I think technically you could class Blake and Davidson as short term loan deals and therefore I wouldn't say value for money.

Boyd may have a claim but he did spend a lot of his second period injured.

Blake was at Warrington for over 3 years. Davidson was short term.

?

I remember 89 very well; Blake on a loan deal like Davidson and them both being missing for the 89 semi at Maine Rd.

boyd did more injured than a large percentage of our pack...and he would of let them know about it aswell...he wouldnt of played half a game like most do

I guess we shouldn't forget that SL clubs will be getting an extra £600k I think it is from increased TV revenues from 2017 onwards. Of the 12 clubs SL only 1 isn't spending to the full cap I believe.

Surely with increased TV revenues this is affordable for all clubs? Plus te salary cap hasn't increased, even with inflation, for 10+ years. That means our players are earning the same now as they were 10 years ago, I'm not sure that's fair?

Widnes ain't spending to the cap.

Blake played the 85/86 season (legendary), and the 88/89 one (less good, but still brilliant).

Davidson may only have been a loan, that's true, but he was superb throughout his time at Wire - he was also an Origin player and Kangaroo when he came to us. His levels of effort and commitment even in just a short-term spell would put several recent recruits to shame.

Neither are Warrington spending full cap.

Quote ="St pete"Widnes ain't spending to the cap.'" I based my assumption after reading this. I would guess he had a better idea than most, but accept it's not concrete evidence. m.yorkshirepost.co.uk/sport/rugb ... -1-7292473 RD whether we do spend the cap is irrelevant, everyone knows we have the ability to.

Quote ="St pete"Widnes ain't spending to the cap.'" I based my assumption after reading this. I would guess he had a better idea than most, but accept it's not concrete evidence. m.yorkshirepost.co.uk/sport/rugb ... -1-7292473 RD whether we do spend the cap is irrelevant, everyone knows we have the ability to.

Phil Blake, Chris Hicks and Nigel Vagana were not [imarquee[/i signings.

They all went onto become hugely impressive players, provided some wonderful memories, made massive contributions to the P&B and were excellent value for money.

BUT, they were largely unknown before they arrived on these shores and THAT is my point. If we want value for money from our overseas signings, established internationals often brimming with ego, attitude and pay-demands have not generally provided the best value.

Les Davidson and Les Boyd did, though. I'll gloss over Steve Roach.

Regardless how excellent Blake and Davidson were, like Morriseyisawire says....not value for money.
The return ended up as nil.
When we needed them most at Maine Rd they wasn't released back to play for us, I think they were both at Souths.
Peter Higham vowed after that, we would never to sign an Aussie overseas player on a short term contract ever again.
The season after Blake and Davidson were discarded by us and they became short term Pies instead.
Higham turned his attention to Welsh RU and NZ.

Apologies if this has been mentioned already, but can clubs have a home grown (£100k) & overseas signing (£175k) at the same time ? And does the home grown player have to have come through a clubs academy ?

club trained, or non club trained, and i believe its one or the other, so you can either keep hold of a superstar or buy in a superstar.

I think people are panicking over nothing saying the gulf between clubs will widen....WHY!!! Because some clubs will be able to sign 1 yes I repeat 1 high profile player and pay loads for him. It doesn't guarantee they will be amazing over here and tear other teams to pieces, look at Carney...injured for most of the year. This ruling will help every club for example, Michael Shenton is home grown and say for example he is on £150,000 a year currently. If cas use him as their marquee player then they will suddenly have an extra £60,000 to spend next year. To either bump up the contract offer for a bigger named player or buy another quality player they wouldn't have been able to get so it's win win. Not trying to sound arrogant because we can spend loads on a player but I genuinely think it is a good thing for all teams.

I mean an extra £50,000 not £60,000 to spend.

It was close enough and we understood. Well put.

That's quite disappointing. I was hoping we could get a top NRL star & lure a current Yawnion player back to league too.

They would have the capacity to spend extra but that doesn't mean they would have the available funds to use it. Your logic matches that of my wife and a credit card

If they didn't have the available funds they wouldn't be able to pay that wage in the first place would they.

Taking your example, what if Castleford maximum budget is the 1.65m and not a penny more without putting risk on other areas of the business - even though they CAN spend another 50k, it would endanger normal operating costs.

This puts clubs in a sticky spot. Most fans won't and don't care about the regular running of the club, only results on the pitch. Do they spend the extra to placate the fans, encouraging increased debt and potentially a Bradford style spiral? Or do they not use it and risk the fury of the fans, and potentially the ability to challenge for the sake of still operating?

It is incredibly naive to think this is good for all clubs. It's especially bad for championship clubs in the middle 8s.

It's also bad to a certain extent for the clubs who adopt the rule first. Say Warrington sign Cronk. Hill and Ratchford will be subjected to that time of tempts and offers from other clubs, knowing Warrington can't offer them the same - how long before a club successfully unsettles one? Is a superstar worth unsettling your current best players?

Just like the wife and a credit card or even the last labour government

But with the TV income the clubs receive covering the £1.8M cap from 2017 onwards, surely even the lowest income clubs would be able to make use of the marquee allowance? The differnce will be the size of the marquee wage from club to club.

I'd like to see published basic salary cap increases announced so the clubs know what they are aiming for in terms of future financial performance. Even if they are only increasing in line with inflation. i.e.
2017: £1.85M
2018: £1.90M
2019: £1.95M
2020: £2.00M etc etc.

As for unsettling the rest of the squad, you get pay variances across all professional sports teams, I guess the difference here is that you will have someone specifically named as the 'marquee player'. At the end of the day it's up to the coaches to manage that situation. Obviously the marquee player is also in the yawnion salary cap - don't follow it to know if that has caused issues?

i dont see what the stigma would be over said marquee status, there are already(and have been for years) players over here on large sums of money not carrying teams on their back.

I wonder if the songsmiths of the terraces are already working on ditties for when these marquee players drop a clanger.