firstly hindsight is a wonderful thing we didn't sign flops deliberately, secondly Ashton was offered a very good deal for a young lad and paying him substantially more than his peers would at best damage team morale and at worst set a chain in motion with all our young lads trying to get offers from union in order to talk their value up, wouldn't be too tricky for some of them. We were hardly world beaters when Ashton was at the club, we had some tremendous performances from him personally and some poor ones too, he seemed to have a bit of an attitude problem which Northampton Saints discovered when he was in his 2nd season for them, he was great in the first year when all was going good for him. Could we really afford the risk of being 3 men down on the squad to accommodate him? doubtful! 3 years on we are Super League Champs with Sam, Richards and Roberts (for a short period due to injury) all among the best fullbacks in Super League, Chris Ashton would not have made the slightest difference to our teams performances under Noble and we're managing to move on from the days of one or two players earning a fortune and have a large squad of players the vast majority of whom (as Sinfield described the Leeds side on SL supermen) play for the club they love regardless of the fact they could well earn more money elsewhere.

Perhaps if St Helens hadn't decided to pay Eastmond a fortune to keep him 'loyal' you may well have had a larger squad and been able to cope with the injuries you've been moaning about all season.

If anyone demands a massive wage increase to stop them going to union let them go, if the club's youth system is good enough they will produce more players who will learn through excellent team spirit and motivation that they're playing for their teammates, fans and managers, not just for the money.

I know the point about the salary cap - union have one too.

Northampton decided Ashton was worth a good chunk of their salary cap and have been vindicated as he's bloomed into an international back.

Wigan decided it would be better to allow Ashton to leave and use up cap space that could have been spent on retaining him on a number of average players like Mathers, Pryce, Phelps, Smith. To me, that was a poor decision, but it was Wigan's decision.

That's without getting on to the fact that Wigan have been losing money at the current cap level in a new stadium, so to make out they can spend whatever they want on players (i.e. sign all the aforementioned guff in addition to keeping Ashton) is misleading.

You're basically agreeing with me - Wigan made a decision based on a number of factors (age, form, attitude, wage structure, squad depth) and decided not to pay Ashton more money than they thought he was worth.

That was Wigan's decision - the cash to keep him was certainly there given the subsequent signings made.

To blame the salary cap is a bit daft when Wigan (amongst other clubs) are losing money at the current cap limit and when Wigan decided to pay big bucks to sign Amos Roberts a year later.

Wigan are now champions and have apparently turned a profit now - a profit which is due in no small part to not allowing player wages to run away with them with a cap in place.

Regards the union salary cap it is significantly higher than Leagues. Union clubs are also able to subsidise the cap with players going on loan to lesser clubs, they usually have a feeder club, much in the same way Pryce was signed with Gloucester yet played mainly with Worcester, this is the rule rather than the exception.

So basically it comes down to percentages of the cap which is relative to the total cap, so I expect that Wigan offered Ashton a major increase in his wage which in terms of percentage of the cap is more than he went to Northampton for who have significantly more money to spend. Value is all relative the the size of the cap and a clubs ability to move under it.

And the club's ability to [iafford[/i the cap.

rlhttp://www.northantset.co.uk/news/Northampton-Saints-make-500000-profit.6498661.jprl

As much as RL fans (and in particular Wigan fans) want to argue that we should have a higher cap to compete with Union, the sport isn't financially strong enough to do so.

Northampton made a £500k profit despite a much higher salary spend, including big bucks for Ashton. Their tunrnover of £12m is almost treble that of Wigan.

So we're left with a dilemma. Do we chase our tails trying to splash cash we don't have on young players who are wanted elsewhere, or do we do all we can to keep them, but do so within a cap that is currently the limit of what a lot of clubs (including Wigan) are able to afford?

The SL is currently a vibrant competition with good crowds, expansion opportunities, a fine crop of young players and clubs which are finally doing their upmost to be financially stable.

We're not yet in a position to challenge union financially and trying to do so too soon is folly. If Wigan threw £100k at every talented young player wanted by union, they'd be bust within 5 years.

I totally agree, which is why I find it strange some still decide to criticise Wigan for letting him go.

Regards the cap, I think it should be related to a clubs turnover, I do not think it should be limited around what everyone can afford. It should be related to what each individual club can afford.

At a meeting Maurice was asked about Ashton leaving and he said the player was already the highest paid teenage player in SL when he was at Wigan.
I don't think that it was because Wigan couldn't afford him as then Whelan was underwriting all the bills and profit/loss accounting wasn't on the horizon. Simply they wern't prepared to pay Union's kind of money to anyone!

Now Ian Lenagan is running the place profit/loss is a major issue and rightly. Wigan have already lost the battle with Thornley who has gone to Stockport. It hasn't prevented Wigan RL signing a number of younger players on full time contracts the details of whom IL said will be announced soon.

