Successful "player production" should be rewarded with salary cap incentives. Clubs are going to the wall now at the current cap level as you say. Do you think the cap should be reduced as a result of this ? If so how attractive do you think the competition would become to the main sources of income it has - TV and sponsorship - if it became effectively a junior league with no stars playing in it ? More clubs might be more solvent but there might not be a league to play in.

There is already a self imposed reduction in salary cap spend from at least 1/2 the clubs in the competition. Fact is that all but a handful of players will never go to Oz so the competition won't be diminished. Sponsors and TV are interested in spectator numbers and viewers. Do you really believe that losing a few players to oz will affect this? How many top players have come over here from oz in their prime since SL started?

Is your answer for the competition to spend it's way to success? All that will happen is that the same players will earn more money. It won't make them better and the real superstars of the game will all be playing down under anyway. The RFU salary cap is significantly ahead of ours and we haven't seen the predicted drain on players from union.

The fact is taht RL players in SL are, on the whole, well paid and few of them would earn what they do from the game elewhere

They could have something like, no federation trained player 21/22 years and under, to count on the cap.

A club can claim a ‘set or limited’ compensation fee for the first time sale of a player, whatever age they are when sold. The fee to compensate the cost of development, not the value of player.

If our competition falls (further) behind in salary terms it will mean that all these top young players that will take the place of overseas stars will go where the money is.. They will go to RU or NRL. There have been a few go over of late to both - some of the better youngsters of course - and this number would increase if they can't earn comparable wages in league. The reason there haven't been all that many go up to now is the precise reason for the debate - there isn't that much quality around. What I'm saying is this - if by some miracle more talent starts coming through there has to be a league worth playing in with salaries that prevent players leaving otherwise what's the point ?

Ideas along these lines will help if they don't run into legal difficulties along the way. The game needs world stars as well as youngsters. There must be ways to keep the mix at the right balance and much of that will be down to how much players can be paid.

And there have to be clubs in existence or the game will whither and die. Maintaining the number of clubs and paying a reasonable level of income is far more improtant than worrying about losing a few of the absolute best players or not bringing over players who would never come here anyway.

Increasing the salary cap will only encourage club owners to overspend. It won't improve the competition at all

As I asked earlier should the salary cap now be reduced then ? Just because some clubs are poorly run and loss making shouldn't mean that those that are run well have to struggle to attract and retain the best players (young or overseas) for their customers/sponsors/revenue providers to watch. Incentives for nurturing young talent in terms of salary cap enhancements is the way forward otherwise it will be pointless nurturing anything.

I said that there is a self imposed reduction in spend by some teams so, no, I don't think it needs to be reduced.

How much do you think it should be increased by and what do you think would be the benefit? Maybe you could tell me which top class aussies would come over or how many world class players England would likely produce in the next 10 years as a result? Or which of our better players would rather stay in the North of England than live in Sydney given the choice?

Do you think sponsorship and TV revenue would increase if we had 2 or 3 rich clubs dominating the competition and hammering other teams most weeks?

The only benefit I could see is that rovers may go pop but it seems even they've seen the light and are reducing their spend on players

i dont see the massive issue with people thinking all our best player will go over there, the aussies pride themselves on bringing through there own young players and the depth they have is huge, also english players may not want to go over yeh its an attactive place to go and play rugby but alot of players have familes ect and may not want to go over anyway many players like long and cunningham had offers to go over but dint want to.

there should be a incentive to bring through player even if its say 5% of a club trained player dosent count on the cap or something along those lines but for me anyway i think the rfl should make it 6 non british born players you are allowed then over 6 years bring that down to 3 or 4

There is an incentive to bring through club-trained players... the 8 club-trained player rule, which is actually pretty massive. The only way you can have any sort of depth to your squad is if you produce players.

I'm not aware of any other sport doing anything on this scale.

That actually suggests evidence against your argument of a cap increase meaning more clubs going under. If they're being smart enough now I don't see why they wouldn't continue to be so. What would more likely happen is that the gap between the clubs spending the cap and those not would widen, that's all.

I do think we need to look at a cap increase and some sort of incentive for promoting youth. As said, SL needs some star imports, it's starting to suffer from the decrease of them IMO, so we need to do what we can to bring them back. The RFL just need to be more inventive with possible ways to apply the cap to try and prevent dominance of a few emerging, such as a percentage of club produced youngsters not counting on the cap, or a marquee player system.

Not every club is spending to the cap but if the cap increases then there will be pressure on all clubs to spend more because salaries on offer from some clubs will be higher, increasing the expectations of everyone else. It's exactly what happened when SKY pumped a stack of cash in. The players now are no more skillful than they were pre SL. They're fitter and stronger as a result of full time training but we are probably producing less world class players in this country now than we were 20 years ago.

SL has had hardly any "star" players from australia since it started, but has had plenty of journeymen from other countries earning significant amounts of money that would be better spent developing British talent.

The game in australia is a completely different kettle of fish to here and trying to compete financially with the NRL will lead to financial ruin for many clubs.

Don't see why that has to happen. With the penalties for admistration it's still not in clubs' interest to take the risk. Also, those clubs who can't afford the full cap will hopefully be pushed towards youth development as a result. The expectations will already be increased anyway because of the NRL and Union now, imports of any half-decent quality coming over will be wanting more now, and the top players here will be wanting near parity or they'll just switch codes.



Not sure how producing more world class players in the pre salary cap days is an argument for not increasing the cap TBH. Plus it's at least partly down to the fact that League used to be able to cherry pick from Union but that has now been reversed due to the money in Union combined with the cap in League. Suggests we need to do something to keep hold of those we do produce to me.



Think it has had quite a few, personally. I'm not arguing it hasn't had too many journeymen, but the point now is that we're probably going to be looking at the journeymen and slightly better being the norm and the real quality a thing of the past.



It's not about competing with the NRL overall, we never will in total and regardless we won't attract plenty purely because it means giving up representative rugby. It's about putting ourselves in a position to make sure the players that do come over are of good quality and not just those who can't get a decent deal there. Good players coming over are a vital part of our game for the fans, sponsors, and the youngsters who can learn from them.

Fact is that paying players more will not make them better players. We will still have overwhelmingly the same players. My point about the pre SL days was showing that more money doesn't mean better players. The potential benefits of hanging onto a few players who may go elsewhere are far outweighed by the downsides of increased financial pressures and the potential for a small number of clubs to dominate, having a detrimental effect on attendances and sponsorship.

As you say, we can't hope to compete with the NRL for salaries so will only attract players by paying over the odds.

At the current salary cap level only a small number of clubs make a profit and, by and large, these are pretty modest. There is no scope to increase the cap unless more money comes into the game from an increased TV deal or a large sponsorship from somewhere. The only clubs who would benefit are those with a rich backer prepared to bankroll them and that is unsustainable in the long run as has been proven many times before in many sports

I disagree it would necessarily be the same players. If there are some exemptions for youth as I suggested, it would encourage clubs to develop them so there would be a shift towards trying to develop players better. It would also mean a slightly better class of imports for the kids to learn from as I said. SL pays over the odds for NRL players in comparison to what they'd get over there whatever their ability, a cap increase would just mean overpaying for a better class of player. So you'd still be getting say, £50k more worth of player.

As for the point about a few clubs dominating, it's not exactly a different winner every year now is it?

My issue is that whilst I understand that we can't have clubs risking their existence, I also don't think it's fair to effectively hold back the more successful off-field clubs so that the less successful ones have a better chance of keeping up. The RFL need to give them more drive and assistance where possible to improve themselves instead.