The focus on scrapping the salary cap detracts from his overall position. IMO he could learn to be a but less controversial in order to get his main point across which is you need quality players in SL to attract blue chip sponsors. In the short term he sees the need to be able to use his own cash to get Salford up there quickly and people are focusing on that rather than what he has to say about the overall problem.



You are living in cloud cuckoo land if you think that is all there is to it. Get a gig in the top 25 players of an Aussie side and you are on a minimum of £53K a season. Plenty of incentive to suddenly become ambitious! In any case if we want to keep the quality in our game we can't really afford to lose the players that go. We are weaker minus the ones on Oz already such as Graham.



You are just repeating the same old and very tired objections. Have you not read the thread? The clubs can't generate the required amount of revenue off their own bat just the same way the NRL clubs can't. The money needs to come from outside the sport as it does in the NRL. The worst team in the NRL can still spend to their cap. If they want to waste money on keeping their best player who isn't really that good in the grand scheme of things that is up to them! So what?



If he is a comic strip villain can I be Batman? Honestly that is a really stupid label to apply to a man as successful as he is. He's the kind of person we want in SL. Everyone lauds IL for being a successful businessman. What are people afraid of? Koukash has more money he is prepared to chuck at Salford than IL is at Wigan?

He has two agendas. Salford's and that of the sport. One is short term, one longer term. I doubt he want's to fund Salford permanently out of his back pocket and he isn't daft enough to think Salford being the only club able to afford top class players is healthy. His position is to get blue chip sponsors you need blue chip players. And you have to pay for blue chip players in professional sport. This fact has been obvious to me since Wigan went pro never mind the rest of the sport. I have been saying literally for YEARS if you want a pro sport you have to pay for it with high wages.



It won't work. If each club gets £1.2m lets say we drop two clubs and ruthlessly (and are able) to deny them any of that money that would give the remaining twelve clubs an extra £200K a year. Wow.

Drop four clubs and go down to 10? Better as we get £480K a club but its still a cap of just over £2m



He is firmly of the belief they need something that's worth investing in but isn't daft enough to assume one rich owner splashing the cash will solve the problem. Why do you think he is?

The problem isn't the chairmen or the salary cap. It's the RFL themselves.

There is no money in the game. The tv deal and the sponsorship deals need to improve before the cap can be raised.

I do not want RL clubs operating at a loss like pretty much every football club in the land. Why? Because the banks would call in those debts without a second thought.

I can see where you're coming from, I just don't quite understand how you expect Super League to attract 'blue chip players' when there isn't that much money available throughout the league.

The only real players who might be a big draw are Australian internationals and they won't give up international selection or Origin selection to play in Super League. I don't see why people expect Koukash to make such huge signings because even some of the top NRL players aren't household names and won't make a significant difference to the sport. Koukash might sign top British players but guess what, we've already had those players here and they didn't bring in any significant sponsors.

You just can't expect one or two teams to sign some better, big name players and expect the sport to improve. We need a competition that is worth playing in and a competition where teams can spend the cap. If you think we can afford to scrap or raise the cap now then surely you would think we can do the same in two, three or four years time after trying to improve the quality of competition first.

You don't need the best players to have a good quality competition, you need excitement and competitiveness. If you have that then maybe the likes of Lee Mossop, James Graham, Sam Tomkins etc might consider staying in Super League.

And I don't think he's daft enough to think one rich owner splashing the cash will solve the problem, but I think other people are.

As long as the money is held by a very small number of clubs the game isn't likely to show significant improvement even with investment in better players. The one sided scorelines will put fans, players and investors off the game.

All Koukash is likely to do is sign better players for Salford from clubs already in Super League until Super League becomes more appealing to players.

The salary cap serves no positive purpose whatsover.

Hold on. Clubs now get an additional £550,000 from Sky compared to when the salary cap was first introduced. Clubs are getting aditional money and yet the cap stays the same and players wages are going down each year in real terms. Factor in inflation and we should have a cap of £3 million if all things are equal and the extra TV money was put towards wages. Instead the cap has gone down slightly and is constantly eroded each year by inflation.

The smaller clubs have had more than enough time to catch up and look absolutely no closer to the big clubs, in some cases they are further away. Short of some of these clubs being taken over and managed properly I dont see how things are going to improve, do we just wait forever? Based on Lenegans comments will he even want the cap to go up anyway even if all the League can spend up to the cap, after all why should he spend extra when Wigan has the production line that it has?

Well it certainly doesn't do what it was 'officially' intended.

To stop clubs 'going bust' !

Or create a more even competition, as some would have us believe.

Looks like there's going to be a shake up of the SC in this re-structuring.
Jamie Peacock's idea was good that he spoke about on the SLS.
Re-allocate some of the SC monies and allow a club 2 of their top players who would be exempt from the cap.
IL's not wanting to pay more is obvious, however those who tend to pay the most usually win the most as IL and everyone else knows.

Why don't they restructure the cap based on salary tiers, something like this...

2 players can earn over 200k p/a with no upper limit.
3 players can earn 125k - 200k.
8 players can earn 75k - 125k.
All other squad players must earn a minimum of 25k p/a.

That means that top clubs can hold on to their top star players (£250k+) but can't stockpile loads of them. The mid range tiers allow talent to be spread amongst clubs. The minimum salary means younger talent is rewarded with reasonable salaries.

So now can you tell us were all the extra income is going to come from ?. It seems people are great at finding ways to increase the cap but I don't see many people coming to tell us how we can generate more cash.Cause if you can the Rfl would love to hear from you.

You miss the point completely. The system I proposed does not necessarily involve increasing the cap. The only compulsory element to it is the minimum salary of £25k. There would be no requirement of the poorer clubs to throw megabucks at top players, but there is also nothing restricting the richer clubs from paying their top players good money. It is a structural suggestion rather than a simple cap increase proposal.[/list]

Maybe you can suggest a proposal yourself?



Course they would

You and others miss the point.

It is a CAP not a requirement to spend.

So 5 players could possibly earn 1.2 million

Is that a statement or a question ?

The overall wages and salaries at Wigan and every club go up each year. So the whole of the increase is taken up by the non playing staff.
We can always find the money to pay them.
If we can increase the money for the non playing staff at all clubs then why not the players? Why are their salaries capped? No one else's are!
So the most important people at the club, the players, have their salaries capped and the rest get their's increased.
That is just so Rugby League!