I agree with most of what's been said. I would like to say as well that the constant chopping and changing of format and rules has really contributed too. The Super League bosses have been far too reactive and knee jerk. Some of the formats and rule changes have been silly gimmicks at the expense of long term credibility.

Also obviously it's just money. Salary cap is the big one. It's frankly embarrassing that the league only got Ben Barba because he's a coke head and Joel Monaghan because he put his cock in a dogs mouth. How can we celebrate having those players when they clearly only came because of degenerate behaviour? It's like we just pick up the dregs. I'm not trying to take a moral high ground here either, I know Wigan have Zak Hardaker and had Hock, I'm just saying they would be playing in England anyway, the first two just demonstrate that we're such a league we only get outcasts.

Nice one Cruncher and Post. You’ve just reminded me of Widnes during the late 80s (when I first started watching RL). What a side that was. I went to the game Wids v Wigan (88/89 I think) at Naughton Park for the league decider under the floodlights. What a game! Two top quality sides going toe to toe. It’s a few years back, but I remember Widnes winning, something like 11-6 I think??
I can kind of remember the sides. I won’t quote the Wigan one as you guys will know it. But here’s the Widnes side as far as I can remember:

Alan tait
John deveroux
Andy currier
Darren Wright
M offiah ( I think he was still at wids before he moved to you for 400k
Myler/Davies
Hulme
Sorenson
Mckenzie
Joe grima
Koloto
Moriarty
Les holiday/Richie eyes (sent off at Wembley v you in the cc)

(It’s just an educated guess at the team Widnes would have had at the time)
There were other class players not in the 13 I’ve mentioned. Fimalo, other Hulme brother, Mike o neill, Brimma kebie. The Wids forwards brought in by Laughton were absolute beasts.

But as you say, we did have some good sides. I’ll never forget losing out to Joe Lydon’s drop goal (semi at Maine Road). You scored a conciliatory try near the end but it was close. It was such a good side and team which gave your superstars a proper game. I’ll always look back at those times and have a shed load of envy. But, as a Wire fan; a pack of Boyd, Tamiti, Roach, les Davidson, mgginty, and Sir Micheal Gregory will always give you a chance, and definitely give any fan of proper sport a real reason to buy a ticket.

Funny- the Ben Barba and J Monaghan bit

Quote: The_Enforcer "Who exactly came up with the salary cap idea? Its socialist/communist in nature and just drags the top teams down to the level of the bottom teams. Surely it is illegal if challenged in court? It limits a company investing in better players to increase their revenue via more people coming through the turnstile to see those better players.'" Quote: The_Enforcer "It was brought in to stop us winning everything, in realty we pushed the boundaries and became the most famous rugby team in the world, up there with the all blacks, we were in debt and had to win the challenge cup every year to break even though. I wonder what the Premier League would look like if they were only allowed to spend 1 million a week on wages? All the superstars would go abroad, as would the sponsors and their money, the standards would decrease and the spectacle would follow, because of that the viewing figures would decrease as would the revenue from the TV deals. And here we are.'" Salary cap’s are used throughout most sports other than football. Rugby League isn’t on its death bed, it has simply become less popular in Wigan. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salary_cap

Quote: The_Enforcer "Who exactly came up with the salary cap idea? Its socialist/communist in nature and just drags the top teams down to the level of the bottom teams. Surely it is illegal if challenged in court? It limits a company investing in better players to increase their revenue via more people coming through the turnstile to see those better players.'" Quote: The_Enforcer "It was brought in to stop us winning everything, in realty we pushed the boundaries and became the most famous rugby team in the world, up there with the all blacks, we were in debt and had to win the challenge cup every year to break even though. I wonder what the Premier League would look like if they were only allowed to spend 1 million a week on wages? All the superstars would go abroad, as would the sponsors and their money, the standards would decrease and the spectacle would follow, because of that the viewing figures would decrease as would the revenue from the TV deals. And here we are.'" Salary cap’s are used throughout most sports other than football. Rugby League isn’t on its death bed, it has simply become less popular in Wigan. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salary_cap

]
Absolutely spot on , good post

I do agree that the season starts too early.
Expand to 14 teams and drop the 6 loop fixtures and start the season 2 weeks later.

I agree with less fixtures and later start, but the sticking point is going to be Sky getting their money's worth to enable this to happen.

The salary cap came into our game due to Maurice Lindsay bankrupting Wigan and other clubs trying to keep up with them. The RFL and the clubs then took the Sky shilling to keep going with a full time squad.

The salary cap can only be raised if there's more money in the game, and there's only one way for this to happen - through TV. However, I'm not confident that we'll get an increased TV deal.

1 - The salary cap can only be raised if there’s more money in the game.

2 - The only way to get more money into the game is via sponsors, TV deals and rich owners.

Sponsors won’t sponsor a second rate competition, they want their brand associated with top level sports, hence why we are sponsored by betting firms, mushy peas, cider and cheap spartan cars.

TV money won’t be raised or we won’t get a much better deal because TV companies aren’t falling over themselves throwing money for our rights because the standard isn’t good enough, the standard is t good enough because we don’t have the players, the players won’t come because we don’t have the money etc etc and we enter into a vicious circle.

Rich owners won’t come into our game and spend money because they aren’t allowed to, look how Marwan Koukash was treated, he’s a well respected owner in the horse racing industry but he was treated like some backwards naughty upstart who dared to dream. If that doesn’t put money men off coming to our game I don’t know what will.

We are in a vicious cycle, the only way to break that cycle is either by Sky throwing a load of money at the game to improve it, so we can increase the cap and sign the best players from NRL and Union or

We scrap the cap.

That would be fine if we had a number of individuals with the cash (owners or otherwise) to spend on player recruitment.

I don't think that there are any, the other option is by funding through debt. That's just not sustainable, and led to the salary cap in the first place.

Your correct with the "vicious circle" but there's no easy answer to breaking it.

i agree with about the SC. Removing (even substantially raising) it is no panacea, as others have said, it doesn't solve the issue of lack of money in the sport, but things have reached the stage where action on it needs to taken. Taking third-party deals off the cap would be a simple and pretty painless reform; there's no reason that couldn't be done right away.

What I don't agree with is the complaints about "sanitisation of the sport". If the sport is so sanitised, how come RL suffers more injuries than any other sport? The game is plenty tough enough.

And old-skool fans may want to "bring back the biff", but

a) It's just not going to happen, is it? Everyone knows this. And

b) TV networks and sponsors don't want to see it either, which is why is has largely disappeared from other sports like RU.

Other sports do it, do you think Formula 1 is sustainable? Or football? Or Cricket?

There’s two ways we could get out of this vicious circle and that’s either removing the cap and allowing teams to spend as they wish and raise funds however they can whether it be going into a load of debt, having a wealthy board of directors/investors, having a wealthy owner or pulling their fingers out, making a proper marketing and sales team who can go out and secure sponsors and come up with ideas to make money, or

increase the cap with extra funding coming from Sky’s TV money to allow us to compete with Rugby Union and NRL. It would need increasing to at least match the NRL if we are to attract a better standard of player.

Sky can get their fix....it's about time every game was on TV now anyway to do that
14 teams.
1 Thursday
1 Friday
2 Saturday
3 Sunday.