WCS latest Solly to the rescue.

[JoneslessBishop]

Well made points Parky. Defiantly a gap that need to be closed, and I have been saying for some time on here that the top teams have let standards slip. Williams to early replacing Green, Fallon for Aitom (who was no Buderus). The RFL have delivered a record TV deal, new commercial partners and a marquee signing rule, but the top clubs aren't using that money to sign marquee players to boost quality. That wouldn't remove the gap, but it would reduce it.

So the RFL have eveyright to demand improvement from the top teams. Should do so behind closed doors.

But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. We have been too guilty of that in the past

[foozler]

The SL cap has needed to be raised for a number of years now, but given the difficult economic times the game has been through since 2008 it was prudent to not do too much to it.

 

My understanding is that what the clubs receive from the tv deal covers the cap at its existing level, so of course it is time for the cap to be moved upwards to allow those clubs which are commercially successful off the field to spend more on the field. Sure not everyone will increase their spend and you will get winners and losers, but that's life. I'm not sure Newcastle Falcons are able spend the same as Leicester Tigers do, but you don't hear their head coach moaning about the cap being too high in the Premiership RU. FWIW I was amazed to read in an article with the new owner of Gloucester that the effective Premiership salary cap is just shy of £10million once all the exemptions and marquee rules are taken into account.

 

If you want to increase the quality of the RL playing pool in the UK, you need to make playing RL a financially attractive proposition to RU players, whether established stars such as say Danny Cipriani or Mike Brown or Jonathan Joseph or George North or up and coming stars. Why would any of them think twice about RL when they can currently earn a load more in RU? Let's face it, if Offiah or Davies, or Tait or Gibbs were playing rugby today, there is no way they would be in league. Would the young Shaun Edwards, captain of England schoolboys RU have gone on to play professionally for Wigan or would he have chosen to play RU?

 

The NRL pretty much has the pick of the best Aussie rugby talent, right now the sport here is handicapping itself too much with the low cap.

[JM2010]

Would an increase in the cap result in the standard of SL improving by attracting better quality imports ( but not more)and talented teenagers choosing to sign pro RL contracts instead of football or RU as they may be able to earn good money. Would it tempt top quality RU players to switch codes and help prevent RL players going the other way?

On the other hand, would it encourage teams to sign even more overseas players or pay the same quality of player we have now more money? Would all clubs be able to spend the cap or would it create a more uneven competition? Would it cause clubs to overspend or divert money from other budgets, such as development, to keep up with the top clubs?

If it's the first scenario I'm all for it but think it may end up being more like the second.

[deluded pom?]

The SL cap has needed to be raised for a number of years now, but given the difficult economic times the game has been through since 2008 it was prudent to not do too much to it.

My understanding is that what the clubs receive from the tv deal covers the cap at its existing level, so of course it is time for the cap to be moved upwards to allow those clubs which are commercially successful off the field to spend more on the field. Sure not everyone will increase their spend and you will get winners and losers, but that's life. I'm not sure Newcastle Falcons are able spend the same as Leicester Tigers do, but you don't hear their head coach moaning about the cap being too high in the Premiership RU. FWIW I was amazed to read in an article with the new owner of Gloucester that the effective Premiership salary cap is just shy of £10million once all the exemptions and marquee rules are taken into account.

If you want to increase the quality of the RL playing pool in the UK, you need to make playing RL a financially attractive proposition to RU players, whether established stars such as say Danny Cipriani or Mike Brown or Jonathan Joseph or George North or up and coming stars. Why would any of them think twice about RL when they can currently earn a load more in RU? Let's face it, if Offiah or Davies, or Tait or Gibbs were playing rugby today, there is no way they would be in league. Would the young Shaun Edwards, captain of England schoolboys RU have gone on to play professionally for Wigan or would he have chosen to play RU?

The NRL pretty much has the pick of the best Aussie rugby talent, right now the sport here is handicapping itself too much with the low cap.

I mean, look how well England performed at the RUWC because of their huge SC. Look how well the England football team do and they don't even have an SC.

