Yes. Salford would spend money, which feeds money throughout the sport to all levels. Salford would sign Tomkins, Wigan would spend that money on Huddersfield's star, Huddersfield would spend that money on Castelford's star, Cas would spend that money on Featherstone's star, Feath would spend that money on Swinton's star, with that money Swinton can afford a new training ground changing rooms ... Plus we'd still be able to attract Aussies and prevent union from picking up all our talent (which if things stay as they are, they will do freely and frequently in five years time). There would be greater interest in Super League from bigger sponsors and possibly other backers putting money into other clubs. Plus other clubs would want to challenge Salford and emulate their success so would seek for further investment themselves.

I think you have to ask yourself why the Aussie game, which makes lots of money from TV rights and sponsorship still bothers to have a salary cap.

The SC should be driven from the bottom up, not the top. It is all well and good stating a percentage of income, but that doesn't naturally flow to high income streams leading to increased affordabilty of expenditure.

Maybe the solution is to find a way around the cap... oh wait a second ...............

We bust the salary cap anyway, the only reason nobody is talking about that is because Leeds scored a couple of tries late on on Saturday.

If we had won you can be sure that the number one talking point in the rugby league community this week would be how can the Double Winning Warrington put together such a dominant side, with all the players they have, they must be over the cap.

I hadn't thought about it like that. I am starting to feel better about Saturday already.

Forget about it. The salary cap, for all its limitations, at least helps stop too many clubs overspending and going to the wall. You can talk to me all day about 'it didn't prevent the Bulls going bust', true, but without it you would have clubs like Wigan ( and probably Wire, though I'd like to think we'd be more sensible, given that Simon Moran never just threw money at the club ) simply buying all the best talent, inflating wages and making life impossible to the lower-income clubs unless they overspend.

It's been at £1.65M for some time now.
My view is that a modest increase is justified - to say £1.8M.

Keeping the cap at £1.65M has encouraged clubs to develop home grown talent which is definately a good thing, but a slight increase wouldn't give cause for concern.

I always understood that the salary cap was to make the competition more competitive by stopping a massive gap opening up between the richer & poorer SL clubs. Talking about marketing, the RFL really does need to buck its ideas up & start acting like a business instead of an organisation with a working men's club like committee...we all know what happened to them.

What i would like to see though is Sky putting the game on freeview outside the normal RL viewing areas to try and bring the game to a wider audience & give others a chance to embrace the game as something they could enjoy. It shouldn't cost Sky anything to do this as it comes as part of a package that is paid for anyway.3 or better still 5 years on freeview could do wonders for RL ,even encouraging new supporters to attend live games throughout the season , maybe even a full to capacity Wembley.

Simon Moran should start lobbying the regulators like the banks do.

He could threaten that if the RFL doesn't raise the salary cap he could simply take his wealth elsewhere and buy an NRL club where he could spend a higher amount on players.

If you regulate wealth creators offshore then nobody gains.

There's a decent argument for bringing the cap down unless most of the clubs can spend up to it. The Bulls spent at the cap, or close to it, for many years and their business model was flawed. Word on the street is that other clubs are about to hit the wall. If the sport can't manage a cap of £1.65 million then it needs to come down. If that means players leave then so be it. It doesn't matter if Sam Tomkins goes to Rugby Union. What matters is that Wigan don't get into financial meltdown - they don't have any family silver to flog any more. Similarly with us - we have a valuable asset in our stadium that has lots of equity in it. The day we start using that equity to pay the bills is the day we're on our way down.

I recall the whining from Brynn Hargreaves when he quit RL. He basically said "I was treated like crap by the Administrator at Bradford" and "There's not stability in RL, I can get more financial security elsewhere". No argument with the first bit. As for the second bit - so what? Good for you. I also recall ex player and all round complete **** Bobbie Goulding trying to make a massive issue of it on Twitter and saying "the sport needs more money". Ditto the normally sensible Mathers and the less sane Stankevitch. How? Where? Who?

It really is dead simple....

- The sport as a whole can generate X income through crowds, TV and other sponsorship.
- Clubs need to be able to manage existing debt, their current expenditure and compete on their share of X.
- If they cannot, if they say, spend 10% more than X, then on a long enough time line, the sport will collapse.

We have two options - increase the money that comes in, or reduce the outgoings. Unless we increase the money that comes in, as a sport we must spend less. That might mean the cap goes down. IF the sport is awash with money then by all means increase the cap. Doubt it will raise standards - just means that average players will drive slightly better cars and retire with £6,000 saved up rather than £2,000.

Sports finance works to the same principles as individual. We all have jobs and the people from St Helens know people who do. If we spent more than our salary every month, then on a long enough time line, we'd lose everthing. Again, if the sport can stomach it then great. But it can't.

Very interesting debate though.