This is a lesson learnt that Saints should have got him signed up to a long term deal earlier like we have with Sam that way he would have a contract that the thieves in union would have to buy out and that gives Saints the power however as is Kyle has the power and union has the greater attraction (MONEY MONEY MONEY!!!!)

It was obvious who you were aiming the comment at. You call me an idiot yet you think people at union reckon Kyle is the next Jason Robinson

You said you dont think Sam would get offered the 200k which Kyle is rumoured to of been offered in union. That does not fit in with what you say above.

Paying a £200K wage for a key player in the 2nd best side in the land doesn't seem an outrageous wage to me. He may be a contemporary of Sam T so just at the start of his career but surely if a player is good enough not only is he old enough to have a 1st team place but he deserves the wages of a top half back.

The worth of Eastmond should not be decided by what RU can offer to prise him away from RL but what is a fair wage for professional sportsmen playing the toughest team game in the UK.

It's about time people realised this is 2011 and £200K a year for a professional sportsman who has a short career is just not a huge wage.

Instead of thinking how smart Saints are not to be meeting any wage demands people need to realise the real problem is that they [ican't[/i meet those demands.

While we as a sport have "headline" club based events like MM in 1/3 full stadia the RU rightly push International RU as the pinnicle of their sport and that will influence players like Eastmond as well. Not only will he get recognition he will get well paid for it as well.

Nope. Can't afford to. Saints offered him the best deal they could but no-one can force another player to sign a contract. Roby signed up without hesitation because, like Sam for you guys, he knew he wanted to be at the club and he loves the sport. Kyle isn't a local lad so probably doesn't have that sense of identification with the club, and maybe he prefers to be rich and famous.

Nope. You're missing the point.

The point is that RL clubs can't afford £200k for one of the leading players in the game.

If you assume inflation of 3.5% over the last 12 years then the equivalent wage back in 1999, in the early days of SL and the SC was around £130k. Lots of players were on that sort of money then.

So the point is that not only is RU leaving RL far behind, but RL is actually going backwards.

Even with the Eastmond situation, which should be a real wake-up call for Saints fans, none of you seem to be able to face up to the reality that our sport is in a very serious decline and we will have more to worry about than RU if this continues - RL will only be able to support a semi-pro game in this country.

On the TotalRL forum quite a few of them seem to be going out of their way to point out that this is not a problem, reality bites, we have to move on, we'll just produce another better player, he wasn't that good anyway yadda yadda ... all the other meaningless bravado born of being completely and utterly wrongfooted by the opposition.

I wish some of them would start to see the bigger picture. Every key player lost to RU is a PR disaster for RL. Not only that, it weakens us internationally. So many people trot out the old line that we need a strong international side formed from quality home-grown talent, thereby expanding our base and our global competition immensely, before we can even start to compete with RU's expenditure. But no-one seems prepared to face the reality that we'll never have - and that means NEVER, as in it simply WON'T HAPPEN - a quality international side so long as all our most exciting young players get signed up by RU as soon as they make the first team (in Ian Thornley's case, he didn't even have to do that much).

You'd have thought that those who prophesied this would never be a problem (when it only seemed to be happening to Wigan, of course), would be hanging their heads a little bit by now. But no - not at all. They're as vocal as ever. "The game's in better shape than it's ever been. We are looking forward, not back. We run a sensible economy. We have better viewing figures than ever before ... where's the problem?" And so much more irrelevant crap.

I certainly don't expect us to pay out massive salaries when we can't afford them. I don't expect us to abolish the Salary Cap (though it needs updating). But good grief, we can not afford to do nothing. We just can't. And yet apparently that's the plan, and so many of the game's lemmings wholeheartedly support it.

Well, your chairman on 5Live before the Magic weekend made a very good point: how many quality players have we actually lost to Union over the years? Hardly any, actually. Union lost far more players to League in days gone by than League has lost to Union since Union got its act together.

So far as the international scene is concerned, what that needs is more - many more - clubs producing their own English talent so that England is not so dependent upon so few in key positions. Once clubs all begin to pull their weight in terms of home grown produce then we will see more options at international level. In the meantime, we will struggle.

I don't disagree with you Cruncher, in fact I think your spot on with your assessment. I just want to put accross how I see it....

Isn't the whole point of this franchising system with the new stadia, encouraging sensible financial management from the SL and Championship clubs etc. formed to ensure more money is brought into the game? Therefore all the clubs are then able to start to pay more money to their players, in effect abolishing the SC? Or have I completely mis-interpreted the RFL licensing thing?

