I just think the cap should be scrapped all together. The only cap should be on imports in order to promote the youth systems at each club. Big mouth he has but Marwan has a point - let the clubs pay the players what is affordable. Sod those who can't keep up.

I'm not sure if its been mentioned but on sky sports it says the details about the 4nations are to be released soon, also plans are in place to have a british lion tour in 2016......maybe the rfl are finally starting to listen to the fans afterall?

Or maybe they've just realised they are staring into an abyss. If so, it's about time.

Most of the points are well made on here but I'd love to see the workings of how Union and League go about putting in the foundations for success.

Sam Burgess may very well be moving for the money. However, it would not be too radical to suggest he might very well be doing it because England RU have a much greater chance of international success in an important tournament (e.g. World Cup).

Some have mentioned scrapping the Salary Cap and allowing endorsements/central funding. Would that make much difference? This is a game whose elite league in GB struggled to replace Engage with a title sponsor and most of the club's, even the bigger ones, don't have national or internationally recognised companies investing. The games finances are precarious at club level for several teams and the rising of the Salary cap would distort the league.

Another point well made was the lack of interest in the Aviva Premiership in terms of attendances. For a game that can virtually guarantee a sellout at Twickenham for international's it doesn't get football crowds for its domestic game. If we follow the central contract route we may improve internationally but it will be to the detriment to the Super League, which is really the main interest for RL fans in the UK.

We need an approach where we promote the areas of the heartlands and give as much money, infrastructure & communication as possible. We need more ex-players involved in the development of players, not for one club, but as a central RFL pool - a centre of excellence similar to Wigan' s Central Park but on a greater scale. The club's keep their academies and developmental areas and offer advice, coaching, scouting etc to help maximise potential.

The game needs selling at grassroots level with some level of confidence and security, whilst putting in real work on finding potential areas of development beyond the heartlands with investment from local authorities and businesses for local clubs to set up and links with Championship and SL clubs to offer a breakthrough scheme for players.

All of this can be offered to sponsors bigger than we currently have as a community, healthy sport with the potential to earn money.

This is being done I'm sure, but to what extent I'd love to know.

The problem doesn't just lie with the lower clubs. Our own chairman has publicly stated his opposition to raising the cap.

RU gives a great deal to top level players once they have retired, you don't see many skint top level international RU players. RL hasn't solved the life after Rugby conundrum. RU also identifies potential top level talent and nurtures it into international players, they want to win the RU World Cup and start working on it years out.

There is one other point I would like to make about the RL stars, Sam Tomkins was Boo'd by a section of England fans while on England duty, the Swansea welsh RU fans don't boo Jamie Roberts when he is playing for wales, RL can be a bit tribal and self interested (if you think I'm talking rubbish look at the threads on Sam Tomkins and some of the comments about him leaving for NZ).

I'm a convert to RL, it's great to watch and twice a year has a big show, the club games are more exiting and interesting and it a good day out with the kids, but as an international sport it's rubbish.

But I'm still coaching union to kids and I still enjoy the six nations and autumn internationals.
They are great days out, with a lots of skills on offer. Cardiff, Dublin and Edinburgh are great places to visit and the crowds tend to be ordinary working guys, not the hoorays portrayed on here.
Oh and I'm scottish so it isn't about winning either

Yeah, the evidence is all over the telly on Saturday afternoons - especially on the evening news, when the best highlights they can come up with are Owen Farrell's latest 10 penalties. Great use of a kid who was once a real rugby talent.

As for the bit about them wanting to win the RU World Cup. Cool, fine ... that makes it all okay. We, on the other hand, never want to win anything.

Ok so it's not your cup of tea, and as a spectator sport I'm watching wigan not club RU, (except my own club)
But the RFU/WRU/IRU put a great deal of effort into the national side and it's players, who knew Sam Tomkins or Sam Burgess outside RL, lots of people know who Owen Farrell, Johnny wilkinson & Martin Johnston are.
Asked you average Welshman who the welsh RU team are they would reel off a list of current players.
Show a Welshman a shot of Gareth Edwards and they will name him, he hasn't played for 35 years. He's a national hero.
Thats the potential RL has, it's not tapped into.

