I found old article earlier relating to when Harris was up for transfer for £1.2million (hehe, just the thought of that transfer asking fee still makes me giggle a bit)... and there's a quote from someone at the club saying that the RFL came in and told the club that they weren't allowed to sell Harris to a RU club, when they'd already had the "deal of the century" lined up. I wish I'd made note of the URL, as I reckon I'll be hard pushed to find it again.

Raise the cap, cut the number of clubs in SL to 8-10, and add another cup. Merge clubs if necessary.

I personally could take RL losing some of its top talent if it meant our game not dying on its booty.



If we raise the cap and a couple more clubs end up like Wakey but don't have the luxury of someone taking them over, our game would slowly die.



It hurts losing talent but it hurts a thousand times more if we lose the game.

personally i'd rather see more money spent on marketing, possibly not a great idea in teh current climate but i would've thought at all clubs the aim would be getting more bums on seats, surely the RFL should be pushing and assisting clubs in this sort of thing.

I have said for a while now that the Cap should increase to allow us to compete with RU for the best players.

If we are to sell RL as the greatest game in the world (which we all know it to be) then we need the best players.

Just think what a draw it would have been for an RL club to be able to prise Jonny Wilkinson away from RU when he was at his best.

I have no idea if he would have been tempted away but he most certainly would not have come given the current salary imbalance between us and RU.



People say that if the Cap is raised then clubs would spend silly money and a club could go under. Is RL in financial utopia right now??? Wakey and Crusaders have both called in the receivers and I bet Quins are really struggling with the crowds they get. In the recent past there was talk of us going under or having to merge because of money problems.



We all need to wake up and smell the Coffee, to get the best and compete with RU we have to pay the money. This will undoubtedly mean problems for some clubs, but overall the long term future of the game we all love would win out.



The Cap must be increased in a sensible and manageable manner, but increase it must.

Fatbelly. without relying on Mr Moran, and based on the documented submitted accounts for 2009, can you explain how our own club (never mind any other clubs for the moment) could realistically afford to spend, say, £400k a year more on salaries based on a profit of £28k ?

I'll say it again. RL needs to increase it's revenue, if it does that, then the salary cap can grow as a result of that.

I gave up trying to explain that. The glib 'well the clubs have to increase their turnover 5% year on year' when expalined that you need to find £200k additional income to achieve that, when no doubt every SL/RL club is pursuing every last penny it didn't even register.



I think most believe there is a money tree knocking around.

The simple fact is, we can't compete with RU. I am not a defeatist, purely a realist.

At the present time RU brings in more money, through benefactors, sponsorship deals, centrally sourced funds that are distributed among member clubs, and so on.



that is the situation which RL needs to aspire to, and compete with. The salaries of the players, and the cap in place, is a by-product of the funds available to the clubs.

Don't even need to spend much money on it really. Plenty of grafitti artists around and some of them are very talented. If any are caught painting on walls that they shouldn't, you could sentence them to community service, and part of that community service could be for them to make use of their artistic skills painting murels to do with Wire in "new town" areas where exposure and awareness are at their lowest.

The state of the pound doesn`t help, if the cap is not raised then its going to be really difficult to attract Australian players over here and to keep the ones you already have that are coming to the end of their contracts, they can earn far more back in Australia due to the weakness of the pound along with the image rights loophole being closed as thats how we have managed to get a lot of the top names over here previously.



Its a tough question, i can see both the pros and cons for raising the cap. I think overall though by raising the cap your going to create a situation similar to what we had previously where its the bigger clubs that will dominate the top positions in the league.

We can't and probably never will.

But sport on the whole isn't a profitable business.

Chelsea and Man City could never afford the players they do without their big Backers.

In the same way we couldn't realistically compete without Mr Moran's money.



Don't look at sport as a business in the true sense of the word, if we did that Warrington and most RL / RU and Soccer clubs would have closed decades ago.



Most sporting clubs are run like businesses these days but none are business in the true sense of the word.

Spend the money and invest in the best to grow.

