Surely no-one can be surprised?

It's inevitable.

RL would struggle to keep hold of it's players in a completely free market. The CC puts the final nail in the coffin.

RU have learned that it makes more sense to buy potential rather than experience (Hape aside), hence Ashton and Myler, let them learn the game for a few years and promote to England as and when.

Still at least it means that we won't be faced with the prospect of established players crossing codes, RU won't want them by that time.

Can't blame the players for taking the money. I certainly would.

60k a year for someone who hasn't even played a first team game? No, thanks.

Where as that figure come from?

Sale message board, t'other Wigan forum and of course [size=50(and this makes it fact)[/size the pub

Are the comings and going at Wigan a hot topic in le French pubs then.

Catalan bars mate


...and anyway, I'm back in God's country for the [i'summer'[/i.

Myler went to rugby union because even Salford considered him not good enough to offer a contract. Nothing whatsoever to do with the salary cap.

If any rugby league club went around offering the likes of Thornley £60k a year contract they would be in such a dire financial situation within a few years that they would have to sell their ground to Tesco.

Did the salary cap stop Ryan Giggs signing for Salford?

This is of course true, but it's only a matter of time before we lose someone of Tomkins or Eastmond's quality.

We can't afford to have these RU sharks constantly circling our youngsters. If nothing else, it will cause a big distraction.

Thornley is a slighty different case because, according to what I've heard, he and his family were inclined towards Union for quite some time. I don't think loyalty to Wigan or RL was ever an issue with him at all. But with others you wouldn't necessarily have to top what RU are offeirng to keep them in RL, just improve on what you're already giving them without endangering the rest of your pay structure. That's why some kind of modification re. the cap and young homegrown players is required. The only people I could see objecting to that are those who can't (or won't) develop young players of their own.

When Union were pinching has-beens, and I include Jason Robinson in that, it wasn't such a problem. But it has the potential to become a real problem if we allow them to start chipping away at our youth structure.

Maybe the answer(as some people has suggested) is to exclude youngsters from the salary cap then all RL clubs(including my own Saints) can stop the buggers from taking all our best talent.

Even at my club there are rumours still about Eastmond's future whether it's RL or yawnion,I hope and pray he stays in RL even at another club.

I don't think complete exclusion is viable, but something like, say, a 50% discount might be.

Problem, as always, is the tail wagging the dog - all the clubs with no real youth structure have the majority vote.

Normally I'm with you all the way Cruncher but I disagee if you think losing any junior player to RU is worse than losing Jason Robinson. He was 26 when he went and could have been the highest RL player for ages in terms of profile.

We don't get many that are known nationally but he could have been one of them IMO.

Okay, we could have made use of Robinson for another couple of years, no question (though not necessarily on the wages he was demanding).

But those kinds of signings - at least in the UK - are now less likely given the number of flops who followed in his wake. Faz, Harris, Paul, Pryce, Walker - all went for big money and achieved next to nothing. On the other hand, Ashton, a kid, who cost a lot less, has been a revelation, and though I doubt he'll ever fulfill the potential he had in RL, I feel sure he's going to have a long and successful career in RU.

The message of that seems to be "if you get 'em young, you get 'em cheap (not 'cheap' in our terms, but cheaper than Faz. Robinson etc), you get 'em for longer, and you get 'em while they're still fresh, so you can mold them into whatever you want".

To me, promising young RL talent was always our Achilles heel. It seemed to take an age for RU to realise the same thing (as it always does), but they have realised it now and, unless we fix the cap quickly, I fear they'll be back again and again.