I thought you should have but for some reason it doesn't work that way. The final runners up in the NRL didnt get it over Melbourne either it just shows "Melbourne Storm (Stripped)" on the records.

It said (at the time of Melbourne being stripped of the title) that the WCC clash was null and void.

I'm guessing thats because Leeds should have played the team that Melbourne beat in the final.

We should have played the runners-up for WCC . Surely if they were stripped the runners-up are then the champions .
I wouldn't ask for the WCC to be handed to us . We lost fair and square on the day . But I wouldn't have minded a go at the r-up for it . Mind you . With the difference in the caps we would still have ( for this reason , and this reason only ) got our asses handed to us .

What he's actually saying is reverting to a position where two or perhaps three bigger clubs raid the poorer clubs for their better junior talent with transfer fees would be a step backwards, those big clubs would snap up all of the talented juniors and leave them to rot in their U21's teams until the odd occasion where they may be needed due to injuries in the first choice 17.

That's how it used to be. And it sucked. People have hazy memories of RL pre-SL era, they have a glorious mental picture in old news-reel style flickering black & white, of a game in rude health, enormous crowds every week and when we used to give the aussies a good spanking. The reality is that the crowds were largely pathetic apart from the few showpiece games, and a lot of clubs spent themselves in to oblivion in an effort to try and compete with Wigan (how do you think Offiah ended up at Wigan? Widnes HAD to sell him to stay afloat, and it's also how Wire got Jiffy for that matter).

I'm all for an increase in the salary cap. Providing the clubs can afford to pay out the salaries. Right now, I'm not convinced that they'd be able to. The temptation to spend up to the cap, despite not really being able to account for it, is always there because of the mistaken belief that if they buy the right players' they will win the various trophies/competitions and the prize money will ease their financial woes.

The real challenge for RL right now is not to find a way to pay it's players more (which, morally, they do of course have an obligation to do - RL players are, on the whole, massively underpaid), it's how to increase revenues from gate receipts, TV contracts and sponsorship deals. At a time when the business world is recognising it needs to be more thrifty with money, this is a very large challenge for the games' administrators.

Some more amusing stuff on here from people that simply don't get it.

Many pro-SC people continue to say that clubs can't pay more. They are confusing two issues: what the salary cap should be and what an individual club should be able to spend. Regardless of where the cap is set a club should not be allowed to overspend (a major and obvious problem with the current system which few pro-SC people strangely seem to acknowledge, despite the long list of clubs getting into financial difficulty - anyone would thing that they had another agenda! ).

They are ignoring the inexorable erosion of salaries due to inflation. £100 in 2011 is worth only c£70 in 1998 terms. We are heading for a semi-pro future for RL in this country. This is just basic maths and economics. The game has gone backwards in the last 15 years under the present system.

It's time to start a debate about whether people want the game to go semi-professional and if not, what we are going to do about it. If people don't want a semi-pro future then simply sitting on our hands isn't an option. Before too long RL will cease to be able to support full time professional sides.

And in relation to hazy memories of the late 80s and early 90s I remember clearly an international scene that was much healthier than it is now, with a British side that was genuinely competitive with the Aussies and big crowds at Old Trafford and Wembley for RL internationals.

I think we should just accept that the Salary Cap is never going to be abolished.

In the light of Ashton and Eastmond's defections it doesn't seem quite so heretical any more to suggest that it should be. But if it was done away with, too many clubs would go to the wall. Clubs are going to the wall even with the Cap, so imagine what would happen without it.

There's nothing we can do about this - there are just too many poverty row clubs filling our so-called top tier.

However, to compensate those of our clubs who have managed to develop their business to a successful level, what we need are Salary Cap dispensations on club-trained players - thus rewarding those clubs who are refuelling the talent reservoir, and maybe dispensations on players signed from Rugby Union. I'm not talking about overpaid big name RU 'stars', but maybe some deal can be made regarding their younger players. Just a little something so that, while they're cheerfully taking from us, we can - occasionally and hopefully very irritatingly - take from them.

That would seem to be a reasonable way forward, and I'm struggling to see why anyone would object.

There will always be someone to object because some people always moan at the slightest thing

I can't see anyone objecting to on offset allowance for home grown players, in fact, that should be one of the high-scoring parts of franchise criteria: how and what resources do you place on developing your own talent pool. That said, not being privvy to the assessment criteria, it may well be in.

Deano G, there are three clubs who made a profit within the year, deapite not having their current accounts, I would wager they all have a historical debt. In fact, I will quite hapily send you the last set of accounts for Wigan submitted in 2009 which showed operating costs £500k in excess of turnover. Cite inflation all you want, the simple fact is income streams are being extracted th the nth degree.

As for being a pro-SC, which club do you think would benefit the most from relaxing the rules. Those with a Sugar Daddy, of course, which my club has one, and a very generous one at that.

Agree with pretty much all of that Cruncher. To abolish the SC just wouldn't be practical, but something has to be done to keep the best young, English players in the game. The salary cap needs, at least, to rise with inflation. There is a difference between keeping the cap the same and effectively lowering it. I don't want to see clubs going into administration or disappearing completely, but I don't want to see a league devoid of young talented players, as they cannot earn a living playing rugby league. Those people who want to see less foreign players (and think that by keeping things as they are this will happen) need to realise that it will also decrease the number of quality English players in league too, unless some sort of dispensation is made towards players brought through a clubs youth system.

I wonder what that STG sides wage bill is ?

More than any SL sides anyway i bet

On a straight currency conversion it may well be. You'd have to get an economist to work out what the average wage per player is vs. the cost of living in the country for a true reflection. Back when sterling was much stronger against the Aus$ than it is now, the common complaint from the NRL clubs was that they couldn't compete with the offers being made to their players by the ESL clubs. Swings and roundabouts an economics, they are never simple and I doubt we have many economists posting on this forum to give us a true answer.

I think Brett Kenny is an economist, you just multiply wages by inflation every year and clubs go out and increase turnover by 10% annually (presumably by selling TV rights and shirts to the emerging Eastern European market for RL) until we're paying more than union.