I doubt you could sell that belief to the majority on here, if FC failed to make the top 8.

Over the last couple of days I have come around to that way of thinking. The league really has become a procession to the end of season play offs with half the league with little to play for after May. However, I do worry for the clubs that will be regularly stuck in the bottom four of SL. Were is the incentive to develop players when each season their only goal is to beat the championship clubs in the end of season split. Just see these clubs returning to a short term mind set with past it players on big contracts being signed rather than taking a chance on youth.

£24 to see us play Batley?

Even some passholders would give it a miss.

Does anyone remember 1997? when the "end of season playoffs" put us in a group with Rovers and York, poorly attended, and they sold a mini season ticket for the games.

Cummings not too keen on the idea! www.newsnow.co.uk/A/691302081

Cummings not too keen on the idea! www.newsnow.co.uk/A/691302081

My thoughts exactly. The only incentive was to get into the 8 before, where they knew they'd most likely be knocked out within a week or two anyway.


I think if clubs fall into that cycle they will ultimately relegated anyway. I think clubs need to be given a bit more charge of their own destiny, and if they choose the wrong options they suffer the consequences. SL was becoming stale and sanitised by the fact they were being told what to do and how to operate, and if they didn't follow those instructions, well... not a lot happened really!

Further advantages for growing your own players, taken from the policy review:

5.3.11
In Tier 1, the current Elite Squad Representative Dispensation Allowance is removed, to be replaced by regulation that limits the Salary Cap Value of a Club Trained Player at a nominal value of £100k (i.e. for any Club Trained Player with a Salary Cap Value of over £100k, his Salary Cap Value will be assessed at £100k only with any additional wage not included in his salary cap value). This would reward clubs for producing elite talent and give them an opportunity to retain this talent in the face of competition from other sports and competitions.

If you produce your own players, and they become star players, you can keep them under the cap more easily. Buying in star players will eat at the cap.

Look at Wigan. Look at the players they've produced. You couldn't buy in a squad like that. You've quoted around 10 players in a squad to be paid around the £100k mark. In theory, you could grow your own ten players, invest in them and turn them into star players whilst keeping them under the cap. They'd be at the £1m mark collectively, but really you could pay them anything you like.

If that's not incentive to grow your own players then I don't know what is.

Clubs with a short term strategy will not be able to build a squad that challenged with £1.8m, but a club that spends time producing it's players will. The club will have more room to keep these players as well instead of bigger clubs poaching them.

I don't disagree with what you're saying.

All I'm trying to highlight is that £1.8m doesn't go far and doesn't share out very easily.
Infact, my numbers are wrong, they only add up to 28 players!

10 home grown stars (if only) on £100k cap still doesn't leave very much for the other 20.

If you had 10 homegrown stars worth over £100k, you wouldn't need much room for the rest!

Also, isn't the cap for the top 25 earners?

It does indeed, and then their is a secondary cap, designed for players in the academy to be brought through and be able to play first team without affecting cap rules. I believe the current amount is 75,000 for the secondary cap but I may be wrong on that, I'd need to check.

The home grown cap cap isn't designed to aid particularly to build squads with (beyond the norm) merely help with the retention of the likes of tomkins and graham. It should be quite successful hopefully.

I'd forgotten about that one. Just had a look at the rules again, but all the references to first and second tier liabilities has melted my brain.

It's up to clubs to be sensible. I'm not a fan of the RFL controlling everything clubs do. Risk is a part of sport. If we sanitise things too much, we won't attract pioneers.

would like to see any increase in cap money only allowed to be spent to devolp home grown talent