The NRL should be getting more TV money though. The viewing figures suggest its worth more. I remember last year when Toyota cup games rated higher then Super 14 games. But like you said when it comes to internationals, they beat us hands down. All of these big deals are funded partly by the ARU. I wouldnt be happy if other clubs were able to have players on their team partly paid for by the NRL, just because they are a star player.

Genuine non argumentative question, could you elaborate on that? There's a lot of untruths and urban legends about our financial position in the run up to the salary cap introduction, and I'm just curious which 'view' you ascribe to.

Mat Rogers, Wendell Sailor, Lote Tuquiri, Craig Gower...

If the past is anything to go by he'll 'love his first game', stay on the gravy train for a year or two then come back to rugby league saying he never wished he'd have left.

Genuine answer (whilst desperately trying to remember back to the last Fans Forum):

We posted a small loss (in comparison with most SL clubs) last year.

I think the figure was around £50-80k.

It was stated that had we made the final of the CC, rather than heading out at the semi, we would have posted a profit of between £50-100k.

So basically, we are currently around the break-even point.

Looks like this hasnt hurt the storm as much as alot of us thought it would, over 700 new members since they got found out, to take them above 9,000 so far for the season. Good to see them getting behind the Storm.

[urlhttp://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/nrl/new-members-flocking-to-storm/story-e6frexnr-1225860257811[/url

We also payed off a debt of 400k, which caused a 200k loss if i remember correctly

As much as it was crap to see them go the game didnt suffer. New faces came in from the amazing talent pool that is the NRL and the Toyota Cup. The first 3 of those came back and its been great, but there still wasnt a need to panic when they left. We are never going to be able to compete with the ARU, so if the players want to go they will.

Well if the biggest club in British RL is at breakeven, I'd suggest the cap level over here isn't too low for the moment.

But the game in Britain would suffer drastically if similar numbers of our top players defected. The only thing that's preventing that, IMO, is that we don't have too many star backs at present. (We've got plenty of good forwards, but the latest thing is that our best forwards seem to go to the NRL, so it could be seen that we're facing attack on two fronts).

Eastmond seems the most likely British star to defect to RU at present. If he goes, which I think he will, I suspect that we'll all just shrug our shoulders and say "ah well, we can always find another one". But that won't be much reward for St Helens, who'll have spent time and money developing his talent, only to see someone else benefit. Neither will it be a realistic view to take in general, because, as we've shown in the past - with our restricted numbers, we won't be able to unearth a similar talent so quickly.

I honestly can't understand the attitude of so many RL fans, when an alternative to this rather limp-wristed fatalism would be to tinker around with the cap and find some way to enable us to keep our home-grown stars. It makes no sense to me, and I still wonder if it really owes to a deep-rooted fear that, given a chance, Wigan would simply go out and buy all the world's best players (even though they no longer have the cash or the inclination for that).

I wasnt talking about Superleague, just the NRL. The players that were mentioned were all NRL players. As for Superleague i do agree that the game would suffer if too many players left. Ive always thought the Superleague cap is too low, especially as it hasnt even risen in line with inflation. But to simpley increase it wont solve the problems of keeping top players in league, it would help though. Too many teams cant even spend to the current cap.

Raising it across the board is clearly not the solution. But modifications can be made. I see no harm in clauses being inserted whereby clubs can discount the cap (or a percentage of it) on players they've signed from their own Academy. That would reward clubs who develop players, and make it easier for them to keep them.

But we've had this conversation before. I guess all we can do now is wait and see how things develop in Australia if Melbourne really are going to launch these legal challenges.