I agree at this moment in time, it isn't bearing any fruitition and doesn't really look promising. 5 years time, maybe it'll be different. I don't know therefore I won't speculate on whether it will be or not. For a sport that has been in existance for as long as ours has, for a sport that probably did experience a boom in demand in the 80's (before my time so could anyone confirm/throw that out?) why have we declined?

I seem to remember watching a WC match England v Australia at Wembley on ESPN Classic, not sure what year it was, but the stadium was packed. Could we honestly say that we could do that in the new Wembley? England RU could, but not England RL. The RFL need to seriously look at how the RFU gets revenue. How the RFU go about advertisement etc etc. Yes they are RL's "main rival" but it doesn't take Stephen Hawking to realise that in every department, the RFU is better. I for one just wish the RFL would get their damn finger out their ar$e, stop thinking that a 2/3 empty Millenium Stadium will get interest in RL and stop with the gimmicks and start learning from RFU.

We all wonder why when RU come knocking 9/10 RL players jump at the chance. I reckon it's money, international competition and fame. All of which RL cannot supply.

Well, as your chairman also said, he was talking about good players, not players who might or might not have made it or who haven't made it in League. The latter are irrelevant as they are not of value to the game. The good players, like Jason Robinson, they are the ones that matter and they are few and far between.

Your chairman made a very impassioned speech about this very subject. I was impressed. Pity you didn't hear it.

Agree totally with Cruncher's post but would add that it isn't just about the dangers of RU - serious though that problem is.

If we do nothing to improve the finances and profile of the sport then before long the decline in player salaries in real terms will mean that the game will only support a semi-pro lifestyle for players. Long before that happens many will have drifted away from the pro-game or not even got involved in the first place.

If you assume inflation at 3.5% for the next 12 years then a player on £100k in 2023 would be earning the equivalent of £65k in real terms. A player on £50k would be earning the equivalent in today's money of £33k. A player on £30k would be earning less than £20k in today's money.

Its difficult to see on those sort of figures how the game could support a truly elite competition.

By then of course spectator and sponsor interest will probably have declined making even holding the SC at its current level in absolute terms impossible.

Unless something is done the Super League will probably be similar in stature to the French domestic RL competition in 15 or 20 years time.

The flat-earthers will continue to deny the reality of the problems facing the game, of that I have no doubt,but the long term future for professional RL in this country looks bleak.

IL is wrong on the SC.

The point that we will never know whether players would have made it in league is key - the talent pool is shrinking as players leave the game.

There is an even bigger threat in the long term than RU poaching, which is that as pay in real terms continues to decline there will be fewer players coming into the game. That's just basic maths and economics.

And then pay levels will reach the point where they can't support a full time pro competition.

I would actually say it was the other way round, in that Robinson (and Andy Farrell) were coming towards the end of their League careers, probably both had 1-2 more years with Wigan had they stayed, so in effect RL had the best years out of them.

Whereas Owen Farrell and Thornley had their whole careers ahead of them in League (probably at Wigan - maybe not) had Union not come along. So to say they were not of value to the game is incorrect. The fact that they were snatched prior to making a first team appearance in league is irrelevant, they were exciting prospects (as was Ashton) who are now lost to the game forever (probably)......now that's the real shame!

It does to me. It's the kind of thing that Lenagan was complaining about when he first arrived: that a few highly paid players were restricting his abiliity to pay the rest of the side what they were worth.

If you set Eastmond at £200k, do an exercise with the relative value of the rest of the squad - you very quickly get to a total salary cost around £4million, and it'll be a long time before that's sustainable in our sport.

Interesting attitude. I disagree with it, so I mustn't have heard it.

That's the sort of arrogance that is blinding you to the facts.

It's quite telling that all of a sudden you're narrowing down the field of those who've defected to proven, top quality players. What, I wonder, is the more damaging - the loss of players like Jason Robinson and Andy Farrell, who really were veterans in RL and had given us their best years, or the loss of players like Chris Ashton, Owen Farrell and Kyle Eastmond, who had all the tools we look for in future stars but will now never know about because they'll be doing it in another sport?

It doesn't take a genius to answer that.

All you're doing here is massaging the facts to suit your argument. Why not say - how many Great Britain captains have defected? One - and he was a crock. Why not say how many Golden Boot winners have defected? One - and he was a crock.

You see, it's just silly. The reality is that we can't afford to lose any - past stars or future stars. And please don't give me the argument that "we don't know they'd be future stars". It doesn't take a discerning eye to work out that in the likes of Owen Farrell and George Ford we've lost great talents of the future.