[The Parksider]

 Williams to early replacing Green, 

 

Mr. Schofield made a big point of that saying Williams needs to pass more and not ignore overlaps, a criticism he also makes of Lee Gaskell. 

 

So your bang on with that!

[The Parksider]

The SL cap has needed to be raised for a number of years to allow those clubs which are commercially successful off the field to spend more on the field. Sure not everyone will increase their spend and you will get winners and losers, but that's life.

 

1. I was amazed to read in an article with the new owner of Gloucester that the effective Premiership salary cap is just shy of £10million  you need to make playing RL a financially attractive proposition to RU players. Why would any of them think twice about RL when they can currently earn a load more in RU? 

 

The NRL pretty much has the pick of the best Aussie rugby talent, right now the sport here is handicapping itself too much with the low cap.

 

That's a very fair and accurate assessment.

 

People should look at what your saying. Quality RU players, not just internationals and top club players are way beyond the budget of RL clubs and in a comfort zone in their own game.

 

There is only a crack in that door and I cite the fairytale rise of Josh Walters scorer of the winner at the grand final and IIRC he scorched through the Cowboys defence to go under the posts last weekend, couldn't get the ball down. Equally Tom Lineham is I believe a York RU convert.

 

At several times the salary cap of RL I fear RU taking them back if anything,

 

2. AFAIK even if we up the cap, Australia are upping it anyway. My $oz to £gb calculator seems to say NRL cap will be more than double ours.

 

But as one poster (forgive my memory) says we are dependant on hanging onto the coat tails of the NRL who are "overstaffed". They have "bad boys" they don't want, they follow good practice and release players "over the hill" not waiting until they are too far downhill, and they are able to reject younger players because of a surplus, who are not up to their standard but certainly ready made up to ours.

 

That gap showed with Mantellato a star at HKR and now Jy Hitchcox pops up with two tries...

 

We sign the left overs of the NRL, that is no criticism, it is an absolute necessity.......

 

3. Would an increase in the cap result in the standard of SL improving by attracting better quality imports 

4. Would it encourage teams to sign even more overseas players or pay the same quality of player we have now more money?

 

5. Would all clubs be able to spend the cap or would it create a more uneven competition? 

 

3. In theory of course. A six figure sum is already waiting for RU & NRL players to choose to drop a standard for more money. But you should note there have been no takers, and Dr.K. will have been waving that particular cheque book about.So to date no better quality players have signed on the marquee.

 

Beyond the marquee allowance (you can use it to keep players as well) a rise in the cap would need to be very large indeed to be able to offer more to a better rugby player whether RU or NRL to come and play RL in the Superleague - and here's the crack - after watching the blow out scores who is going to drop a standard.....

 

4. We sign the best overseas players available after NRL has had their pick and Catalans have had their pick of the French lads. By definition those left without contracts once we sign the best left overs are of an even lower standard than who we already have. There could be some fringe NRL players who may get a better deal here but you should remember they have to drop a standard and move across the world.

 

I don't think the Chairmen are stupid enough to over pay players, they know exactly the score on players.

 

5. Every club is different. Several chairmen voted for the cap on the basis they will not be prepared to "personally" fund (no club sits on a massive trading profit) say another £500K on the cap. My wild guess is this includes Caddick, McManus, O'Connor, Fulton, Davey, Carter and Hudgell.

 

Several clubs have chairmen who have not been averse to spending more via transfer fees, or by "going over budget" or actually allegedly going well over the cap itself and these may be Gausch, Moran, Pearson, possibly Lenegan, and definitely Koukash.

 

If by some about face the majority decide to put half a £Million on the cap then I think this will create massive upheaval. 

 

Widnes - O'Connor was so against spending beyond income that if the big clubs upped the cap he may as well pack in, and he has already taken a back seat.

 

HKR - Hudgell doesn't have big money but he and Crossland have managed to sub Rovers about half a £Million a year. That they are keen to up this may not be the case as they tried to sell out to Tony Larvin. 

