The SC is a great way to cap the achievement of the top teams and level the league. The associated rules were a good way to prevent insolvency.

I'm not sure that the RU competition actually matters on the whole, look at the players that have been lost. Has RL lost a player that has the media's eye gone? Not in my opinion, because RL hasn't had the media focus nationally to start with. How much of a loss to RL was Andy Farrel/Paul Sculthorpe (not RU) at the time? Is anything Scully was worse due to his Gillette sponsorship loss.

Raising the cap may make more Aussies arrive, but the UK a players have to compete against them to play. Does this make the league improve or get worse?

No but having the current concept is working right?

You talk about RU because YOU think its boring. I personally like the game and love the six nations/world cup tournaments as its competative and will hold your interest.

British RL is in a desperate state due to a lack of high level RL being played every week like it is in the NRL.

I don't believe that the crops of quality youngsters we produce season after season who beat their Aussie counterparts at youth level suddenly turn poor before they hit their peak.

What happens is their development is hindered as they stop being tested to the level NRL players do each week.

I'd love a comp as big and as good as the NRL but sadly we don't have the playing pool to achieve it. Instead of reducing the teams, cutting away the also rans and raising the weekly intensity level we instead dilute the comp with championship level players who we pretend are a lot better than they are.

It baffles me how blind some people are. We can watch standards slip further away season after season but yet some RL fans have their head in the sand.

Linking the cap to inflation and letting it rise with that isnt raising the cap though in real terms. The cap may be the same as 10 years ago but players today are being paid far less.

a point that most fans fail to understand.

players are getting poorer in real terms, why would they chose to stay in the competition.

You can't believe this, surely.

How many small clubs have won the SL in the SC era?

How many clubs have gone bust or had serious financial difficulties in the SC era?

Are you actually a member of the board of directors of the RFL?

I don't like the SC in it's current form, but it is only a symptom of a wider disease. Even if the SC were reformed in the way it should be - to encourage growth, ensure financial stability of clubs with additional financial controls and monitoring and reward clubs for developing players - the SL would still always be weak financially because of the people and culture at the RFL and clubs (and in the wider RL world - as shown by a poster on this thread claiming the SC has done a good job to protect clubs from insolvency!!)

Some of the cash has gone into new stadiums (Wigan's deal diverts a lot of revenue - more than IL has yet admitted publicly - to the stadium company), but it is a bit of a mystery as to where the money has gone, until you realise that clubs have just got used to the status quo under the SC and waste money because they can't spend it on players...

I wrote " The SC is a great way to cap the achievement of the top teams and level the league. The associated rules were a good way to prevent insolvency."

I neither stated that the SC prevented insolvency, nor that they did a good job. I do think that the maximum spending limits which took into account the clubs revenues were a good way, I think that this route with more financial governance would help but I don't think the RFL executed this well.

"The associated rules were a good way to prevent insolvency".

Clubs that have got into serious financial difficulties in the SC era include: London, Bradford, Widnes, Halifax, Crusaders, Wakefield, Salford, Gateshead, Sheffield. There may well be others, but that'll do for starters!

As for the mythical level playing field - it remains mythical. The league title is held by the club with the highest revenue in the competition and the SL this year is likely to be won either by the club with the biggest fan base or the club with the richest owner. I ask again - how many clubs have won the title since the SC came in?

Where did I advocate reducing the number of clubs in the league? Actually I think the issue is not so much the number of clubs but whether we have the right clubs making the right contribution. So, for example, if I were in charge of the SL one of my top priorities would be to get a sustainable Toulouse side into SL.

simple.... have a 2 tier sl with 10 teams in each tier and have promotion and relegation. could have for example...

tier 1
wigan
leeds
saints
wire
catalan
hull
hull kr
brad
hudders
london

tier 2

salford
wakey
cas
featherstone
leigh
barrow
halifax
batley
widnes
sheffield

He said the same on the NRL Footy Show last week where he was a special guest

Is there any way of watching the footy show over here? Can you stream it or get it on Premier Sports? I love that program.

There are clips on YouTube.

For me we need to seriously reduce the imports in our game in order to improve the quality of our home grown players. Under Nobby at Wigan, Sam Tomkins was in the 20,s and not going any further ( in fact nearly on his way out ) because he thought he was not big enough. Tim Smith got injured and he had to bring him in to the team, the rest they say is h.......

There are too may overseas players + coaches in our game, a lot of young players never get the correct amount of game time in their strongest position because of this, I know results, results, results ! only matter and winning trophies because its a business. The demise started when teams like Wigan, Saints, etc went looking down under in the 80,s and don,t get me wrong I loved watching Kenny, Meninnga, Miles etc, and this trend has continued ever since.

The trade off is, our own lads never get the right chances and hence we never produce the correct amount of talent we should do. There is enough playing talent round the north west alone in RL to produce enough players if they are coached correctly and more importantly given the correct chances. ( over-rated Kiwi stand off playing for England instead of ? )

Its the same in the Premier league, too many foreign players and not enough home grown lads. How many non-Aussies play in the NRL ? not many, how many non Spanish play in their football league, not many.

If they had kept the overseas quota in and reduced it to 2 players years ago, there would be a lot more players like Tomkins knocking about in SL.

Imo this is the only way we can go forward in SL in order to improve our own league + chances of competing against the Aussies. I also think the player pool is not bigger enough yet to support 14 competative teams in SL