Quote: DaveO "I am not suggesting clubs do rely on prize money but what I have never understood is what is wrong with seeking out rich board members and benefactors. Man City in soccer can't afford their players based on mechanise and gate receipts. Everyone seems obsessed with clubs being run as a business and only getting revenue the club itself can generate. Well I don't think we are competing with a sport in RU which does that. Clubs get huge handouts from the RFU, international players have central contracts and so on. I don't think given the higher salary cap in RU anyone minds some rich benefactor making it possible for a club to spend to the cap.
At the moment it seems the only acceptable way for clubs to generate revenue is gate receipts/season tickets, sponsorship and merchandise. All these revenue streams have limits even for an RU club.
My view is we don't need to increase the salary cap that much to help stave of RU raids on players. They do not have limitless funds and won't be targeting every player in the game. What I don't see though is a desire to increase the cap as some sort of stated aim of the RFL (however you do it). They seem happy to let the clubs vote on it and for reasons previously discussed it never goes up.'"
This is a very good point, RU are not going to target every player, only a small minority actually.We have seen that Eastmond has gone i think we will increasingly see is that RL clubs will just not be able to keep the likes of Eastmond and Sam Tomkins for their whole career, the draw of the cash will be too much to resist. I would love to see Sam at wigan forever but i doubt very much that he will. He couldn't be blamed either really, it is a short career and at current salary levels there are very few Superleague players who will retire from the game with financial security.
