My take on it is that if anyone who comes through said teams academy isn't on the salary cap then that leaves room for big marquee players so surely everyone's a winner.
If your a young player say someone like Myler though playing for another team on any form of pro contract eliminates the freebie aspect if you played for any other pro team.
So what i'm saying is that Widnes would be the only club he wouldn't count on the cap.
Maybe another clause would be that if he was to go back to Widnes he would be free again, technically, only free with the club you signed the first pro contract with.

If a player has come through that clubs academy, only 50% of the wage counts on the cap. Simples.

If a player was free though if he came through the academy, the money available to you could then go on a player of say Inglis or Thurstons calibre.

Aussie players win (big pay cheque)
English players win (learning of great players)
Fans win (watching fantastic talent in your home teams colours)

I agree but at the same time there still has to be a cap on the amount you can spend, otherwise it still won't limit clubs spending more than they can. 50% is a massive discount, so you can have a top class player from your academy being paid that of a relative youngster still, freeing up cash. Otherwise you could have (extreme example) 5 top aussies taking up the full cap surrounded by endless amount of squad players produced by wigan, some of whom would be earning top dollar anyway. We could probably get a squad of all-academy players in a few years and not a penny count on the cap? If we had this allowance in now, we'd be able to get at least one world class player , even with all the current high earners I reckon.

There needs to be a discount, but not a freebie, just an incentive. Maybe after playing for the club for a number of years the discount gets increased maybe?

Whilst I definitely agree with the thought, I'm not sure how legal it would be as you'd be effectively be adjusting a players freedom of contract as he'd cost more to any other team than then one he started off with. Mind you it's still open to debate whether the whole salary cap is legal or not in the first place.

Wigan could win a league and cup double and thrash the NRL champions by 50 pts in the WCC but it still wouldn't make the SC a good thing IMO.

What we need is a proper system of financial controls that stops clubs getting into difficulties, encourages growth in attendances, focusses clubs on growing income while keeping costs under control, rewards investment in better facilities and of course ensures that player development is given real priority. The SC is a really poor at achieving these key objectives. But its a sacred cow; so many Wigan haters are desperate to see it stay in place in its current form simply because they fear Wigan will return to dominate the game. Its the pathetic my club first mentality, the parochialism that has cursed RL and held back its development for decades.

The cap simply doesn't work because we still see the best players at the richest clubs with Myler going to Wire from Salford a prime example. It has never worked as intended since the flat rate cap came in with the richest clubs still dominating the competition. It's no surprise Wire are now in the mix due to getting a wealthy backer and it's not because the cap lets them compete with Leeds - it's the fact they can now spend to the cap that does that.

If clubs are not equally wealthy (and they aren't) you have to set the cap low enough so the poorest clubs are not disadvantaged but it clearly isn't low enough given the above example of Myler. The trouble is if you set it too low you risk losing players (or failing to attract them in the first place) and we have already seen interest in our players from NRL clubs who operate to a higher cap than the UK now.

The solution is to do what they do in Oz and have not just a cap but a salary floor which means all clubs must pay out a minimum amount of wages to their first team squad and the Oz salary floor is actually a high percentage of the cap (its around 90% I think). Clubs should be audited to prove that they can pay to the floor and if they can't then they ought not to get a franchise.

Clubs being able to pay to the floor would go a long way to prevent situations like Wire being able to get Myler as all clubs given a franchise would be able to offer similar wages.

So really it's not a cap that will ultimately even out the competition but all clubs being able to pay out a similar amount in wages i.e. when all clubs can pay to a salary floor.

Dave

Lowering the salary cap would be a bad move, the nrl salary cap will soon be increased and they plan to add another 2 teams. So there is a need for 50 new players, they'll take our cream and some aussie journeymen too. The stanard of sl will take a hit regardless, let's not lose all the top players though.

Our cap should reward the promotion of youth and even succesful business.

Said this before the cap needs to be st as a % of clubs income up to a maximum of 2.5 million. The idea is good but as seen with the Quins and Celtic it does not do what it was set up to do save clubs from themselves.
If you took off the cap the players that came through the academy system you could be putting the club at risk. A better way would be his wages would not count towards the cap until he was 21 because up until that point most academy players are not on that much.
The % of income rule would make clubs work harder to promote there club and so bring in more income. If you went for no cap or your own talent not counting at all lots of clubs would go to the wall.

The Cap is a good thing as it is a (partial) insurance against Clubs overspending. Having said that, it is in need of an increase, although we should be wary of increasing it by too much. Someone has said £2.5 million would be a good figure to use as a new cap and I would agree with that from next season, but then increases should only be made to the level of inflation.
If you look at some of the current trouble in football at the mement, with several Clubs in administraion and more due to follow at the end of the season, then we don't want to go down that path.
Clubs also have to make big efforts to increase gates and other streams of income. Wigan are doing well with this, as are Wire and one or two other Clubs, but some just appear to hope that the projected move to a new stadium will be the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Salford are a case in point re this. The new stadium has been coming for well over 10 years now and I don't really believe that it will ever arrive. Warrington and Hull did all they could to lift their gates in the 4-5 years prior to the move, Salford don't appear to do a thing.

What is / was the purpose of the cap?

To end Wigan's dominance - our financial implosion in 1997 would have done this anyway.
Equalise the competition - Not really, there are still haves and have nots who can't spend anywhere near the full cap.
Stop clubs going bust - Has gone some way to helping this in recent years, but a simple "you can't spend what you don't earn" rule would suffice.
The cap's major failure has been in generating interest in the sport due to a lack of real stars from Aus and RU coming across. It has also caused players to be underpaid thereby denying junior talent a viable career opportunity.
You will never get to a situation with 14 equal clubs - are we saying that Wigan and Leeds should downsize to Salford and Quins' financial aspirations - in football would you expect Barcelaona to spend the same cap as Espanyol?

The cap is a good thing but it justs needs the rules/conditions updating to help move the league forward. Football will eventually follow suit with a salary cap imo because it wont be able to survive otherwise.

If you want to stop clubs spending outside their means then use a x% of revenue limit on wages, but after that clubs should be allowed to spend how they please.

I like the idea of a cap but it does need to change. Clubs like Wigan shouldnt be held back due to performing well financially and producing a wealth of young talent. We should be rewarded for this.

That's exactly what quite a few people in the British game think, and it's the sort of attitude that has held us back for decades. Dougie Laughton used to refer to it as "the tail wagging the dog".

Personally, I believe the cap is now well due an overhaul. Apart from anything else, the financial situation is changing in Australia, so it will HAVE to change here whether people like it or not, because we are starting to lose star players to Aus as well as to RU, and the jury is still out about whether such a development is actually good for the British game.

Many of the other points made in this thread are valid. We need to moderate the cap so that we encourage clubs to develop youth not discourage them.

Given that Wigan now officially support the salary cap, and seem to have regained their status as one of the bigger clubs while living within its strictures, I'm not sure that it's really an issue of debate among Wigan fans any more. But I'm still very dubious about the morality of denying clubs the right to spend their own money, especially if it's money they've generated through having good business models. As for the concerns about the free market ruining football, I think there's something in that - though I sincerely doubt that we'll ever end up in a mess of that magnitude, simply because so few of us are willing or even able to make preposterous pay settlements. If idiot players insist on demanding ridiculous wages, a la Sonny Bill Williams, they can still go to French Rugby Union, where they might hate their deterioration as athletes but at least they'll get rich.