The days of trying to compete are now and truly over,last week the NRL announced massive increases in the Salery Cap.

This is what it will mean to NRL clubs.

The annual cap goes up from $4.8 million dollars per club to $5.8 million dollars.
This will go up by $300.000 thousand dollars per year until 2017,giving a ceiling of $7 million.
The minimum wage is to rise from $55.00 dollars to $75.000 dollars for players,this will be specially benificial to the young up and coming players.
The wages for "Marquee" players to go up from $300.000 dollars to $550.000 dollars per year.

Finally the sponsership for State of Origin is been kept seperate and is being sponsered
by "Holden" the main Car Manufacturers in Australia with the figure of .
5 MILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR

Don't worry about it. Eddie and Stevo will still be telling us that our game is the more entertaining, and others will be insisting that losing Graham, Burgess, Tomkins, etc will allow other young lads to get a chance.

I think they've been over for a while tbh. The comparative strength of the Aussie $ compared to a few years back along with the closing of some of the more beneficial tax loop holes means it's just not worth it for top Aussies to come over. Looking at the minimum wage now too and it would seem even average players will be staying put which will just leave us with people who cant find a club either through personal issues or a lack of ability. Stack the Rugby Union poachers on top of this and the failure of the game to expand and its a tough time to be a Rugby League fan in the UK.

But all that said it's Christmas , so happy Christmas everyone

The fact that some Superleague players are quitting to get a 9 to 5 job in Australia is pathetic, something needs to be some because at the moment IMO in the perception of the general English public RL is on a par with Speedway when in the early 90s with a visionary at the helm in Uncle Maurice we were fighting up at top.

Regardless of how healthy the game might be in the eyes of the RFL they're just kidding themselves, something drastic needs to be done to get the popularity of RL in the eyes of the British public higher, Christ, it comes to something when people know more ballroom dancers than RL players.

I think the RFL should think about binning Sky off the game over here is going from bad to worse.

Sky are not going to have the monopoly over TV rights for ever, lets bin them off as soon as we can, get the games played when the fans want them played and look to building the crowds again at all the SL clubs.

At least then if we build the crowds at each club it should see the game in a better state than it is now and we are in a stronger position than we are now when it comes to negotiating TV contracts and not relying on the low budget easy money from Sky to be second fiddle to other sports on their channels.

The main problem is that Sky dont have any competition when bidding for TV rights. ESPN, Beeb, ITV and channels 4 and 5 couldn't give a toss so Sky know they can go in with a low bid.

Out of interest can you give an example of when top flight crowds were at a higher level than they were over the past few seasons?

The idea of Rugby League, unilaterally amongst all professional sports, somehow being able to reject pay TV millions is laughable.

Quite. The RFL/SL can bear-pit all the other rabid TV bidders, whilst considering the exact same situation for radio-only rights.

Its WELL over. I have a friend who was a professional RL player in this country. He played for Warrington but had a contract offer from the club he was loaned to last year.
He is now making MORE MONEY playing SEMI PRO in Australia. He therefore has time for another job (but doesnt need to) and has enough money to keep his girlfriend without her needing to work.

To me that shows just how far our game has sunk that he can make more money part time than full time here.

Unless there is radical change in a number of areas, the only future for SL is a semi-professional game played at a similar standard to the French domestic league. Most SL clubs struggle to pay players 1.6m in total per season. The SL has gone backwards financially while other sports, the NRL and employers generally have increased wages significantly. After more than a decade of SL players are paid significantly less in real terms than they were at the start.

The mismanagement and financial failings of the RFL and SL clubs and the game's failed structures have been painfully obvious for years (though at times you'd never have guessed it if you visited this board, which has far too often been clogged up with morons arguing that everything is fine and that critics of the status quo wanted a return to the days of Wigan "buying everyone" .)

I think the head of the RFL shold be voted for by the fans

Every 4 years there are candidates who propose what they mean to do e.g.

If I was a candidate I'd say bring back the Ashes, GB and GB tours to Aus, reduce the teams in SL to raise the standard and spread the money around, bring back promotion and relegation, league winners win the SL (not have to then win it via GF)and have top 3 teams play top 3 teams from aus in a proper WCC

Sorry "Post" don't agree.
The Chairman of the RFL should not be voted on by the fans.
He/She should be selected on ability not elected on popularity. I'd rather have IL, McManus, Moran, Pearson etc selecting the new chief than us lot voting for someone.

GB will return but not with full tours, maybe a mini tour.
Leave the clubs in SL at 14, or 13 if Salford go. We have increased the number of British players in SL by over 75% in the last five years and we need to keep that going to raise the standard.
Pro/Rel from Full Time to P Time can't work and does not work. We proved that hence licencing brought in. Licencing needs improving I know but going backwards to Pro/Rel will be to repeat the mistakes of the past.

League Winner to get a Trophy and Prize Money.
Top three play off, League winner to the GF with 2nd and 3rd playing off for the other GF place.
WCC to be expanded to 3 clubs from each hemisphere.
This last improvement will give SKY nine extra games which will allow us to reduce the play off games which no one watches. Reduce the C Cup games whereby SL clubs enter at last 16 and that be where the Magic weekend should be.

If "Them" want "Us" to watch more rugby and put more money into the game they have to provide "Us" with more matches that people will pay to watch and reduce the number of games which are poorly attended.

Can't disagree with much of this although I'd go back to the top five play-off system that provided a cleare reward to higher placed teams and with Wigan, Warrington, Saints, Leeds, Catalans and Hull all having realistic aims at silverware at least one "contender" will not even qualify for the play-offs.

In respect to the WCC I'd look to alternate that with an international tournament as an end of season competition with the teams competing being the Grand Final winners and league leaders from that season and the previous year (when the international tournament was held) or if a team wins both them dropping down in league places. Could also consider NZ Warriors and Catalans getting automatic qualification for greater international presence.

By reducing the teams then we spread the Sky money out more which would be a temporary fix to the quality of SL by paying players more and only having SL standard players, for instance look at the Widnes team, this shows there aren't enough quality players in the UK to have 14 teams as now with the strength of the Aus Dollar plus the Aus salary cap being raised we really are getting Reserve grade rejects, there is absolutly no quality players coming over from Aus in fact all our best players are going to the NRL.

We can't bury our heads in the sand saying 'our clubs are being run well, we have more British players playing in SL, TV figures are up' that's all well and good but at the end of the day we use the NRL at the benchmark and judging by that we really need to shake things up or we will be a feeder league/sport.

One of the things I'd do is bin off London, if Richard Branson can't make it work what chance have the RFL?