So what you're essentially saying is that we should accept the fact the sport can't realistically sustain being full time unless we have people like Moran around. and if a club goes under because their backer goes away/loses interest, it's a case of: "oh well, sucks to be them". ?



I'm failing to see how that's good for the game.

I'm not sure what people mean when they say we need to 'compete' with RU for 'talent'. RU was amateur for how long and we used to sign RUs top players and their game survived.



In honesty other than Jason Robinson leaving to go to union, who was a fine player but had had a long career in league anyway, I can't think of any league player who is in the calibre of the union players who used to come here, Davies, Scott Gibbs, Bateman and so on. If we do nothing and keep the cap as it is, you will get the odd player going to play union here and there but the actual impact on RL development, RL crowds will be minimal.



I also reckon a lot of league fans today get influenced by Eddie and Stevo's definition of 'talent'. When we are fearing 'top talent' being taken away from us, who are the players who are genuine superstars that if we lost them, we would start seeing fans drifting away from RL to start following RU?



When you are old enough to remember real greats like Hanley, Offiah and Davies then its hard to get excited about James Graham and Sam Tomkins however much Eddie and Stevo might try to convince us all that these are world class superstars. Hand on heart how many RL fans are going to start losing interest and following union because of Eastmond going? How many would it be if union signed Graham or Tomkins. These guys are replaceable.



Also the other elephant in the room is when these clubs say they just can't afford to compete with RU because of the salary cap, what they really mean is they didn't value their player the same value that RU put on them. British clubs have always got enough to pay big salaries to overseas players, if they are so bothered about keeping a home grown youngster why not show it.



Like people are talking about Rhys Evans now, if a RU club comes and offers him megabucks then rather than whining about the salary cap why don't we think maybe rather than spending on the likes of Matt King and Joel Monaghan, put one of our own on megabucks instead?



Saints a few years ago supposedly had the money to splash out on Sonny Bill Williams but they don't have it now to keep Kyle Eastmond...hmm. But I expect they will have the money to sign a leading NRL player to replace him who won't come cheap!

could we create a system in which clubs who already spend to the limit are given say an extra 10% on the premise that they have to give MONEY to an RFL marketing and develop fund, that money is distributed to other clubs.



So even though you get to spend an extra 10% on wages you have to put money in to raising the profile of your rivals so not only are you spending 10% extra on wages you also spend an 10% on the games development.



If you don't want to spend that money then you don't get the increase on the cap.

You could even perceive it as a positive bribe

I'm not an old fogey, so i can;t relate with some of what you say. However, What does excite you about Rugby League, if not James Graham and Sam Tomkins? Is there someone you see as more talented?



I agree that clubs do have the money to spend on big stars, and I agree we should promote home grown players more. But unlike what people are saying (or maybe as people are saying) this is a business/ competition. Clubs have to secure the best talent. Wigan talk about signing youngsters up and Sam for 5 years. I'd like to see those contracts. I don't think they would be as much as a big aussie name (who could probably wipe the floor with all of them) combined. If Rugby Union with the money decided to sign Sam Tomkins (who was probably on the biggest contract) they could. It's the name of the game. I don't resent that and i am not calling for the cap to be increased. I accept it and an organic growth is what is needed. Artificially raising the cap does not help anyone.

We must accept though that we are in no position at the moment to offer Evans a massive contract.



With Kyle Eastmond. You're right. They and many others didn't see the value for money. He had been given a chance several times and was (apparently) on Long's biggest wages and did not provide for the team. IT was a no brainer for him to leave. I would suggest the wait was not for St helens to make him a better offer. IT was trying to get some money back on him. We won't miss Kyle. Even if he makes it big in union, it doesn't mean anything to us. It's a shame he used St Helens though

You may not be an old fogey but you write as if you are suffering from senile dementia and in the possession of a damp patch around your groin area.

Sport is about emotion, tribalism and loyalty. Business is centred around none of these factors.



Ideally each RL club would be able to attract enough paying customers, advertising, merchandising sales etc to cover all salary and running costs, but the Engage Super League is not a financial utopia. To do well clubs must have a backer who has the wealth and passion to fund success.

