If this were a newspaper story, the headline should be:

"Shock as employer argues for lower pay for employees".

IL has done wonders for the club but on this issue he is wrong.

In his normal business life IL has to compete to hire and retain talented staff, without the benefit of a restraint of trade keeping wages down.

Of course it is short-sighted to think this is a good thing.

In the long term this dumbing down, this lack of ambition that BK refers to as communist is going to kill the professional game.

The SC has been at the same level for over a decade now. In real terms player wages are way down on what they were (they've been eroded by inflation).

We need to start talking about raising the SC over time - if the SC isn't raised (at least in line with wage inflation) then the professional game is inevitably heading for a slow but terminal decline. It has declined significantly already in the last 12 years -the revenue of many clubs has dropped by over 30% in real terms.

If I were IL I would be pretty worried about that.

I'm quite sure that there is £50,000 dispensation of a player's wages against the salary cap once he reaches his testimonial year. I do think £50,000 is quite shabby and could be increased as 10 years is obviously a long time.

I imagine it's a ploy to stop people saying we are over the cap as they normally do.

Have you got a source for that revenue analysis? If that is correct you are suggesting that we are losing money in real terms and should put that under more pressure by increasing player salaries across the board? Where is that extra money going to come from to pay for these increases? I'm not against raising the cap to reflect increases in revenue in the game but it looks to me like this will be entirely dependant upon the next television deal being significantly higher given that club revenue streams are already under pressure from the general econonic situation.

I wonder how IL would reply if you asked him directly how he felt about having to tolerate agents who seem hellbent on advertising his best young players to RU?

Given that he's a fairly honest chap, I'd imagine he'd admit it's damn inconvenient.

Things are not too bad for him at present. Somehow or other - with no little astute wheeling and dealing, I'd imagine - he has got most of our best youngsters signed on longish contracts. For once, we haven't got a 'Kyle Eastmond' situation to cope with, wherein a very promising player is leading us a merry dance before he makes his inevitable decision to leave.

It's easy for IL to be upbeat about the Cap at present.

But if one of our kids really develops into a star over the next few years, we'll struggle to compete for his signature when it's contract renewal time unless we have some kind of dispensation to give him a bit more - and everyone knows this, even though so many of us still refuse to admit it. Only when some kind of Cap alteration has been introduced allowing us to give our best kids what they are worth without it damaging the rest of our team-building plans, will agents start to view RL as a viable long-term option for their best clients.

And I really wish people would stop talking about paying players more as if it's somehow immoral. Most RL players are currently earning derisory salaries compared to other sporting counterparts. What's more, most of us, if not all, would gleefully take higher pay-cheques if they were offered. We're not talking the obscene fees that top footballers get, just a little something extra to suggest that we actually place value on the superb sporting spectacle that we call RL.

Paul Wellen thinks it needs changing. www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/rugbyl ... codes.html

Paul Wellen thinks it needs changing. www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/rugbyl ... codes.html

Cruncher has got this pretty much nailed IMHO. It's a travesty that a club can bring players through their ranks from the age of 14+ and be in someway restrained from doing all they can to keep them. For years RL has been talking about too many NRL players coming to super league but not put in any incentive to clubs to rear their own talent.

Deano G was making quite a valid point too until he mentioned this 30% loss in revenue (in real terms) which blew his own argument straight out of the water.

Source? It's simple maths based on the SC itself.

When the SC was brought in a number of clubs were operating at the maximum salary cap.

Now 12 years later (after inflation of say 3% per year - the RPI figures would be higher than this but its a nice round number) we are being told by club owners that clubs cannot afford to spend more than an amount which inflation adjusted is less than 70% of what clubs were able to spend 12 years ago.

To take an indvidual example that shows how wages have been eroded, a player on £30k is on a wage worth about £21k 12 years ago.

If we keep the SC at is current level for another 12 years every £100 of wages paid to players would be worth only about £48 at the original prices.

I know many Saints fans desperately cling to the SC because the noughties were a very rare period of dominance over Wigan but you need to get over your emotional attachment to it and look at the facts.

The fact is that whether the SC is the root cause of the financial decline of RL or not (and personally I don't think the SC is the main cause of the problems RL has, it is just one example of a wider failure to have the right structures and controls in place to ensure that clubs plan properly for financial stability and sustainable growth and then deliver those plans), it is damaging the game.

Your point about whether or not clubs could afford to pay more misses the point. We should be setting aspirational goals (keeping pace with inflation isn't an aspiration by the way, in the long term it is a necessity, if we don't do it in the long term then the game will inevitably become semi-professional because in 10-15 years' time most players won't earn enough to be full time RL players.)

We need a system which ensures financial stability and growth for clubs. It isn't the job of the SC to do this. Even the most wild-eyed, foaming at the mouth fanatical supporters of the SC have given up claiming it can do this - the evidence is too obvious to ignore given fiascos such as Wakey, Crusaders, London, Bradford, Gateshull etc etc.