I will never dispute that the RFL have killed professional RL in Britain. Or that the Aussies have shown astonishing isolationist short-sightedness, which has also contributed to the inevitable destruction of the professional game in this country.

But I'm afraid I don't agree with several of your assertions about RU - and I have been around that game a lot too. I played it for many years before I turned to RL.

The apparent guarantee that RL players crossing over will get fast-tracked into the England camp - it's built into their contracts, according to Mike Stephenson - strongly suggests the basic skills required to play high level rugby are absent across a lot of British RU. I can see no other reason why the likes of Sam Burgess, Sam Tomkins, Joel Tomkins, Kyle Eastmond, Christ Ashton, Iain Thornley etc - guys who'd never played RU before - should be chased so hard. It took most of the RU players who came to RL - even the good ones like Botica, Davies, Inga - months and months just to reach club standard, while some - Jon Gallagher, Andy Powell (!!) - never made it at all.

I'm not trying to trash the work you do in RU, but the more your lot chase our top stars, offering frankly ridiculous money, the more desperate they look.

And regardless of that, if you're looking for sympathy or understanding, you're in the wrong place. Unlike the RU defections to RL, which were done on a club-by-club basis and could often be construed as giving unemployed men a job, these defections - which are targeted at the absolute cream of our crop and funded to a ludicrous extent by a central governing body (something RL never did, as the clubs would have gone ballistic) - are going to destroy our current status. So please don't give us any guff about "we want to win the World Cup". For our part, we'd just like to see the kids we've used money and know-how developing into superstars benefiting our struggling game, not aiding and abetting the clueless English RU.

All this applies to the NRL too, by the way, who are actually even worse than your lot because they don't even need the players they are constantly tapping up.

This is the key issue. The actions of the governing body to supplement the RU clubs to bring these players in, using funds that the clubs and their backers could never match. And no amount of "Dr koolcash" type chairmen could do so in RL either, no matter how deep their pockets may be, there is no way individual clubs can fight the current situation.

This is a point I make quite often when the RU v RL debate fires up. It amazes me how many of our own fans think what the RFU is doing now is equivalent as to what RL did when the RU game was amateur.

We hardly saw any English players defect, as "amateurs", they were still paid too much! It was mostly Welsh or second string RU players from overseas as Botica was at the time. None of them were breaking contracts to move either.

I intended to answer the question about what RU gives as a profile.
Whether you like it or not high profile RL stars are defecting to the NRL or RU. These guys aren't local lads playing for the local club, they are pro players making a career out of it, so defecting for challenge/money/profile are a fact of life, it happens in every profession from engineer to doctor and some even emigrate. The Unions have dealt with it, the RFL haven't and the clubs couldn't agree what day of the week it is.
What am I doing, well paying my gate money, beer money across the bar, shirts for the kids and I, oh and bringing some of my friends on a scrum down ticket and guess what some even come back an full paying tickets.
Labeling me as as one of you lot "RU" highlights my point about being tribal and self interested, be inclusive, it's a game. I enjoy both codes for what they are,

Seriously ... are we supposed to be impressed that you also like Rugby Union? Does that make you a better person?

You're totally entitled to your opinion, but please accept that other people - especially at a time when our top tier is being systematically dismantled by a group who have more money than sense, and vastly more money than they have talent - are going to take a very different view.

Tribalism? I'm not ashamed to be part of the RL tribe.

Self-interest? I will proudly shout from the rooftops that my primary sporting interest is RL.

And frankly, someone who comes on an RL message board and mentions these things in scathing terms is very possibly in the wrong place.

Why am I in the wrong place. Wigan fan, rugby fan?
What's scathing about my opinions, I've found a game I enjoy watching and joining in with the chat,
I answered the question and put some points forward, you don't like them that's fine but debate the points.

Due to the latest news... Could anybody list (just for fun) a potential England RU team made out of RL players and a England RL team made out of RU players... I wouldn’t mind seeing the difference in opinions in team selection and positioning of players in some cases. Current players only no retired one please...