 

Wakefield - Carter Will not spend over income, and will walk if anyone has a go at him. He has money and apparently would spend it on buying Belle Vue, but not better players.

 

These clubs are well behind the other nine already and if the cap goes up and they have their best three or four players taken to bolster the big clubs playing rosters, then it's more than likely they will walk. Chairmen are not fixtures forever, Glover walked quickly enough at Wakey, Omar Khan went through a revolving door. Wilkinson was at Salford for 25 years but walked after the stadium flop and left them for dead.

 

To me I would guess that a rise in the salary cap is not about bringing in players because they are not there and way out of budget. 

 

Quite a number of posters on here have made two significant repeating arguments.......

 

1. That clubs must find the money to run reserves teams and have a bigger playing staff because playing staff is threadbare at clubs, such that academy kids are often well up the shirt numbers.

 

2. That SL reduced to 12 because of a lack of money and a lack of quality players, in which top people in the game said that the cull to 12 may not be enough.

 

I therefore would guess that for the cap to go up Superleague would have to go down to 10 to accommodate chairmen who are vehemently against it and would not hang around if it happened and to give remaining clubs a bigger slice of the SL deal if their chairmen are reluctant to open their own wallets. 

 

Sorry for the long post KW's but these gentlemen asked and it breaks no rules. 

[JoneslessBishop]

Jeez Parky even in a post where I am essentially agree with you, you jump on half a sentence and find a tenuous arguement. Suppose as you are committed to filling 50% of most message boards you have to jump on everything you can

[foozler]

I mean, look how well England performed at the RUWC because of their huge SC. Look how well the England football team do and they don't even have an SC.

 

Soccer has no interest to me.

 

England RU went badly due to the abysmal coaching set up, not for a lack of quality players. Eddie Jones, a man with a serious international coaching pedigree or Stuart Lancaster who had never previously coached at senior level? Give it 12 months and you will see the difference a proper coach makes.

 

Bit like Saints, bin Cunningham and get in Robinson or Sheens or Maguire and you would see a dramatically different side and playing style emerge after a season. And that would be without a major squad overhaul.

 

You kind of missed the point anyway. Loads of people are bemoaning the fact that English RL has a smaller talent pool to draw on than the NRL. Historically that has always been the case, its just that until the mid-90s the sport could and did attract British rugby players from union because they could earn more in league. As things stand, these being a rugby union player is significantly more financially rewarding than being a league player so you won't be getting any of the decent half backs for example making a switch, and if you are a promising youngster the careers advice would be RU all day long if you want to earn the maximum from being a professional rugby player.

 

Raising the cap is about making sure youngsters at the English champions playing first team rugby are earning more than £16k pa, but also making a career as a league player a more financially attractive proposition to players in the other code.

[deluded pom?]

its just that until the mid-90s the sport could and did attract British rugby players from union because they could earn more in league.

Would that be because union was allegedly amateur and the reason to go north has now been removed?

[foozler]

That's a very fair and accurate assessment.

 

People should look at what your saying. Quality RU players, not just internationals and top club players are way beyond the budget of RL clubs and in a comfort zone in their own game.

 

There is only a crack in that door and I cite the fairytale rise of Josh Walters scorer of the winner at the grand final and IIRC he scorched through the Cowboys defence to go under the posts last weekend, couldn't get the ball down. Equally Tom Lineham is I believe a York RU convert.

 

At several times the salary cap of RL I fear RU taking them back if anything,

 

 

I seem to recall that Walters came to the Rhinos from Carnegie. A couple of years back I was at Headingley for the Aussie schoolboys game and there was a kid on the Leeds side whose junior club was down as Leeds Carnegie RU, and am fairly sure it was Walters. Which is great, but he was if you like an in-house transfer.

 

To an extent, I think it is not so much about making the game attractive to current union superstars. Let's be honest as long as he gets picked for Wales George North is never going to consider league unless his league club earnings can match what he gets at Northampton plus Wales. Jonathan Joseph would give Watkins serious competition for that right side centre spot, but unless a league club pays him £500k pa it won't happen. Quality English qualified half backs are as in short supply in union as they are in league, and so command serious money so you will really have to pull out all the stops to make it worthwhile for a George Ford or Owen Farrell to even consider a switch back to the code they played in their youth.

