As I've pointed out. Dress it up as they may but unless every club is the same it is words on paper.
It cannot be a level field unless it is mandatory that every team pays the full cap and nothing more or there is a handicap structure.

It all a bit idealistic ..... essentially we are bow governed by the lowest common denominator preventing the more successful outfits from growing further. Yes we do not want to go back to situation as in the 80's with Wigan winning everything but all the clubs have now had 20 years or so of being heavily subsidised by Sky and if we cannot see by now that if we are to be a top ranking sport some dead wood will have to go we will always be also rans

I completely agree. We now have 3 teams very close to each other and another 3 (Cas, Hull, Wire) close behind.

The salary cap is stifling the investment in the game. If the poorer clubs need to play in a different league / go bust so be it. The game desperately needs the investment.

This levelling down has to stop or the game won't be worth watching.

Never said it works just what the aim was in reference to your point in which you seem to question the aim.

The salary cap doesn't stop you spending money on junior development and investing in producing more talent.

If we did increase the salary cap we would probably see two effects:

1) An inflationary effect on salaries for existing players - when it came to contract renewal of regular first teamers, their agents would push for increased deals. A lot of the extra budget would be absorbed by this.

2) An increase in the number of highly paid NRL imports in the category of players who are not in the current Origin or international teams. This would help return the standard to where it was in the mid 2000s, although it will still be harder to offer really attractive deals as back then you were looking at around $2.70 or $2.80 to the pound whereas now it's $1.75. So we might be getting a lesser quality of import than back then especially as the Aussie salary cap is bigger now too.

Some of the less well off clubs will look to chase the signings as well so potentially would scale back investment in youth development to try and keep up with the need to bring over these imports. The rest of us will lecture them saying they should be investing more in their own youth development rather than just looking to sign imports - well why don't we do that now? We can do that even with the current salary cap restrictions.

I'm open to salary cap reform but we have to be realistic about the difference it will make to us.

Also I think this argument of "we need to stop British players going off to the NRL" is wrong, if we want to compete with the Aussies we need more of our players getting experience in their competition, in their conditions. The Premier League in football is great at keeping most of the England team in England but it doesn't do much for our international team, whereas there are countries like France, Belgium, Portugal, Argentina, Brazil who lose most of their players to foreign domestic leagues but have international players who are experienced in different leagues, different styles of play all around the world.

Well SC the cap has increased and the top tier is infinite twice over. As pointed out, only six of those infinite positions from all those available areas across SL and the championship have been alloted. Yet 4 of the 6 are all English¡

Your account doesn't seem to stand up Sally C.

That's more an issue about increasing the overseas quota.

If there are NRL players who are outside/on the fringes of Origin or Kangaroo selection and are open to come to the UK, who are as good or better than the top British players, but willing to accept lower wages, then we should be able to sign them already under the existing tight salary cap. The tightness of the cap should be incentivising clubs to search for that type of value for money. If the reason they can't, is because of the overseas quota then that's what you'd need to increase to have the positive supply effect, but it won't be popular with some people.

The restriction on overseas players creates the scarcity effect that drives up wages of the British players. But this also helps keep British players in SL rather than the NRL because if they are being overpaid relative to their worth here, they are less likely to be tempted away by the NRL.

There will be even more restriction on overseas players after Brexit if the UK is no longer bound by the Kolpak ruling as the NRL players with family backgrounds in the EU or countries with agreements with the EU will no longer come in off quota.

The other way to reduce the scarcity effect would be to increase the flow of genuinely talented young British players (rather than Championship standard players who get a long run out in SL due to lack of alternatives) but it's easier said than done and everyone has wanted to do that for years anyway...

The players you list only came over in the Aus off-season, none of them actually signed for a UK team as their primary employer even without a salary cap. The move to summer rugby stopped these type of signings.

Not in Warrington's case.
Blake, Davidson and a drop goal sealed that fate.

Yeah I know (with the exception of Jamie Lyons). My point still stands though - we can lose the expectation of having the NRL super stars in SL but there are some superb players in the next tier down.

When you said Lyons I thought you meant Cliffy Lyons rather than Jamie Lyon.

I think Roberts falls into the superb player from the tier below the elite of the NRL. Potentially the stand-out player in Super League.

Yes I agree with you.

Price has confirmed he will play on Saturday - be good to see him out there.

Price also unsure whether he sees him as an edge second rower, or a loose.

Also he would like a better song than chicken tikka masala lol.