I have a feeling Chicko will turn up in Jan and all will be forgotten - I hope!

I think the club are as certain as can be he's not coming back otherwise they wouldn't have offered the shirt deal to the fans.

I don't know if you can play him now even if he did come back.

About as likely as Denny Solomona scoring 40+ tries in a yawnion season .

The article on the website on 05/12 talks about a "decision to renege", so I suspect he has formally communicated a withdrawal from the contract - hence the decision at this stage to consider legal action and offer to redo the shirts, without waiting until the return date of 03/01.

I'm going to take a punt that GH will get Cameron for 2017 and get 'Smith 9' put on the back

Joking apart Leeds haven't made a big name signing to get excited about since Buderus came over in 2009. And not one this decade!

Think I said "since Lauiti'iti" a few months ago, though I'd forgotten about Buderus.

Not just a Leeds issue though is it? Big name signings are a thing of the distant past among all SL clubs over the past decade.

If I were to summarise the past decade of SL in as fewer words as possible, I'd opt for [i"[uManaged decline[/u"[/i.

He will be lucky to get 40 passes if he signs for the bum sniffers mate!!

William surely you meant mismanaged decline

Leeds were given information that Segeyaro was telling players over in aus before anything was even announced, they just chose to ignore it.

You could certainly argue a very strong case for decline as a result of mismanagement.

There has also been a managed decline which is most evident when you consider the salary cap in SL. This has fallen in real terms (accounting for inflation) by around 40% since the late 1990's and by around 30% during the last decade alone.

Some SL club chairmen have also argued for a lowering of the cap. I believe GH himself is on record somewhere of arguing for a lowering of the salary cap?

There's other stuff going on which SL management has no control over like the recession and the value of sterling against the Aussie dollar which has also had a huge effect on the number and quality of signings from down under.

However, a state of managed decline is where the game resides with little knowledge or know how of how to turn things around as clubs do little more than hang around for their next handout from Sky. The fans meanwhile are being sold turds rolled in sugar.

I don't think they ignored it, but it would be stupid to make any rash statements before telling Segeyaro the potential consequences of him deciding not to come back.

If we take him to court there is a decent chance we could make him pay the value of his contract (or at least some of it), I believe SBW had to do similar whn he left Canterbury.

A more useful option though, might be to buy a hooker (say Dwyer) with a transfer fee, and then Leeds could quite clearly prove to a court that Segeyaro had caused them loss of revenue, and force Segeyaro to effectively pay for his own replacement.

Can't argue with much of that. Clubs don't generate enough income, but can continue to run at lower cost, so don't speculate to accumulate.

The salary cap and sky contracts mean there's little advantage to be gained by earning more than is needed to pay players.

The result is that when the best competition is paying way more money, it's a no brainer for the top talent to leave

A good summary of where things are, and have been going for a good few years. It's tough to see how things turn around from here and it's more realistic to think that SL will continue to slide in the wrong direction.

Mid 1970's and early 1980's were pretty grim, during that era when there was an international ban on recruiting overseas players from down under and vice versa. I'm of the opinion this current era is a match for those grim times, at the very least.

There doesn't appear to be any options to turn things around. The sport seems to be waiting for a magic solution to come along but in the meantime, just plod along with the downgrades year upon year.

If Sky do ever withdraw their financial backing and the game has to fend for itself, it will return to its former semi-pro status with perhaps a handful of the bigger clubs managing to maintain full time pro status courtesy of a wealthy backer. There will be several dodgy specimens with questionable business interests among that lot getting involved as well

I too fear that RL will wither on the vine.
You could argue that now that the other code is fully professional there is no longer any place for a second code of rugby.

Sky withdrawing their support is a sobering thought, isn't it? I wonder if clubs could support themselves and if the players would be happy to become part-timers on a significantly lower wage. I very much doubt it.

Arguably, we're held to ransom by Sky. All the more reason that the RFL should be doing everything they can to support the clubs and ensure that, when big name overseas players do sign (and in doing so improve the game), they see out their contracts.

Completely agree on all points.

Luckily for RL in this country, Sky have had a bit of a wobble and have lost the rights to Rugby Union and a lot of top level football, so I think that should keep them interested in Super League for the foreseeable. They do tend to see RL as a 'filler' sport though, so if/when they regain the rights to more top level football and RU, we will see RL shunted to even more obscure time slots and away from the main channels to red button/online formats. This could also be the time they decide to drop the price they'll pay for RL, and the worry is, what serious competition will be out there to bump up the rights value - particularly with the current level of rugby being played in Super League.
Name 1 current super league player who has the same sort of exposure or national profile as Schofield, Hanley, Offiah, Jonathan Davies.... The only RL players from the last decade or so with any sort of profile are Burgess and Farrell (both got more exposure due to RU) and Sinfield (Sustained success, but more the SPOTY nomination which was after he retired from RL anyway).

The profile of the sport is at an all time low nationally. BIG BIG problems!

The static salary cap is really crippling us at the moment.

A quick Google shows £1.8m in 2000 (I can't remember the exact salary cap at the time) is £2.82m now.

The NRL Salary Cap is $7m in 2017, which at todays rate converts to £4.15m.

Union's Premiership will be £7m I believe next season (171icon_cool.gif.

And the NRL cap is scheduled to be raised to around $10m in 2018. The problem we have over here is that the sport simply can't afford to raise the cap - there's currently not enough money in the game here to support it, the issues run much deeper and there is no short term or quick fix.

The current position in the NRL is that the clubs will receive funding of 130% of whatever their cap is from the NRL (though the NRL are trying to lower this now). Our clubs simply don't get that level of financial support and most appear incapable of raising enough funds to support an increased cap.

It seems to me that the only hope is twofold:
first, that folk get fed up of seeing overseas mercanaries providing most if not all of the players in the Premieer Legue - Sky's soccer viewing figures are falling.
Secondly, that BT Sport or another TV provider competes with sky for the next era of superleague.

True, but with BT coming in as a competitor to Sky, and for the first time it looks reasonably serious competition, Price hikes for TV deals will continue to Sky rocket (pardon the pun

), no matter how much people think the money in the game is at vulgar levels. SKY have already shown they are prepared to cut other sports adrift in the desperate efforts to hog most of the football, they have released a lot of the Tennis package they had and the Ashes cricket has gone to BT, so the worry has to be that they would do the same to RL next time the renewal comes. Or at least offer us a reduced price as there is no obvious competitor to them for it. It would maybe help if the RFL lobbied the likes of BT to get them bidding off with sky on SL rights but we all know how well the RFL do at selling the game so that is highly unlikely to happen.

BT's coverage of RU & the premier league is the equal if not better than Sky's in my opinion.

don't watch union but football they have really caught sky up

I can't stand Alan Parry on the football or Mark Robson commentating on the rugby, both on Sky.
Plus Stuart Barnes has always been anti RL.
Has there been any announcement yet as to the new Sky RL commentary team?