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.

Sensible post again from Mr Redux. Existing clubs desperate to get the players to compete are currently spending up to the cap and going bust because they don't have the income.

So the directors of HKR get fed up of putting their hand in there pockets and get rid of their players, Salford and Cas ( who were not even up to the cap I believe ) have to sell players, and London - well, London is a joke business model. So the only way you could really raise the cap is by getting down to a league of 10. I would guess that would reduce to a group of 4-5 teams over time as the remaining clubs overspent, or their backers disappeared.

As Ian and a previous poster says, clubs need to be self sustaining, they must generate the income to pay for their players. The only alternative is for a wealthy backer to constantly sub the club, and that is a dangerous position to be in, it's not 'sustainable' .

My views on this are quite simple. The two most frustrated sets of supporters in rugby league at the moment are the supporters of Wigan and Warrington. The reason is that both sets probably feel their team should have won the last two Grand Finals but didn't.

Wigan fans are already seeing quality replaced with not quite as good for next season, and have by far the most wanted man in the game in their team and they're worried about losing him in the near future too. Warrington fans are seeing quality players age and are fearing they won't be replaced by the same standard in a year or two's time.

Both know their club has a bit of dough and could afford to spend above the cap IF their owners and board were prepared to, so feel held back.

That's fair enough, but eight Challenge Cups and seven league titles in a row tells it's own story about what happens when one club is allowed to freely outspend the rest. No one wants a return to those days - except very biased Wigan fans maybe!

Money is not necessarily the only factor in players moving anyway. Yes, the NRL salary cap increasing means less high calibre Aussies will be tempted over here, but for years people have complained about too many overseas players anyway. Forcing clubs to focus on youth development is not a bad progression. As for holding on to our own stars, well the fact is the NRL and RFU do have more to offer than we do, like it or not. Going to Australia gives players the chance to experience a different way of life, in better weather, in a part of the world where rugby league enjoys a far higher profile than it does here. Rugby union gives players the opportunity to try something new knowing that if they succeed they could be playing for England in front of over 70,000 people regularly, citing national hero Jason Robinson and current golden boy Chris Ashton as their inspiration.

That's before money even comes into it. Those opportunities will always appeal.

I don't like all the "rugby league will die unless..." scaremongering. In 117 years rugby league has never managed to get a real foothold outside the north, but it's still alive. For it to continue we need to give more clubs opportunity rather than marginalise them as the big get bigger by outspending. We need to stop Bradford type collapses happening again. If that means players go elsewhere for money or any other reason so be it, some will anyway. If Sky pulled the plug and the game went part time again though it will not die as long as there are still tens of thousands of people who want to play and watch it. Which there is. Primarily in the north, yes, but I don't see that as a major problem. So relax.

Aren't London moving back to Kent again next season & how come it didn't take off last time ?

Notice my title is change the salary cap though not scrap it, we need a means of making a club who can afford to spend a bit more being able to?

What about this for an idea, any club who spends x amount over the cap also has to but the same amount in to a kitty that's shared amongst clubs who can't.

So say if Wigan or Wire wanted to spend 1 million over, they'd also have to find another 1 million to put into a pot that's shared out amongst the likes of Salford and Cas.
This way rich clubs don't go flying out in front and the wealth is shared.

Last I heard they had changed their minds again and were staying put. Perhaps it was a threat to get a better deal on the ground rent.

I really havent the faintest why they don't get decent crowds, even when they were higher up the table they never really pulled in the punters. Perhaps the only way to get a club going down here is via a home grown club such as the Skolars or Stags at Hemel.