Lenegan is a clever guy. He runs Wigan to its limit of profitability and he knows to make the life of him and the club easier he needs to keep the RFL on side. If he makes them think he is in support of keeping it where it is then they may be more inclined to help if we require it. Also they may be more inclined to do a vote expecting him to support stagnation but he may in fact vote the other way. Hes a clever guy and I wouldnt bet that there isnt something to read between the lines here.

People are talking like it is impossible for the salary cap to be lifted because the club invests in other areas and are asking the question would they be happy for ticket prices to increase to pay for an increase in the cap. Well sorry clubs have always invested in these areas so it is hardly anything new and I actually think people have become brainwashed by the whole the game is skint brigade.

Clubs now get more TV money than they ever had before, £1.2 million a year at the last count. In addition season tickets and match day tickets have gone up on a fairly regular basis since the salary cap was introduced. Attendances at most clubs are also up dramatically, more than double in some cases. The game has never really had huge sponsors anyway so I doubt the lack of sponsors today even has an effect compared to times gone by, even say a £700,000 League sponsorship deal is at most £50,000 per club without the RFL even taking a cut. Bearing all this in mind I really do find it hard to believe that the game is as hard up as some claim, and dont forget it is in all of these owners’ interests to claim that it is for obvious reasons. Any clubs that have gone to the wall have done so because of mismanagement as there is no reason for any club to do so if it lives within its means and besides the salary cap hasn’t prevented this anyway.

Looking at the days pre-salary cap, as I said in my initial post there are Wigan players that got paid far more pre salary cap than players today and that is not even taking into account inflation, never mind the players at the start of the salary cap who got far more in real terms. In the 80s and 90s, 16 year olds got thousands, and in some cases 10s of thousands, for signing professionally, big transfer fees were common and we had a proper reserve league. We also had players signing from RU for big money, often funded by sponsors and many paid for themselves by what was put onto the gate, incentives and initiatives like this will never happen with the salary cap as it is. We also had quite a few clubs with superstar players and much better squads than what we have today, just look at some of the players that even clubs like Castleford had in the 90's. Just about all of this has disappeared or fallen victim to cost cutting. Where has all this money gone? Why has the major sources of income risen, such as TV income, ticket prices, attendances but the salary cap hasnt even gone up by inflation? The salary cap in its present form has created a very lazy and complacent league where innovation and investment are discouraged. Decisions regarding the salary cap, play off structure and anything else where the owners have a vested interest need to be taken out of their hands because it certainly isnt doing the game as a whole any good.

So you have no idea Paul re IL's wealth.

Do fans not commit a bigger % of their income.

N.B IL has not spenty any of his personal wealthat Wigan and will make money on his investment when he sells the club.

The salary cap is a terrible policy. It has achieved nothing positive and has had a negative impact upon SL. It disuades potential investors from investing in RL.

See top of page and as previously stated the answer is no for the vast majority.

If the salery cap did not exist Wigan would have won more trophies.

Or gone bust without another Central park to sell...

the investment you talk about, where has IL paid that money from then?

With Warrington's wealth they may have dominated without the salary cap, oh sorry I forgot it's Warrington, forget that.

Why? It didn't work for Leeds who spent money like they were printing it pre-salary cap days in the 80's and 90's. Wigan's success has always been about more than money and those who say it was simply down to money do so to simply discredit the clubs achievements. What does my head in is some of our own fans will make the same argument if it suits the point they are trying to make!

I am certain IL has played a political game since taking over and has been on a fence mending exercise since day one. It's now very hard for any club or other clubs fans for that matter to criticize Wigan as they could under Mo and DW.

However isn't it mission accomplished on that front? We play by the rules, IL says the right things, is supportive towards the RFL and other chairmen such as Hethrington. We are now squeaky clean.

All this is good but if IL has done this in order to increase Wigan's influence when he is going to use it? The next five years are going to see the NRL salary cap rocket. The player drain problem isn't going to go away but what I read from IL is basically a statement that says Wigan are OK because we can be the top of a poor competition. If he is keeping his powder dry he'd better make sure the war isn't lost before he chooses to act.

Mr Lenegans statements also provide some insight into why we might have lost many of our 'class players' over the last couple of seasons in particular.

This actually flies against the Wigan RLFC 'culture', which is over a century old, of 'only the best will do !'