That's not a logical conclusion, you've straw manned his argument, and unnecessarily polarised the debate. There are a multitude of possible models that other sports use to crete competition stability. Like I said in an [url=http://viewtopic.php?p=15228868#p15228868earlier post[/url

i disagree. I dont believe it to be a straw man, though i would agree it polarised the debate, but only to highlight the hypocrisy.

i dont doubt that there many options in between, that isnt what my argument was against

there are many ways in which the administration of the game places limits on clubs, demands certain standards, and other way influences the way that the club is run, not always in that clubs best interests, to safeguard the stability of the sport.

Either we accept that as a necessary evil, or we dont.

It is hypocritical to say we can place restrictions on what clubs can spend, how many overseas players they can bring in etc, which may in some cases be to the detriment to an individual club but put in place (rightly or wrongly) for the benefit of the game as a whole, but not put a restriction on who gets admission to the league even though it is restricted for the benefit of the game as a whole. Especially when the argument put forward wasnt that this would disproportionately disadvantage the lower league clubs, but that it is fundamentally wrong to restrict clubs.

It is also one of the clearest examples possible of the flatcappers hypocrisy that demands p+r between Pro and Semi-pro game, but not the Semi-pro and amateur game.

Cant believe I'm rising to your bait, but youre such a plum, smokey.

You may call me a "flatcapper", but i am not against promotion and relegation to and from any league - it's sporting reward for achievements on the pitch and reward for failures on the pitch - everybody knows where they stand at the start of each season and you dont get all this pathetic in fighting amongst supporters of a minority sport that needs everyone pulling together if it is to expand and become better watched. The in fighting you seem to love fanning the flames of.

My point is this, although you rabidly support licensing and all it stands for, you seem totally opposed to salary caps. Even you cant see the hypocrisy in this? Licensing is designed to make the game fairer, allegedly, and to stop all clubs overstretching themselves. Yet the salary cap, which is designed to do exactly the same thing, as well as make a competition fairer, you oppose? Is that because your beloved club cant buy their way to success - I seem to remember them trying to do that for many years and throwing good money away after bad. How can you support one scheme to improve the sport, licensing, which is an underhand scheme to deliver the sport Sky wants and removes natural selection, but not support the very thing that is saving clubs from themselves and looking after british talent.

I'm sure the salary cap has saved my club Halifax from itself in recent years and know for a fact that it has turned the championship into a fantastic competition. It is that hypocrisy that us supporters of "lower league" clubs cant abide

You've come up with this suggestion before and I'm genuinely puzzled. You posit it as a 'half-way house' between annual P&R and franchising. And it would be, if franchising was as it is in the NRL, for instance: once you're in, you're in for ever. But that's not the case with the the current SL licensing system. And four year licenses is not in any way a compromise between annual (semi) automatic P&R and the current three-year license system. In fact it's the opposite. To oppose the current three-year license system and offer as a compromise a four year license shows, imo, either stupidity or a total lack of understanding of the current system.

everybody knows where they stand at the start of each season now.


you have just made exactly the same argument i have. Exactly the same. How did you think this was an argument against it?

also, you are wrong, i do believe in a Salary Cap, just not this one. I have always argued that the SC should be part of an overall effort to get clubs to what we need them to do. I want to make it harder for clubs to buy success, i want them to be forced to invest in youth, i want them to be forced to only bring in the BEST overseas players. I want clubs like Hull KR which regularly put out a team with no youngsters they have developed, or one or two at most. Clubs which are finding ways to bring in their 11th/12th overseas player to be punished by seeing a poor product on the field. I want the SC to be used to do this. The current one doesnt do this. The current one is counter productive to this.



if you bothered to actually read what I put rather than having your jerking knee block your vision, you wouldnt have to be unable to abide none-existant hypocrisy