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.

I think if this is to work with overseas players the scouting system needs to be spot on or we could be paying over the odds for mediocrity.

Imagine if the system had been brought in for 2014 & Roy had signed as our marquee player.

At the moment, there's nothing stopping player A working hard, so that he can earn as much as superstar B in the future. There's enough cap space for both if the right deals can be struck,

However, given the ruling of 1 player only, either superstar B needs to move on for player A to earn as much or player A does. To me, I can see that not sitting well with some, especially if other clubs are coming in offering them that space in their team ...

Without the marquee ruling you are left with no option but to sign the Asotasi's of this world. This at least allows you to sign top class players.

Which clubs are willing to pay a salary equal to the top NRL wages remains to be seen.

How would it endanger normal operating costs? The spare £50,000 you could spend on another player would add up to exactly the same amount of money your already paying, but you'd have an extra player.

Sorry magic superbeetle I've just clicked what you mean. Even if it doesn't count on the cap you still have to find an extra £50,000 to spend on the player. Yeah I didn't think of it that way, so yeah it might not be the best for other clubs that don't have the extra money to spend