We all want the very same thing, a thriving Super League, where we are able to attract / keep the very best players, and clubs are viable. Unfortunately with the Salary Cap at half that of RU and also less than the NRL we are at disadvantage.



The talent drain to RU has thankfully not been significant over recent years, perhaps that is because when choosing a code to follow the youngsters have already made their minds up that RU is where the money is so we don't even see some of the talented kids in RL, because they have already made their career choices which are driven by the higher earnings potential in RU.

That shouldn't just be an 'ideal' that should be the minimum of what each club does, otherwise its unsustainable. What you seem to be saying is, we can't afford to cover our costs, but we need to have a salary cap increase to allow us to spend beyond our means even more.



Like you say sport is about emotion, tribalism and loyalty. Fans support the club they aren't attached to a player.



Remember a few years ago Kevin Penny burst on the scene and he was linked with RU. We managed to outbid them to keep him but what would have been the loss if he had gone to union? Would our fans have said that without this exciting player there was no point watching Warrington, or would they have said, hmm ok we're left with Chris Riley so lets give Riley a chance and see what he can do and support him?



Look at the NRL, it has shedded players for years to Super League and that keeps up the vibrancy of the competition. Ten years ago Royce Simmons coached Penrith, they came bottom, and then the SL clubs came and raided them, we got Domic and Rodwell, Leeds got Matt Adamson, Halifax got Robbie Beckett, Widnes got Steve Carter. Result - John Lang came in and refreshed the team with new blood from their youth set up and two years later they were Grand Final winners. The turnover of players creates opportunities for new players who otherwise wouldn't get a chance. Now the NRL is facing players going to union, players going to AFL, but its not going to collapse, they just give opportunities to new blood and the fans get behind them.



In fact I wonder what the effect would have been on guys like Riley and Harrison if the salary cap had been higher, whats the betting we'd have signed another established winger and another established back rower, those guys wouldn't have had the chances they did.



If we are going to increase the cap then I think we need to seriously reduce the number of teams in SL, otherwise a lot of clubs will end up in the hands of the administrators, forget about clubs like Harlequins and Celtic Crusaders and possibly even clubs like Cas or Salford. There's no point having teams who are whipping boys who can't compete at the bottom, or teams who are in administration because they have gone into the red. If we do decide that as a sport we need only those with rich backers to be viable then we need to look at a small competition eg 8 team league, everybody plays everybody else 4 times.

Interesting point this about kids maximising their earnings. Back in the days of amateur rugby union and big name defections in our direction I know of talented RL players who were advised to play rugby union so that they could get the big pay-day when they "gave up amateurism" and signed for rugby league.



I would imagine now that Eastmond will be next year the highest paid 21 year old in the Guiness Premiership. If you are a similar age product of Bath's academy working his way through the system how would you feel about earning a quarter or less than Eastmond is. As a talented kid would you be better off playing league at junior level with the intent of cashing in by going to union in your early twenties?



Perhaps we need to be marketing ourself on this basis. So what if some of the kids do then go to union, there will be others who may stick with league either through choice or lack of union interest.

Spot on. And it could be argued that some of these kids playing union who see their paths to first team action barred by players brought in at great expense from league might be tempted to move across to league themselves. I'm sure some would be good enough.

Graham and Tomkins are young players with the major part of their careers ahead of them, plenty of time to write their own history - who's to say they won't be seen as all time greats? I'm biased as regards Tomkins, I see him as Wigan's greatest pure talent since Brett Kenny, and look at Graham's stats week on week, he's far and away the best forward in the league. And yes I remember Hanley etc and also the previous batch of greats - Millward, Murphy, Reilly, etc.

www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/leag ... 1bew1.html Maybe one day

www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/leag ... 1bew1.html Maybe one day

Hasn't Eastmond gone to Union for the opportunity to play for England on some of the biggest stages in the world? I would suspect that the money offered to him from both codes was very similar so this wouldn't have been the biggest motivational factor.