As SL comes to an end over the next couple of years, in name at least, how successful a time do you think it has been for the sport? Are we in a better or worse place than when it began? It is just shy of a quarter of the sport’s entire history now!

What lessons need to learned, either to be carried forward or to try to improve and strengthen the game?

Worse state by a long way.

Lessons to be learned? The salary cap is killing the sport

I’d disagree, in so far as I think it is a mixed bag. Much of that reflects wider societal, cultural and economic changes, of course.

On the credit side, compared with the 27 years before SL, summer rugby has worked, facilities are typically much less dilapidated, and we have 12 or so full-time teams of fabulously impressive athletes.

On the debit side, even with Wigan’s overwhelming dominance in the final years of the limited tackles pre-SL era, from 1968 to the arrival of SL there 12 different RL champions. The end of Wigan’s hegemony at the start of SL and the rise of Leeds/decline of Bradford from the mid-2000s made it feel like a moving, vital contest. Some the stuff that looks dated now was still fairly new then. With hindsight, the best of SL was probably done by the start of licensing and since that was abandoned, it has felt a bit like rearranging the super8s and the golden points on the titanic. The gimmicks moved from being presentational to structural.

It had its time, and was not remotely all bad, but that time has passed.

The salary cap isn’t killing the sport (after all the NRL also has a cap, and flourishing) - having the cap managed by the people who benefit most from keeping it superficially low (in the short term at least) whilst not having any commercial activity for so long not discerningly increasing money in the sport over decades, leading to everything being cut to the bone financially are the things which is killing the sport.

IMG bringing in a commercial team, and committing to a prolonged schedule of increasing the salary cap, whilst repurposing the cap to focus more on empowering teams to keep their homegrown talent (rather than some ill conceived “providing an equal competition” as it currently is presented as, when it clearly doesn’t achieve that aim), bringing in minimum contracts for young players, limiting cap value to a set amount, and providing more incentives for investing in youth, both locally, and in target communities.

It peaked (in my opinion) between 2004-2007. During this period, the game had lots of household names, we could still sell out challenge cup finals, games felt more exciting both on TV and in person, it felt like we had more media coverage, a better commentary team in Eddie & Stevo on TV.....since then it has been on a downward trend for various reasons including a stagnating salary cap, the demise of the Bradford Bulls (loss of a big derby with Leeds), too many changes to the league structure including 14 teams, franchising, super 8s, middle 8s, back to 12, a poor commentary team on TV that struggle to get excited about the product on the pitch and failed attempts at expansion in Toronto, North Wales and the demise of London have made it a less attractive product.

Superleague is BOOMING in St Helens................................

Getting rid of the salary cap won't work as half the poop teams in Superleague don't spend the cap now?
Make all clubs have an Academy to bring more youngsters through, The winners of past Superleague titles have all had Academy's to fall back on.
Up the salary cap a bit but not a huge amount.

Which is kind of what I wanted to say, but If I said it the way you did, I would have just been called a troll by supporters of the clubs this applies to.

Should it not be about clubs trying to keep up with saints and Wigan rather than saints and Wigan being held back by Wakefield and cas etc? If some clubs don't spend up to the salary cap, tough but to stop the exodus of talent to the NRL, we should be increasing wages to keep the best players in SL.

Although the change to summer rugby wasn't universally popular, there is little doubt that it's a better spectacle in "summer" than winter.
Harder, drier playing surfaces keep the game more open (generally speaking) and more entertaining.
The cap is a problem but, primarily because of lack of investment into the game and not just because we have a salary cap.

Even though many clubs dont spend the full cap, it should have risen year on year (at least in line with inflation).

Ultimately though, the sport is still where it was and hasn't made too much progress in attracting new people to the game and the million dollar question is, whether the sport sees itself as a niche sport or a "national" game and depending on the answer to this question, where it wants to be in 5,10 or 20 years time. There has been little progress (perhaps zero) with this over the 25 years of SL.

Facilities, generally speaking, have improved, with new grounds for a number of clubs but, the sport needs to decide where it's going and there's heaps of work to do to keep the youngsters interested, both in terms of wanting to play and wanting to watch RL and this is the biggest challenge that the sport faces.

Some pretty hollow victories for saints these last few years in such poor times.