Shaun Ainscough

There are a significant number of lads that were about to break through in the next year or so at good clubs who will be heading to Australia this year. Academy international Daniel Smith of Leeds who was expected to get first team this year after some excellent performances in the juniors last year is the latest to sign for an NRL feeder team for next season.

Never mind Hock and Wigan’s woes, there are other parts of SL starting to show the strain and if it’s true that nothing fundamentally can change for three years, then I for one think that the game is not looking in good shape. Finance, salary cap, games structure all these things and more need sorting now, and it seems all the RFL can do is hand out the fiddles amongst themselves while Rome catches fire. As for Hock my opinion is if he really wants to go, let him and deal with it. I can see much bigger problems than him ahead.

On the flip side, With all our top guns going over there, Maybe that gives the young Aussie lads being pushed out by them to come over here. It will probably turn into a case of the Super League giving their youngsters the match experience and then when they get good enough they will be off over there again, and round and round we go.


The salary cap needs to rise or it is game over.

Interestingly, Parramatta are now being heavily linked with Israel Falou's NRL return. surely he'd want mega money, could this scupper any Hock deal or do they have a lot of cap space?
I know Hindmarsh has retired and they lost Inu mid season to the dogs

Folau is pretty much nailed on for Parra according to this: www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/leag ... 28mk6.html Will it stop Hock going? Id say you have a better chance now than about a week ago. Get the feeling that Lenegan's phone might have stopped ringing.

Folau is pretty much nailed on for Parra according to this: www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/leag ... 28mk6.html Will it stop Hock going? Id say you have a better chance now than about a week ago. Get the feeling that Lenegan's phone might have stopped ringing.

Inu was at NZ Warriors when he went canterbury.

I'd hate to see Hock leave as a Wigan fan but as an RL fan id love to se him go over and tear the NRL up like Morley did.

As for the future of RL in the UK I think were heading in the right direction personally. Leneghan has always said hed like a squad of home grown players to represent the club. The idea of that for me is as exciting as watching the likes of Finch and Lima and Hoffman who blatantly come over for the £ and do one as soon as the $ is more attractive.

There will always be a couple of exceptional foreigners in the side, i dont think the club or league needs any more than that.

How do you come by that? Hock, Sam & Joel, HH have all come up through the ranks, and now already have / look like going to pastures new. No point in priding ourselves in developing talent if the club is then willing to let it slip through our fingers with a loss to Wigan and to the UK RL scene as a whole.

The solution for me is to make the salaries for any 'home grown' talent to be exempt from the salary cap of the parent club. We can then pay them what they're worth (or what can be afforded), making it more difficult to be tempted away by the dollar.

Moving on, perhaps any transfer movement within the SL clubs, this exemption could be adjusted on a sliding scale basis.? say, 80% of salary exempt for the 1st year after transfer, 75% after 2nd year, 70% after 3rd year etc. That would not only encourage youth development (especially at those clubs with a less than active development programme) and keeping talent within the SL, but also help promote a strong national side also.

My 2 cents worth

...and don't forget the inexorable, unstoppable rise of football either... How many top teenage RL talents are there currently in Liverpool/Manu Utd/Latic's academy setups lost to our game forever that 15 years ago would have been in Saints'/Wigan's/Wire's U19s teams instead? How many kids walk around in St. Helens or Wigan dreaming of playing Premiership football instead of RL that would never have done so even a generation ago?

It's a bitter pill for us all to have to swallow but RL is in the process of being squeezed to death by financial forces that are way out of it's wildest dreams to ever be able to compete with. Increasing the salary cap will not be the answer - all that will do is kill off the limited competitiveness there is in SL already, limiting the global appeal of the sport still further, and send even more clubs to the wall. It could do nothing but slightly delay the departures of a few players from our game, no more. Salary cap or not Wigan could never afford to pay Sam as much as a top RU or NRL club could afford to if they wanted to for instance. We have to accept that British RL is going to likely end up a semi-professional glorified pub league...

...and don't forget the inexorable, unstoppable rise of football either... How many top teenage RL talents are there currently in Liverpool/Manu Utd/Latic's academy setups lost to our game forever that 15 years ago would have been in Saints'/Wigan's/Wire's U19s teams instead? How many kids walk around in St. Helens or Wigan dreaming of playing Premiership football instead of RL that would never have done so even a generation ago?

It's a bitter pill for us all to have to swallow but RL is in the process of being squeezed to death by financial forces that are way out of it's wildest dreams to ever be able to compete with. Increasing the salary cap will not be the answer - all that will do is kill off the limited competitiveness there is in SL already, limiting the global appeal of the sport still further, and send even more clubs to the wall. It could do nothing but slightly delay the departures of a few players from our game, no more. Salary cap or not Wigan could never afford to pay Sam as much as a top RU or NRL club could afford to if they wanted to for instance. We have to accept that British RL is going to likely end up a semi-professional glorified pub league...

I think that is a very good point. Some owner clearly don't have the financial resources themselves or business skills to generate enough revenue to take their clubs forward financially. So they vote to keep the costs down when really they should be looking for people to take over who can improve matters if they have taken the clubs as far as they can.

You only have to look at Warrington to see what happens when someone who does possess those attributes takes over.

I don't think it is just small clubs though that suffer from a kind of cheapskate view. Leeds seem to been at the forefront of various cost cutting measures in recent years such as scrapping the old A teams and what has happened with junior RL recently. I get the impression while they are clearly very comfortable paying to the cap they are more interesting in cost cutting than growth.