 

It has to be a medium/ longer term project to make playing a more attractive career pathway for junior players, and it does fit with the ever expanding geographic reach of the sport at lower levels. If you are a talented young rugby player down in the south west, say the Gloucester/ Cheltenham area, and you have played both codes, you might prefer the thought of a career as a league professional because you prefer the sport, but right now union will be the obvious choice because if Leeds Rhinos offer you £16k, Gloucester or Bath or Worcester or even Bristol will probably offer you double that.

 

Clearly RL is very unlikely to ever be able to match the salaries on offer in RU, but if you can reduce the difference to a point where Leeds can offer you say two thirds what you would get in union then that should start to make a difference.

[redjonn]

I mean, look how well England performed at the RUWC because of their huge SC. Look how well the England football team do and they don't even have an SC.

 

Too simplistic.

 

Its the clubs. English Premier together with France RU are the strongest financially.  Same as Soccer. They thus are able to attract the best players. Thus impacts the national team. They can't restrict the numbers from Europe. Rugby can of course implement a rule to restrict numbers from outside Europe which is where most other players are.    Lets not forget that both English RU and Soccer have at times dominated Europe competition.  Of course in soccer other leagues now have greater investment cutting down that advantage.

 

Lets not forget that due to the massive monies from broadcasters/Sky that all premier soccer clubs can attract best players in the world and compete with the bigger clubs more irrespective of their own activity income.  So having no salary cap helps them.

 

In RL their is only really one other country. They have the strongest league. We improve our international prospects by having English/British players playing their.    If international is sole priority then we would further improve that by having more playing in NRL and allow the domestic league to weaken further and we can become like NZ RL. The salary cap doesn't help that but we could go down the NZ route and have a GB warriors to further help international team if international is sole priority I guess.

 

I guess one of the main difference philosophically between some of us is: a sort of communist utopia RL game where we pull the game down to the weakest denominator   or   we have scope to allow those clubs that are more commercially successful to benefit.    

 

My concern is that teams are leveled out by an incredible low salary cap despite how successful clubs are overall.  Thus impacting the better run clubs in the long term - that is why bother with the effort.

 

Given the relatively low rewards for all the effort and sacrifice to be a professional player with a short career span I wonder why some bother.

[The Parksider]

Jeez Parky even in a post where I am essentially agree with you, you jump on half a sentence and find a tenuous arguement. Suppose as you are committed to filling 50% of most message boards you have to jump on everything you can

 

You agreed with me post #101 I agreed with you  #107.

 

What's the problem? If it's me pointing out that you assassinated a man you agreed with then it was all in good natured lively debate. 

 

But accept my apology and note the deletion.

[The Parksider]

It has to be a medium/ longer term project to make playing a more attractive career pathway for junior players, and it does fit with the ever expanding geographic reach of the sport at lower levels. If you are a talented young rugby player down in the south west, say the Gloucester/ Cheltenham area, and you have played both codes, you might prefer the thought of a career as a league professional because you prefer the sport, but right now union will be the obvious choice because if Leeds Rhinos offer you £16k, Gloucester or Bath or Worcester or even Bristol will probably offer you double that.

 

Clearly RL is very unlikely to ever be able to match the salaries on offer in RU, but if you can reduce the difference to a point where Leeds can offer you say two thirds what you would get in union then that should start to make a difference.

 

The RFL/WRL have of course moved to create pathways to SL for players outside the SL region not just the Midlands, Wales and down south but also Cumbria with academies and schools.

 

On the latter point and on a topical note the message in Cumbria is you too can be like Kyle Amor (a cracking forward not a grizzly bear lookalike)

 

Having avidly followed all this directly for years and read up on it all I could be buoyed by the fact the Ben Flowers, Rhys Evans, Gil Dudsons, Lloyd Whites. Kyle Amors, Tony Clubb's, Louis McCarthy's, Shaun Lunts, Dan Sarginsons and Oliver Wilkes of this world are a healthy production line of players outside the heartlands that augment the professional playing roster within the heartlands.

