But Matty, even if they leave and are replaced by inferior players, my loyalty is to Saints and I will continue to go and support whoever wears the shirt. That's the point I'm making.

I've highlighted the bit that causes the entire problem in our sport.

We don't have 14 "Super rich owners"

We don't NEED 14 Super rich owners.

What we DO need is for any club with money to spend to be allowed to spend it, but whilst the likes of Castleford and Wakefield are given free rein to basically veto any increase in the cap (because they, personally, can't afford it), the game will continue to leak talent.

Yes - This will mean that Wigan & Warrington will have more to spend than the other clubs, but it's up to them to come up with their own ways to raise money in order to compete.

In the past 2 years, Wigan created the first club TV commercial within RL and both us and Wire are very active in marketing ourselves.

Just because the small clubs are unable to do this, their only chance is to hold the rest of us back.
Asking them to vote for a salary cap increase is like asking a turkey to vote for Christmas.

The cap needs to be reset to its original purpose - To stop clubs from bankrupting themselves by restricting them to spending no more than 50% of turnover.

Bear in mind that this didn't work properly - London Broncos.
But before anyone spouts garbage about the current system protecting clubs - Crusaders, anyone?

IMO the sport should NEVER allow the likes of Cas and Wakey to kill the rest of the sport, just to give themselves a fighting chance (even though they never have and most likely never will reach the GF).

The cap is failing, the sport is failing and all the while, the overpaid muppets at Red Hall are taking as much cash as they can out of the game, until something better/more lucrative comes along.

So if Wigan "built" their squads better with very little or no overseas players, Sam and Joel still wouldn't end up at Union?

The idea we can simply roll others off the production line and that tradition and history will save the game is simply pie in the sky. Unless you want to see a game of a much lower standard than we have now that is which possibnly goes back to being semi-pro. Just because Eastmond isn't actually as good as anyone thought does not mean they won't toss him aside and come back for Lomax or Sam Tomkins does it? Whether you want to acknowledge it or not the game can not sustain a regular trickle of players such as Eastmond and J Tomkins leaving. We have an incredably difficult time putting together an England team of anythkg like the quality required to compete with the Aussies and the loss of a player like Joel makes that even harder as he was a shoe in for selection. That should show you why we can't sustain the loss of even a handful of players. We have not got quality players coming out of our ears.

No but its not just about Joel and Sam (for the 4th time in this topic). If Wigan had 4 overseas signings instead of 7 we would have roughly around 250k-300k to spread about the squad in wages. Which in my mind i would spend on signing up our best talent to deals that become very expensive for RU to buy out and good enough to keep the young lads heads from being turned when they weigh up the prospects of moving to a union side.

This has all started by chairmen looking for instant sucess rather than developing players. Too many clubs have relied on Wigans cast offs filling up there squads and we have been bitten on the in trying to buy sucess when theres tons of Wigan cast offs with more medals than current and recent past Wigan players.

Hopefully by this time tomorrow everyone will know for definite what's going on. Who's in, who's out, and who the coach will be. Plus we'll hear Lenegan's view's on everything. It's gonna be a long 24 hours until then.

Couldnt agree with you more. The current rules and salary crap and RFL are in favour of clubs like Wakefield and Castleford. If clubs like Wigan, Warrington, Leeds, Hull FC and Saints we're given abit more of a free reign when it comes to spending then the game would be in a much much better state.

Ain't that the truth!

That said, these things happen and you have to entrust in the current management to make best use of what's available. With the changes to the Aussie cap and the general dearth of talent in SL, we might well be better off sitting on any compo we receive and promote from within rather than risk knee-jerk purchase of someone who could fail for a whole lot more money.

They might well both leave, who knows. But if Wigan had a better structured cap he would be on more money now, thats why he signed for 5 years so they could lump most of the money on the back end of the contract. As has been said you can't pay top dollar to everyone every year.

Never been so depressed about this game i love than i am today..it as just clicked that the best RL academies are now just RU production lines.

hasnt Leneghan stated that he is in favour of the salary cap?

the only beneficiary of removing the cap completely would be Warrington IMO.

If those overseas players were not here and we therefore had £250-£300k to spread about that would mean we were paying their replcements less money. Otherwise that £250-£300k would not exist to give out would it? In urn that means either their replacements are not as good or if they are as good we are not paying them very much so they would be ripe for cherry picking by RU.



What has that got to do with Wigan losing players to RU? And who are these Wigan cast offs with a shed load of medals? I can think of Long and Gilmore (and he wanted to leave anyway) but the vast majority of ex-Wigan players out there in current SL sides have won nothing since leaving. Ricky Bibey has a CC medal I think. Perhaps we should have kept him?

IMO even if our best youngsters were still signed up to big contracts early on in their careers they would still go to Union if they were offered the money. With the huge International stage in Union and the potential opportunity to earn well above your wage through sponsorpships etc it is much more of a lucrative prospect.

What we also don't want to happen is throw money at players early on in their careers who don't develop, as that would be a waste. We could of quite easily signed someone like Ainscough on a massive contract after his 1st season and the same could be said with Warrington and Kevin Penny. It would be a huge risk.

The reason overseas players are paid a lot more is because they are well established players who 9 times out of 10 are better than the young players we are bringing through and justify their wage. I think the problem doesn't lie with the overseas quota and amount of overseas players in the game, but rather the set up of the salary cup in which we should be able clubs to spend more money on homegrown players, or say have half of their wage counted on the cap.

I have to admit this is worrying me big time.

To lose players like Joel and God forbid Sam to the dark side has to be a concern to the RFL.

It seems like we are becoming a feeder club to union with the likes of Ashton,Eastmond,possibly both Tomkins brothers and who knows who in the future,we have to put a stop to this but God knows how though.

I'm assuming Joel and Sam have now signed to the agency run by Phil Clarke and his brother? All bear that in mind when you're listening to Phil witter on Sky about young RL talent.