I see where you are coming from but that wouldn't be as effective at keeping the best players in SL IMO. Given your Johnstone example - he would be knackered because Wakefield wouldn't have the funds to pay him big money anyway, and the other SL clubs wouldn’t have the option of signing him for big money because he didn’t come through their academy, so off he goes to the NRL/RU. With a higher cap at least he would get poached by Saints, Warrington etc and stay in SL.

We will see who has ambition if not then kick them out of SL if a team with ambition comes forward.

Basically get Toronto into SL asap regardless if they deserve it or not. They have an ambition and can pay for it. Bigger SL clubs need to start looking after themselves as the poorer sides have been killing RL for 10 years.

Going off Lenagans comments over the years we'll probably vote against it.

We do probably need to be careful what we wish for. Our policy of producing talent and letting them then spread their wings in the hope that they come back won't be as successful if Warrington, Hull and Salford can just go out and snap up all the best English talent as well as the best available players from overseas.

If Lenagan would move with any change and start fighting harder to keep our talent then I'd be all for it. His current policy has been proven to be a very good one but I'm not convinced it'll work of the salary cap is raised by any significant amount.

I'd love to know what the actual question they are voting on is.

If it's a completely binary thing - i.e. - do we raise it or do we lower it - we can expect no progress. That enables the tail to just keep wagging the dog, and as others have said, certain of the game's leading clubs may feel they have no need to vote for it either.

What we need instead is a package of proposals designed to try to keep our brightest and best in the domestic game. A start would be some kind of salary cap dispensation for home-grown talent, which would mean the likes of Johnstone can stay at Wakey. Central top-up funding for our marquee players who stay in British RL woudl also help. And how about a discount on RU signings?, allowing us to start cherry-picking from them again - not necessarily their big stars, who we all know are enjoying massively over-inflated salaries, but some their mid-rankers who might find real stardom with us: the likes of George Fairbairn, David Willicombe, Mark Preston etc.

Unless we can raise to equal the NRL cap which we never will, I don't see how raising the cap will retain anybody. We'll still have the same pool of players in SLand still won't be able to compete with the NRL or RU. It will just mean a slight pay rise for the current crop!

spot on, for us to be able to compete with the NRL or RU then we need a radical change to the current system, rewarding clubs for producing players through the academy still doesn't work as ultimately if we do produce the occasional star player he gets snapped up anyway. To stop players going to the NRL we should only select players for England who actually play in the super league and should over look the ones playing in Australia/NZ. It might sound like cutting your nose off to spite your face but if players want to play for England then this is a sacrifice they must make.

we need a proper tv deal, its how they are funded

My club (Tigers) would probably vote against an increase of the cap but can hardly be described as a club with no ambition. It boils down to a simple formula - we pay for what we can afford. The game is not awash with clubs like Wigan and Leeds and millionaires like Koucash and Moran or would you like to play each other 6 times each per season and us "smaller clubs" can do one.

Ambition of not measured on the size of your wallet.

Well they do this in RU, but they have a massive pool of players to choose from in England. In league, we really would be cutting off our noses to spite our face.

And even if we did, would lack of eligibility for England stop players wanting to go to the NRL? With the relative importance of the international game in league, I don't think so.

There's no point in just causing wage inflation by upping the cap (although it should be indexed anyway). This needs a bit of smarts to work out a way to genuinely increase pay whilst also increasing the talent pool. In the end the only way I can see it happening is for more exemptions, and home-grown is the best long-term exemption, as it should reward players who develop kids. I have no time at all for clubs who can't pay up to the cap and in addition spend nothing on junior development.

I cant take Koucash seriously demanding an increase in the cap, maybe he should have spent some of his money on keeping the academy setup at Salford.

Unfortunately, this post - while eminently reasonable to you - proves the point about the tail trying to wag the dog.

The problem for the game as a whole is not that rich clubs aren't allowed to win everything by spending lots of money that no one else has, but that our leading stars are now never more than one season off leaving us for pastures new, and quite often that means leaving RL altogether.

You may not consider that a problem given that your team is currently doing well. And you're quite right to say that Cas are showing how good team-management is paying dividends on a relatively small budget, but look at it from another angle - why should the likes of Wigan keep the conveyor belt of junior talent running, at considerable cost to the club (one reason we don't win bidding wars for big names anymore) if we never get more than a season or so out of the finished products?

It's simply not viable in the long term that a small game like British RL can continue to lose its best young players to someone else who has done nothing more than flash the cash.

You also need to consider the moral implications of clubs like yours fighting tooth and nail to prevent professional athletes earning comparable wages to other top sportsmen. How is that fair? You know the salary cap has barely risen in over a decade. In reality, that is a lowering of the limit and a huge restraint of trade for professionals who've dedicated themselves to our game and have a very short career anyway. (To be honest, I'm surprised they haven't risen up against it already).

As I said earlier, I don't think the answer is a simple raising of the cap. I think a package of proposals, such as central top-up funding for established stars and dispensations on RU signings, could be one way to go. But more important than any of this, significant salary cap rewards should be offered to clubs who produce their own talent. Not only would that refocus the minds of many SL chairmen, it would also make it very difficult for outfits like Cas to put club first and vote against it.

I agree with you and can only hope our owner does too.

The amount each club gets from the TV deal mirrors the salary cap.

Ergo - increase the TV deal and so increase the cap. However here we hit a snag. Viewing habits are changing. Fewer people watch TV as they used to (online viewing has grown exponentially). The likelihood of ever getting a better deal with BBC/ITV/C4 is remote. It costs Sky a fortune to host the Thursday night game, almost a loss leader. The future is likely to contain a saturation of televised RL but at a lower price. So where does the money come from to fund an increase in the cap?

As a supporter of the cap and a lifelong socialist I've always had an eye on helping the weakest in the game. However, I'm having to come to the conclusion that my views are out of step with the modern world. Central planning (ie the cap) has only worked up to a point.

I would say in the spirit of Brexit, get rid of the cap, get the money in from wherever you can (arms dealers, drugs dealers, mass murderers)...and trust in the market!