 

But my reservation is based on the opinions of the London coaches that once London left Superleague the London production line would dry up.

 

and Celtic C left Superleague 2009 and the flow of welsh players is no more

 

and Workington was the last full time club in Cumbria who reverted to part time in 1997 there are few Cumbrians in Superleague.

 

My research tends to show the vast bulk of our home grown players come from areas around Superleague clubs, so we are dependant on Humberside, Central lancashire and West yorkshire to provide English professionals.

 

The RFL/WRL certainly did quite a bit on pathways for players outside the M62 but sadly they kind of shut the stable door after the horses had bolted.

 

Some SL clubs partnered with the Gloucesters and South Wales in the hope of some talent being left hanging about, but notably these associations went pretty cold. 

[The Parksider]

In RL their is only really one other country. They have the strongest league. We improve our international prospects by having English/British players playing their.    If international is sole priority then we would further improve that by having more playing in NRL and allow the domestic league to weaken further and we can become like NZ RL. The salary cap doesn't help that but we could go down the NZ route and have a GB warriors to further help international team if international is sole priority I guess.

 

I guess one of the main difference philosophically between some of us is: a sort of communist utopia RL game where we pull the game down to the weakest denominator   or   we have scope to allow those clubs that are more commercially successful to benefit.    

 

My concern is that teams are leveled out by an incredible low salary cap despite how successful clubs are overall.  Thus impacting the better run clubs in the long term - that is why bother with the effort.Given the relatively low rewards for all the efforts why do players bother

 

Your GB Warriors analogy is quite brilliant.

 

But we have our own league because there's £200,000,000 to be gained from SKY. In turn the NRL's player production line enables us to obtain players to stock that league with their large surplus, whilst they take our best in return.

 

If the number of quality northern english SL players is dropping you can always put France, London and Wales in SL  , but if that fails to work adequately you can always drop the requirement for quality professionals by cutting the number of clubs in SL 

 

If that doesn't work and your still have "weak denominators" you can always cut a couple more out and he presto, the problem is reduced.

 

We need less players who we can pay more to. Solved.

 

Dare you name your "weak denominators" though??

[deluded pom?]

Parky, please stop using Humberside. It ceased to exist years ago as an administrative area. There aren't that many professional RL players to have come out of North Lincolnshire.

[The Parksider]

Parky, please stop using Humberside. It ceased to exist years ago as an administrative area. There aren't that many professional RL players to have come out of North Lincolnshire.

 

OK fair enough, that phrase "Humberside RL" will never leave this keyboard again.

 

After this weekends matches can I use the collective term "weak denominator" instead?

 

There actually aren't many professional RL players that come out of North Bradford so I will suffix this club as Bradford southern.

[deluded pom?]

OK fair enough, that phrase "Humberside RL" will never leave this keyboard again.

 

After this weekends matches can I use the collective term "weak denominator" instead?

 

There actually aren't many professional RL players that come out of North Bradford so I will suffix this club as Bradford southern.

Works for me. Can we now call Leeds the weakest link? Goodbye

[redjonn]

Your GB Warriors analogy is quite brilliant.

 

But we have our own league because there's £200,000,000 to be gained from SKY. In turn the NRL's player production line enables us to obtain players to stock that league with their large surplus, whilst they take our best in return.

 

If the number of quality northern english SL players is dropping you can always put France, London and Wales in SL  , but if that fails to work adequately you can always drop the requirement for quality professionals by cutting the number of clubs in SL 

 

If that doesn't work and your still have "weak denominators" you can always cut a couple more out and he presto, the problem is reduced.

 

We need less players who we can pay more to. Solved.

 

Dare you name your "weak denominators" though??

 

 

Chuckle, we are both being a little "tongue in cheek".... and nope wouldn't want to name them as likely to offend, besides which I don't have the club financials and hence would be making assumptions.