If I paid all my staff three months money up front, next months wage bill will be low also

oooooh, controversial Mo

I would disagree with the "there is nothing new" statement. There is something new. Previously in order to gain promotion Championship sides only had to compete with other Championship sides and be the best of that competition. Now to gain promotion we have to face off in a league against Super League opposition with the SL salary cap, SL overseas quota etc etc. The increased salary cap for the Championship has helped and has let a few teams go Full Time. But I think this middle 8's is already showing that the gap is bigger than some expected. I will admit that the past 2 weeks have been a bit of a wake up call to me after we swept all before us for the past 2 years.

I think more needs to be done to rearrange funding in order to make this new format work properly. By that I mean more to close the gap between bottom of SL (£1.8m funding with 1.8m cap) and top of Championship (£750k-£500k with 1m cap) and also to close the gap between the top of the Champ (£750k) to bottom of the Champ (I think about £200k?) otherwise I think there will be little to no change to the status quo under the new format.

Agreed once again. For me the salary cap for clubs outside of SL should be something like £1.3m or £1.4m to give the clubs, outside of SL a realistic chance of achieving SL. I also think that a deadline of 4 weeks should be implemented before the super 8s.

Isn't this common practice in the Borough of Wigan

Kevin Locke's salary is minimal and the other wages sit on the Salford salary cap and are the subject of legal actions being pursued by both parties.

Wakefield fans aren't looking for anything here other than to defend the club against scurrilous insinuations by Eddie Hemmings and Paul Rowley.

He's not on loan!

I know, realised as soon as I posted it

Deleted the post, not quite quick enough

Not sure about that, without checking the RFL rules though I am pretty certain that Kevin Lockes salary sits on Wakefield's cap regardless of whether they pay him that or not.

Well I think Leythers (including Paul Rowley) should stop moaning and get on with it.

We knew the rules before the season started. AFAIK no rules have been broken and Wakey have only done what anybody else in their position would have done. We ourselves have done it, even including paying a 50k transfer fee for a player which is virtually unheard of these days. Sure there is an imbalance in funding, but we have had the benefit of an imbalance all season long in the Championship.

It seems to me to a lot of Leythers these last 2 matches have been a rude awakening and now all sorts of excuses are coming out of the woodwork which there have been no mention of before. We even had Leythers embarrassing us on other forums blaming the referee for our result at Salford.

If we don't make SL it will be because we weren't good enough. Then we'll have to wait and see what happens next year.

(Blue touch paper lit, stands well back)

That's fair enough.But unless the salary cap increases for clubs outside of SL, I'm afraid we might just be flogging a dead horse.

Well I agree with that. Whatever happens I'll still be watching the Leythers.

I think you are right and to a certain extent I do sympathise as it is a massive task to be expected to compete with the discrepancy between the two caps. This raises then then question of whether a team in the Championship should be allowed to spend more if they can afford it. However, Leigh would still be in a similar situation where they were hammering the opposition all year, then having to cope with the increased intensity for the middle 8s.

Well this would give a slightly better chance if that was the case.

The intensity of the league around us is the problem, I think the difference in finances can be overcome.

The only potentially practical solution I've come up with would be to reduce SL to 10 teams, which would introduce another 2 full-time teams to the Championship whilst also freeing £2m/season to fund other clubs in the Championship. This could result in a Championship league with as many as 5-8 full-time squads. That should raise the playing bar significantly.

Obviously the middle 8 format would then need to be adapted.

You would then have a bigger 'have' and 'have not' situation. I find it somewhat tiresome that fans who were gloating when their cash advantaged team was battering the poorer Championship teams and now they are bleating because they are losing to teams with more cash than them.

BTW, good post Pat.