What is it about Wire fans? They seem to be on a campaign to prove (if there was any doubt) that they are the stupidest fans in RL. I just wish they'd take their campaign somewhere else, and leave the Wigan board alone...

I'm not sure whether or not I'm allowed to agree with you Cruncher. If I comment on the SC or on the other structural and management failings of RL I get called an obsessive, though recently I was abused for apparently no longer commenting on SC related issues. You couldn't make it up!

But anyway.. I agree with you entirely. The status quo is not an option. I would add that we need to incentivise clubs to raise their income. Wigan turning over less than £5m in a financial year simply isn't good enough.

forgive my ignorance .....

I forgot to mourn the passing of Saints Player of the season Kyle Eastmond...


come on some ridiculous names on that List, Craig Gower the blokes a nut job the NRL couldnt wait to get rid of him, he's never a loss to our sport Quinns will find out not long into next season.....thats a walking car crash waiting to happen.

Gasnier Was a loss to a certain extent as he is still a top quality even in his final year in the NRL but he spent every contract renewal being linked with Wigan to try and get improved deals in the end he was always going to take union money regardless of where he would play. but he's come back to RL and won a Grand Final and a world Club challenge

Farrell had no Rugby Left in him when He left for Union.
Carney left for union aged 30 and was essentially a flop

Josh Hoffman has been impressive this year for the Bronco's yes Karmichael Hunt would have either remained in the Broncos squad somewhere in the backs or gone to another NRL club but the broncos havent missed him so far.

So I'm not about to Panick And Start demanding the RFL give pots of Money to Wigan And Warrington because they have Most England internationals in their squads.....How Would that be good for the League?

So I stand By My Ignorant point that the majority of those Names have not been Missed by the sport.

Spot on.

We need to keep ALL our talent and then ADD to it.

He may not rate Myler, Eastmond, Ashton etc. but keeping them gives us a bigger pool of players and also stops our biggest rival sport from imrproving.

Another way to look at this issue is to go back to the 10 years prior to 1995, when Wales in particular, saw a number of their top players come to league. The departure of players to league was perceived as doing irreparable damage to their game and was cited as the reason for the poor international performances during that period. The change only came when the Welsh RU was able to compete financially with League and that stopped the flow of players immediately. The Union players who came to league had varying fortunes but there is no denying the contribution to League that the Welsh players, plus the odd English man have made to the game.

In any business model, your strength is in your key players. A value has to be attached to this and to retain your key players you have to be able to match this value, plus match their goals and aspirations. The question is, how to solve the problem, because as the game stands at the moment for a British player, it is essentially Grand Final, Challenge Cup and a not very inspiring international scene.

We always refer to Australia for comparisons and for good reason. If you talk with rugby people down there, the League people rave about the State of Origin and the Union people are in awe of it. It shows that you don't need lots of teams to have a credible top flight competition. Rugby League should put together a showcase competition based on GB, NZ and Australia - but in a modern context, well funded and properly presented. Let the same spirit of Origin be brought into the competition and give the star players of our game the chance to play in what should be recognised as the best competition of any code.

Nobody has really suggested that though have they? The main point I gather on here is that there is currently very little to no incentive whatsoever for RL clubs to produce their own talent and then try to keep them at the club, or failing that, within the sport itself. That needs to change, and quickly. The talent pool in English RL is very small as it is and we can ill afford to keep letting it shrink

Funny how it used to be Saints fans we had this argument with, and then Kyle Eastmond announced he was going, and suddenly they joined the casualty list as well. (Cue a Saint popping in with some unconvincing bit of bravado like "he was never any good anyway", or "we can always replace him" - but that will be purely to save face).

Have Wire had any high profile defections yet? I'm not sure, but the more they have, I suspect the less their fans will appreciate the "let's sit on our ar2e2 and let it happen" approach.

The pro-SC Saints fans are conspicuous by their absence these days. A couple of years ago this thread would have been inundated with Saints fans apparently convinced there was no issue and it was just whinging by Wigan fans who wanted to return the bad old days when we (according to them) bought all the good players.

You still need to address the problem that the RFL has no actual stake in these players. The RFU and ECB call on the time of their centrally contracted players very regularly. The events that they call on them for also generate the huge revenue they can use to fund central contracts. The RFL don't have that kind of cash as they essentially have 2 showpiece events a year which generate big crowds (CC Final and GF) while the RFU have a cup final, a grand final plus at least 5 home test matches each year, all pulling in 70k plus punters.

The alternative is to relax the cap for players coming through the youth system. That's not a terrible idea, but taken too far, it could mean that only wealthier cluybs (Wigan, Leeds, Wire, Saints) could afford to keep their uber-gifted youngsters if other sides are still unable to pay the full existing cap, let alone expanding it to keep their starlets. Which starts to negate the point of the salary cap a bit.

Thus far I actually don't think it's been a major problem, but it would be an idea to address it before it becomes one. One helpful factor is that a lot of RU clubs are really feeling the squeeze in this country at the moment as their benefactors are less free with their cash. I know somebody who has a non-executive board position at a very well established Premiership RU club, and they are not spending their salary cap at the moment.

Even allowing for that, identifying the problem is easier than finding a solution that doesn't solve one problem by creating a load of other problems.

I agree with you that this is not a simple matter. I used to be in favour of abolishing the cap altogether, but it's now become clear to me that we can't do that (and unless it's challenged in court by a player who's perhaps looking to sue his club or the RFL for restraint of trade, or something similar, we probably never will).

But I am in favour of salary cap discounts on younger, home-grown players or RU imports. I simply can't accept that it's better if none of us keep our starlets rather than just an elite few. At least they'll still be in the game.

I feel this idea that life is unfair on the lower clubs (not accusing you of that, by the way!) is part of an unrealistic mindset that seems to bedevilling the game at present. Okay, none of us want it to go the way of football, where even in the Premiership there are now only five or six teams who actually matter, but I doubt we'll get to that stage. That said, I think the social demographic of modern RL is such that clubs like Workington, Wakey etc will never again be top dogs simply as a part of the natural course. They'll only do that by replicating the levels of investment, marketing and common sense management etc that have cemented clubs like Wigan, Leeds, Wire, Saints into the upper tier, and that may be beyond them now simply because they've fallen too far behind. But I don't think that contriving a status quo by which the leading clubs are constantly pegged back is a viable solution.

But ditto ... I too have heard that many RU clubs, while they talk a good a financial fight, are actually having problems. There's no doubt this is a big issue for RL - every time a new star emerges we seem to have the same conversation, and we end up losing some of them, which we can ill afford - but the credit crisis is hitting everyone, and that may slow things down in our favour.

Sam going would be a bigger loss to RL then it would be to Wigan. But IMO I dont think he would ever leave Wigan anyway.

as a sport every player who shows that they have a spark of genius should be kept and nutured and it is up to the ruling bodies to help the clubs at the lower end of the scale to improve not just have a plan whereby equality is achieved by dragging the top clubs down

I agree that Sam should be kept in Wigan indefinitely, starting this Saturday...

Don't want those nasty rah-rah types getting wind of what he can do in their own backyard & on national TV.

Do you really think that they don't know about him, or was that a sort of joke?

I thought it was quite funny tbh.

Why are some people so y towards supporters of other clubs on here?