The clubs should produce business plans, have them independently assessed and when they have been approved they should be forced to stick to them.

I would argue the we should be putting in place a modest SC rise, say 3% per year, perhaps delaying its introduction until 2013 to allow clubs to rebuild after the recession. This would need to be accompanied by some proper financial controls to ensure that clubs did not overspend. (Frankly whether or not the SC is raised these controls are desperately needed.)

Under the present system clubs have no incentive whatsoever to grow their revenues even to keep pace with inflation and if that continues in the long term it will lead inevitably to the death of the professional game.

I have absolutely no issue with players earning more money - I wish they were all millionaires.

My issue is with those who try to kid themselves that RL has stockpiles of cash ready to throw at players if the cap is raised. When arguably the biggest club (Wigan) makes losses at the current cap level, raising the cap is not the no-brainer some people seem to think it is.

As usual you make excellent points Cruncher.

Your comment about RL fans being upset at what players earn is particularly interesting.

Sometimes I wonder whether the people who are so in favour of the SC are motivated more by a bizarre and paranoid hatred and fear of Wigan (we are now back on top and IL's comments on this issue show that he is the last person to want to throw money around!) or by envy over player wages.

I think these days - despite Saints fans stuck in a late 90s timewarp popping up occasionally to rant about Wigan fans wanting to buy everyone etc - most of those in favour of the SC seem to be motivated by this anti-player agenda. They can't be motivated by a genuine desire to stop clubs failing financially since the SC doesn't do that, as the examples of Wakey and Crusaders show most recently, with lots of other clubs having got into severe difficulties in the SC era. Some wax lyrical about the mythical level playing field (which is always going to come in sometime soon, despite the continuing stranglehold that big clubs have on the league) - it's hard to take them seriously in 2011.

Couldn't have summed you up better myself
You ignore the point about the need to bring in proper financial controls. Given the recent failures of Wakey and Crusaders this is needed regardless of the SC.

Clubs shouldn't be allowed to overspend. Whether or not they can afford the maximum SC isn't the point - they should only be able to spend what they can afford.

You also ignore the facts on RL's declining financial position and the dismal future that awaits the game if nothing changes.

You mean the declining financial position that has the RFL with record revenues and profits, some clubs (Hull, Leeds) making profits compared to their perilous financial position previously, an increased TV deal on the horizon, new stadia popping up across the league etc etc?

What are you comparing this "declining" financial position to? What was this golden age of prosperity you hark back to? Was it around the time that the biggest club in RL was selling their ground to stay afloat?

RL hasn't been in as healthy a state since I started watching it.

Deano G

Your 3% increase per annum may sound a reasonable figure, but on the basis of spending 50% of you income on salaries would require an increase in revenue of £100k per annum year-on-year, based on the current value of £1.65 million.

Easy to pass glib comments on how players should be allowed to have their earnings kept in line with inflation, I'm sure the £100k+ players could absorb a £3k increase. Further to this, we are hardly talking in line with/below the national average salaries, are we?

As Cruncher has alluded to, and myself on more than one occasion, the emphasis for the cap should be on making the current situation work at it's most effecient. It is my belief that a sliding scale percentage discount should be applied to Academy produced plalers. Starting at 75% in the first year, then 50% and so-on and so-forth. By the fourth year I think it is fair to say they would be an established first-teamer.

It is those at the bottom of the salary scale that need looking after, not the top.

At the end of the day, for all the intellectual argument - and some of it is intellectual, it's not just paranoid weirdness - that justifies maintaining the salary cap exactly as it is now, the far bigger danger to our game is the continued loss of bright young talents, or the ridiculous jacking up of their asking-price as RU continues to try to tempt them away.

Now ... we can pretend that this still isn't an issue if that makes us sleep better at night, but the reality is that Kyle Eastmond is about to leave. Saints fans will respond, as Wigan fans always did, with bravado about how he isn't that good anyway, how they won't miss him, how they can easily find another one ... but the reality is that he's one of the game's hottest properties, his RL club has put in massive work and cash developing him, and yet again he's leaving before they've seen anything like the best of him.

It boils down to one simple question: do we really want to become the seedbed for Rugby Union? (A Sale man of my acquaintance reckons the sole purpose of the Sale 'exhibition game' at Bolton is to make the club a household name in the Wigan/Leigh/St Helens area, as this is where they'll be doing most of their player-recruitment in the years to come).

And I say it again, we're not talking about ridiculous money that no-one can afford. Ian Lenagan may well argue that he hasn't got an extra £500 grand to throw at a greedy player, but, if that quote wasn't taken out of context, it's skewing the argument. We just need a bit more room to manouevure. I refuse to believe that, if he was allowed to do it, Eamon McManus would not be able to find sufficient extra cash to make RU think twice about throwing all their 2011 eggs into the Kyle Eastmond basket.