As for the SC. It appears the Aussies are about to ditch theirs in the not too distant future and are to test a new system in 2011. Should that be seen as preferable then it will replace the SC within the next few seasons.
We need to look at a replacement too as ours has been in force for around ten years and hasn't produced the results that were claimed it would.

Is it now Chris Ashton's 4th season playing Rah Rah? First year they'd have been promoted anyway, second year he hardly played, third year he was a star and he seems to be doing ok this year too. If he decides to leave at the end of this year have they really had such brilliant value for money for him?

Re Wigan making a loss when Dave Whelan in charge was how he decided to do his accounts, where shirt sales went, he had his fingers in so many pies and no advantage gained by having Wigan Warriors showing a profit.

Its the same old same old from supporters of the CC.

They point out that RU has a cap - really, I hadn't noticed. The point about the Union cap of course is that when it was brought in it was presented as a necessary evil rather than an end in itself and the express aim was to raise it as clubs got richer (which they duly did).

Why should SL clubs aim to grow their revenue or make a profit when there is no reward for doing so.

The lack of ambition - in some cases a desire to pay players less, from short sighted clubs wishing to keep wages down and envious fans alike - of the RL cap is breathtaking, but perhaps not as astonishing as the continuing failure of the pro-SC brigade to face up to its problems and the unfairness to the players, who as a whole have seen their wages eroded very significantly by inflation over the last few years.

We were told again and again by the pro-SC fanatics that Wigan fans were only against the CC because it held back Wigan. We're back on top now and its still wrong. Mind you if we stay at the top it won't be long before the Wigan haters, the my club first parochial idiots that hold RL back will set to work changing the cap, if only to find some way to "level the playing field"....

It's not envy - if a cap was based on turnover we'd have been spending more than Wigan, as would some some other clubs.

It seems to have escaped your attention that Wigan made substantial losses last year, even with a salary cap.

If the salary cap was replaced by one linked to turnover and profits, the likes Leeds and Hull would race ahead of Wigan immediately. I have a feeling you might then change your tune.

Quit with the self-important "it's all about Wigan" drivel as there are other clubs it hinders to a greater extent that don't spend all their time playing the victim card.

Is it about Wigan or isn't it? You seem confused.

I'm quite clear in that whatever system is in place it should be working for the good of the game as a whole.

I don't - as it happens - favour a turnover or profit related cap. In an ideal world we'd expand the live cap monitoring process to ensure that other aspects of club expenditure are captured so that we don't get the sort of serious financial difficulties many clubs have got into under the CC in future due to spending on stadia and other non-player related spending. But I live in the real world and this would be too complex for the RFL, so I think the best thing is to do what RFU did and gradually raise it. We need to do this at least every 5 years or so in any event because players are getting poorer in real terms due to inflation, and unless we address this its going to become a real issue before long. Hopefully the licensing process and the need to submit business plans will ensure that there is sufficient financial discipline to keep clubs in line over a 3 year period, but you never know with RL clubs and we've seen many serious problems during the CC era.

I do think many pro-CC people are motivated by envy of well paid players and think that many sportsmen get paid too much. We've had comments over the years on this board which indicate this is a factor with many pro-CC people.

I consider myself well paid so perhaps I'm lucky enough not to be susceptible to this unfortunate envy of successful people - personally I think its great that our stars make good money, I want RL to be a success and its players to be rewarded accordingly. But this ambition is not shared throughout the RL world, unfortunately.

That's a new one.

The "level playing field" or "Competitive Super League" is nothing whatsoever to do with the SC and never has been.
We have a league with 14 full time clubs and this is acheived because SKY provide something like £18m a year which facilitates this.
Without SKY's money we would have four or at the most six clubs who would be full time the rest part time.
As for Wigan being out spent, well we have been for the 10 or 11 years of the SC. Other clubs took advantage of the tax breaks and other noted scams which gave them a head start over Wigan whom DW prevented from using these methods to enlarge their spending on players. Mo once estimated some trophy winning clubs were 4 International class players better off than Wigan by using these scams which Wigan could not use.
Other clubs couldn't use them for other reasons.
Some club's fans are now complaining on their respective boards that their recruitment is negligible, perhaps the reason is they are now being held back due to HMRC clamping down on most if not all of these scams.
Following the Canterbury and Melbourne SC busts down under the NRL are to trail a system to replace their SC. We should do the same so we are not left behind yet again by RFL's slow administrators and some of the SL chairmen who are even slower.

Rugby Union is very much like 'Purple Aki' in the way of harrassing young and talented Rugby League players who do not want the attention of the subject in question but gets hassled none the less.

Rugby Union = Purple Aki