Even IL will tell you even if the cap was increased Wigan might not necessarily be able to pay to it. This is when it should dawn on people its very hard to run a pro sport on a sound business level alone. Clubs can only raise so much cash from ticket sales and sponsorship and simply need "free money" from the likes of Sky.

BT Vision are paying RU £152m over four years having taken the RU rights off Sky. They have said they intend to use the money (well some of it) to up their salary cap as they want their sport to be at the same financial level as championship 1 soccer in terms of what it can pay players.

Out of interest BT Vision are paying £246m per season for the rights to show 38 premiership soccer games as they launch a sports channel.

We need someone in charge of RL who can pull in such deals for us. I don't mean £246m a season obviously but if RU can get £38m a season I don't see why we ought not to be aiming for a similar figure. RL regularly outstripped RU for viewing figures on Sky. Instead we get zero pounds from Stobarts!

The financial benefits that RL once had have not only stopped they are now working against us. We used to get former Union Internationals turning to League for money. That stopped 1995/6 when Union went pro.
When SL started the £ was very advatageous against $AUD and now is it's the reverse, where NRL players looked to come over for a good salary and pension perks they no longer do so. Due to the devaluation of the £ towards the $ our best players are either going or looking to go to Australia. THe UK tax breaks have now gone.

We are now on our own as far as player recruitment goes and as mentioned are looking on unable or unwilling to take the necessary steps to make the game for finanacially beneficial for our best players.
Wigan do seem to be attracting more Union/NRL clubs looking at our players as possible recruits than other SL outfits but where we can't compete at present at least IL is able to obtain a fee for those under contract. One of SL's biggest losses was James Graham who went when OOC so Saints didn't get a penny for him. At least with Gaz Hock a fee will be payable. If not then he won't go!
The Graham sort of case must be avoided and IL does seem to be looking at it by givening out longer term contracts. Also renewing existing contracts long before they expire.

The RFL and SL Chairmen have to sort something and quickly to stop the player drain, whether this will be linked to the amendments of the salary cap, revised TV deal or other measures but something has to be done, and quickly.

I'm near certain that we will see Sam Tomkins leave in 2013. From the bizarre link up with Saracens to the numerous quotes in the press from the man to his brother leaving to his brief appearance playing RU, I say it with glum confidence that Sam Tomkins will not be playing in a Wigan RL shirt in 2014. With genuine sincerity I hope you can drag this quote up in a couple of years time and have a laugh about it as RL keeps it's flagship talent in Super League. A momentous achievement I can't see us fulfilling.

I accept that players coming and going, especially overseas recruits, is a natural part of rebuilding a squad over several years but my area of disillusionment with the game comes not from this, which I think you may have misunderstood or I didn't convey it clearly enough (probably the latter!) but from the fact as a game, not just as a club, we don't have the resources to be able to replace those players with anyone of like for like quality. Through salary cap restraints, lack of finance, more money and perhaps better lifestyles in other sports/competitions we're seeing the top players, the entertainers, of our competition leave and their replacements are nowhere near the standard of those players who have departed. Hence we see a lower quality of RL and a poorer product because of it which when purse strings are tight as a nation leaves me in my embittered state with the game.

You make the point about the lack of mass exodus to Union/NRL but it doesn't take a mass exodus to weaken our game as a result. If Gareth Hock leaves for the NRL our game is weaker as a result - why? Because Gaz is a top class player, one of the best second row forwards in the competition. He's an entertaining player, whether that's through some sublime piece of skill or an absolute brain fart - it's entertaining to watch, it gets people talking, it puts bums on seats and creates enthusiasm surrounding our game. If Sam Tomkins leaves in the next couple of years, I accept it's not an exodus it's only one player, but sadly that's all it takes to weaken our product/competition standards. How can we hope to progress as a sport in this country when the top talents in our game can be readily poached (worrying seemingly at will) by rah-rah clubs or the NRL (using Joel Tomkins and Gareth Hock as examples).

There are many other different factors which has brought on this outburst, things such as the lack of meaning in the 27 rounds until the play offs, three Super League clubs falling into administration in the last couple of years, an outdated Challenge Cup competition, poorly supported/structured international competitions, horrific refereeing standards, a Russian roulette of a disciplinary panel etc

I suppose I'll see TV figures and attendance figures thrown in my direction now, which appear very rosy and paint our game in a satisfying light for some, but for me I just can't get over these glaring issues that are facing our game at the moment.

I don't think everything is rosey. However, throwing hands up in the air and saying the RFL/Chairmen need to do something does not really offer a solution.

In the end market forces dictate the money that comes into the game. There are a few sources of income TV, species, sponsors, then there is non-RL related revenue, weddings, offices etc.

Changing the Salary cap has no impact unless the revenue can increase. Unions big earner is the 6 nations, it pulls in huge amounts of cash and it's not something we can match. The TV deal is a bit of a Mystery, we pull in better figures, but get less cash???? I think the issue there is a lack of offers from TV companies outside of SKY. This has to be down to the RFL/SL sales team. How we cannot link better viewing figures to a better TV deal is beyond me unless simply in the high echelons of TV advertising we are seen as good on figures but that does not translate to adverts somehow?????

One option maybe to allow more interuption in the game. If Sky could throw 2 more ad breaks in every game bar the GF, would it make our product more TV salable? How you do that is up to the powers that be.