Quote DaveO="DaveO"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?'"
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.
