I think the biggest issue we are going to have is player drain. They will have a minimum wage of £70k and an average wage of £200k. Just looking at us they could probably double the wage of the likes of Burgess, Gelling, Manfredi, Bateman,& Farrell and still pay them less than their average wage.

On last season's form, they'd be lucky.

With the possible exceptions of Manfredi (if he ever plays again) and Bateman (though he's done little in the WC so far), none of those players are NRL standard.

That said ... if they play to the best of their ability, which as Wigan fans we are desperate to see, then it's a different matter.

It's a real Catch-22.

If players want to go let them. It’ll make SL even worse quality than it is now and then finally the RFL might do something about it.

Like what though?
The game over here can't afford to play those sort of salaries, if we try then the game will be bankrupt in less than a decade.
Somehow we need more investment, the next t.v deal needs to be a very good one and the men at the top should be starting to look at and negotiating sooner rather than later otherwise Sky will just walk in with a take it or leave it offer, and we know what happens then.

amazing how we became World club champs seeing as they are so much better man for man that the British game......

We are a salary capped sport and we all understand why. The issue is the difference in the size of the cap. If both competitions had an equal cap then we’d at least be able to compete for the best players. As it stands, the slight increases in our cap mean very little. We still have the same pool of average standard players to choose from but they’d be paid a bit more. Unless we can compete for top quality players, the standard of our game has little chance of improvement.

to be fair the like of Whitehead and Hodgson werent great in SL but are killing it in the NRL

That's true, but why is that?

Arguably, better coaching in the NRL, and certainly, being surrounded by better players. Which brings us back to the same problem...

They didn't sell out to Rupert Murdoch..

Would they be lucky? My point was the NRL teams can now sign that level of player as a squad player, doubling their wage which would still put them on less than the average player in the NRL.

agree

SL needs a bigger TV deal from SKY / BT, and more of them.

The only salvation I see for the SL competition is TV money coming in from North America and France.

The 2022 TV deal(s) will be critical to the future of the competition.