but sadly under the present rfl supremos that's just not going to happen.

Seems like RL clubs are going to have to change their attitudes regarding young players, you can't pay them peanuts and expect them to stay out of loyalty to the game or their home town club. We have to pay them what they are now worth. A club with 8 or 9 foreign players that can't keep hold of it's best kids has got it's priorities wrong. Players like Sam Tomkins and Ainscough are infinately more valuable to Wigan than Smith or Phelps, but do the contracts reflect that?

IMO it's a problem for the whole of RL. Many fans/club owners/flat cappers etc need to realise that these players young or old have a high market value and if you want to keep them you have to pay the going rate.

You hear people calling players greedy or Judas for following the money train to RU but at the end of the day if RL doesn't wanna pay the market value for them they are always gonna leave. It time for RL to get real and realise if they don't pay top players top wages they aren't gonna hang around for ever. I can’t see how anyone can’t justify paying players what they deserve and having their pay match their union counterparts.

money wasted on over-rated average aussie journeymen could and should be spent on keeping young british players in the game.

If it is the case that there has indeed been an approach and the type of money banded about is true my advice would be to take up the offer it's a no-brainer, that's what I would be saying if it was my son. All this 'Judas if he signs' talk is ludicrous.

not so long ago it was thornley who was shortly off to the dark side, before that it was briscoe, melling etc.
could well turn out to be a storm in a teacup...

Sometimes this is the only thing the fans have to use as leverage.

It's tasteless, I know - and I don't think Sam would be subjected to it the same as Ashton was, because Sam patently doesn't want to leave. But if the money's irresistable, and the rest of RL, as usual, turns a blind eye and pretends it's not happening, fans often feel they have no choice but to try and pressurise the player himself.

Oh shoot.

Got told that they have approached him but nothing is to come of it. Thats of somebody close to the club. and the deal they offered was around 250k over 4 years.

Dont shoot me down i am just passing on what i was told.

Nout happening at the moment but in future who knows.

That's part of what makes it ludicrous though, us fans thinking that their 'disgust' at a professional sportsman even considering what the fans think is a factor on whether they sign a contract or not. The plain fact is they don't, and why should they? The list of sportsmen who have left clubs to sign for others because of opportunity (financial opportunity, development opportunity, opportunity to win honours) is miles and miles longer than the list of those who stayed where they are because of what the fans think.

Rumour or not, it's a financial reality that may become more commonplace and, like it or lump it, we are going to have to come to terms with it.

If the SC was changed to 50% of turnover, then all IL would have to do is to buy £1m worth of Golden Gamble tickets each match, and the money would come straight back to him,(less the £2000 top prize if he didn't win) and it would count as turnover..........simple.

Very clever!

Its simple, if a player has been a "one club" player then only 50% of his salary should count on the cap. End of.

Will we eventually come to terms with the reality of having no professional presence at all?

Thats the eventual outcome as I see it, if we're content to remain the poor man's game forever. Modern professional sport is too cut-throat a world to keep places open for anachronisms like 'the people's game', which is the way we were perceived in the 60s and 70s, when we were losing money hand over fist but the BBC still loved us because our working class ethos was in keeping with their quasi-socialist philosophy. The romance of that time is gone. The modern game needs to be about putting on a great show in front of big crowds, and generating steadily increased revenue and publicity. And allowing a situation to develop where all our most exciting players go elsewhere as soon as they're old enough to make their minds up, is hardly a step in that direction.

But essentially I agree with you. This is not something the fans can change. It's got to be down to the RFL. To some extent they've started the ball rolling by doing away with relegation and bringing in new rules to tighten up on overseas players. But they need to go much, much further than that. Next, they've got to grasp the financial nettle and stop being dictated to by non-viable clubs who are hanging onto SL status by their fingertips.

The problem all lies with the cap, theres nothing wrong with having one, but I think it needs to be split up into 3 parts, for players through the academy, one for other british players and another for overseas players that would be enough to sign 2 or 3 world class players rather than overpaid average no bodys of which we have quite afew.

This would mean you could keep all your best talent, without having teams like us keep all the players we produce to have a huge squad or a great reserve side.

There would be more transactions of players between british clubs and they would be of more value.

We woud have less overseas players but the ones who were here in each team would be the best.

Maybe then Nobles idea of one Union player per team would be a good idea but not atm.