There was talk of a segment of Briers' salary being covered by Club GB at one point as well but I can't remember if anything ever came of it.

Clubs get an extra £50,000 if they have a player with over 10 years service, and another £50,000 if they have a regular England international.

Farrell was covered by it too (I'm 90% sure he was, anyway), I'm sure there were a few more on it, too (Sculthorpe, etc)

Was this payment brought in, as a reaction to Robinson crossing over to the 3 point code?

Are you sure Faz was covered by it? I seem to recall he'd signed a deal worth £1million with Wigan before the salary cap came in to existence.

I could be wrong, but I thought the RFL went through all the British "cream", the game had at the time (which would have obviously included Farrell) and made payment to secure their service, to prevent them swapping over.

After all, if (insert the name of a 3 point club here) came with a daft amount of money, I'm damn sure Wigan would have ripped their hands off, for the transfer money, which they wouldn't have been able to do, if the RFL had a controlling say in his future.......but like I say Paul, I could be wrong.

I found old article earlier relating to when Harris was up for transfer for £1.2million (hehe, just the thought of that transfer asking fee still makes me giggle a bit)... and there's a quote from someone at the club saying that the RFL came in and told the club that they weren't allowed to sell Harris to a RU club, when they'd already had the "deal of the century" lined up. I wish I'd made note of the URL, as I reckon I'll be hard pushed to find it again.

Raise the cap, cut the number of clubs in SL to 8-10, and add another cup. Merge clubs if necessary.

I personally could take RL losing some of its top talent if it meant our game not dying on its booty.

If we raise the cap and a couple more clubs end up like Wakey but don't have the luxury of someone taking them over, our game would slowly die.

It hurts losing talent but it hurts a thousand times more if we lose the game.

personally i'd rather see more money spent on marketing, possibly not a great idea in teh current climate but i would've thought at all clubs the aim would be getting more bums on seats, surely the RFL should be pushing and assisting clubs in this sort of thing.

I have said for a while now that the Cap should increase to allow us to compete with RU for the best players.
If we are to sell RL as the greatest game in the world (which we all know it to be) then we need the best players.
Just think what a draw it would have been for an RL club to be able to prise Jonny Wilkinson away from RU when he was at his best.
I have no idea if he would have been tempted away but he most certainly would not have come given the current salary imbalance between us and RU.

People say that if the Cap is raised then clubs would spend silly money and a club could go under. Is RL in financial utopia right now??? Wakey and Crusaders have both called in the receivers and I bet Quins are really struggling with the crowds they get. In the recent past there was talk of us going under or having to merge because of money problems.

We all need to wake up and smell the Coffee, to get the best and compete with RU we have to pay the money. This will undoubtedly mean problems for some clubs, but overall the long term future of the game we all love would win out.

The Cap must be increased in a sensible and manageable manner, but increase it must.

Fatbelly. without relying on Mr Moran, and based on the documented submitted accounts for 2009, can you explain how our own club (never mind any other clubs for the moment) could realistically afford to spend, say, £400k a year more on salaries based on a profit of £28k ?

I'll say it again. RL needs to increase it's revenue, if it does that, then the salary cap can grow as a result of that.

I gave up trying to explain that. The glib 'well the clubs have to increase their turnover 5% year on year' when expalined that you need to find £200k additional income to achieve that, when no doubt every SL/RL club is pursuing every last penny it didn't even register.

I think most believe there is a money tree knocking around.

The simple fact is, we can't compete with RU. I am not a defeatist, purely a realist.

At the present time RU brings in more money, through benefactors, sponsorship deals, centrally sourced funds that are distributed among member clubs, and so on.

that is the situation which RL needs to aspire to, and compete with. The salaries of the players, and the cap in place, is a by-product of the funds available to the clubs.