford where struggling to repay loans when spending at below cap level. The revenue increases would need to be huge to repay loans not just at cap level, but at an increased cap level.

Anyway back to the cap. I would prefer a break even rule. You get a 3 year licence, so over the course of that licence there is a 3 year break even rule. You could bust the bank in year 1 to invest in the squad, so long as you could get to break over the full 3 years.

Failure to do so would be so many points off your next licence application.

That way the good Dr. could offer every play from Tomkins to Cameron Smith £1m each to play for Salford in 2014. They may just be 1 year contracts to give him that boost, but then so long as he could break even by the end of the licence that would be fine.

It does not put a cap on player wages, the club can pay out as much as it can afford. But it also adds protection against going bust as the club has to break even.

In response Mr Shadows, are you really advocating that if the cap is increased to £2.1m that a club can spend £6.3m in Year 1 and recoup £4.2m in years 2 and 3, "break even" as you put it? A massive gamble surely and certainly not one that "adds protection against going bust" if anything surely the opposite would be true?

Unless your club of course has a serious investor prepared to bankroll the club in any event and then it's not really a unilateral rule change that could be effected across the sport.