www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/leag ... -u04i.html To me this seems a very well thought out idea, and its principle is something i have been in favour of for a long time, that is look at the squad make up, rather than pure monetary value to even the league and keep our best players

www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/leag ... -u04i.html To me this seems a very well thought out idea, and its principle is something i have been in favour of for a long time, that is look at the squad make up, rather than pure monetary value to even the league and keep our best players

Who dishes out the points for the ratings?

Edit: Just read the whole article and answered my own question.

Carry on

Normally helps

I would add though, the points values would need to be set at the start of the season and last for the whole of that season

Fledgling clubs would struggle wouldn't they? New clubs with fresh licenses would have no option but to sign players from other clubs. They'd rack up 100 points pretty quickly.

I thought it was a rational well thought out idea, that alone makes it a non starter in the UK. But seriously for the NRL it would work. There was another article in the same paper from Phil Gould stating that the salary cap as initialy mooted was to keep clubs solvent not even out the competition. We in the UK must decide do we want hold back clubs who can spend above the amounts of the cap? .My opinion at the moment likes the points idea as it would allow the better off clubs to attract & keep class players while letting smaller clubs like mine keep its home produced lads (if we manage to do it) the only cap needed is to ensure clubs cannot spend over their income or borrow money they cannot pay back. As with all new ideas I may well have got it wrong & there may be glaring problems but its worth considering.

yeah, i suppose we would look at dispensations for them, for instance giving them 130 points, reduced by 5 per year so that in 2 franchise periods they are level.

Also i would like to see it linked in with the quota, so that while a rep player would cost 6 points, a player from the NRL would cost 8 points, and a player from the NRL who didnt play in 60% of their teams games the previous year would cost 10 points

The points system could still be abused.

Lets say that the England coach had strong alegiances to a particular club, and if a player earns an international call up he gets a higher points rating.

We might then see, some players promoted early to disadvantage a rival club, or alternatively other players held back from international competition to help the favoured club.

The cap is needed for two reasons too encourage competition and to stop and salry race to bankrupty.

Footballs premiership is a fine example of the free market in operation. Portsmouth and Hull are as good as financially ruined. Meanwhile the premiership is bland competition where the winners are known before the season started. It has become a sport were the cheque bookrules, rather than good coaching and player development.

i think thats a fairly paranoid assumption.

And one that can also be abused under this system, most players have international recognition bonus' written into their contract, we dont see the same happening with SC now.

Also if you really were that scared about it put a cap on the amount of points a club can accumulate through England/GB recognition. If a club brought through 10 players of GB quality i would be happy to see them rewarded for doing so

At first glance it seems reasonable but might it lead to a situation where players offered a representative position are "bribed" by their clubs not to take it? It could be damaging to the international game, maybe?

I’ve never been a fan of the salary cap, and I’ve always thought it to be unworkable. I agree with the principle and aims of its introduction but, if abused by some clubs, it is potentially worse than having a free market, Premiership football system in place.

Damian Irvine’s system, on the face of it, seems a little more open and unfudgeable. If the points system is both rigorous and fair, we can all actually monitor the system ourselves.

There are areas that would need working out, but Damian Irvine’s idea has got to be worth a shot.

.....but he's right about the wendyball 'premiership'. Crazy free-for-alls will end up like this all the quicker in a game like RL where there is a lot less money and far fewer bored billionaires ready to buy some glory with their spare cash.

why would they? Why would a club chairman spend a huge amount more money on a player other clubs just wouldnt want to spend the money on?

Chairmen arent stupid, you dont get to be rich by paying out money you dont need to. With the points system you couldnt get a team full of superstars so why would you bother paying average players more money just because there isnt a rule to say you cant?

what the points system would mean is that Leeds could have offered Lee Smith more money to stay at leeds (which is clearly a good thing, stopping us losing young talent to union) but Warrington couldnt try to buy success by offering more than Leeds (because Smith would count more on Warringtons cap than Leeds)

Its a very very paranoid mindset that would think this would result in huge amounts more money going to players, because it wouldnt

the Wendyball 'premiership' is at least as competitive, if not more so than Super League

The problem with the point's system, in the UK at least, is that virtually no club in SL are making a profit. The cap itself was more away to stop the lower clubs spending themselves out of business rather than to level out the field. If you remove the financial restriction you may cause the game more harm than good.

should clubs who cant be trusted not to spend more than they have, have a place in a franchised super league? especially when they dont need to over spend to put out a competitive squad as the point system would mean clubs couldnt hoard players and there would always be players of sufficient quality that couldnt find a place elsewhere

Erm, where have you been the last 115 years or so? Loads of clubs have gone to the wall spending money they didn't have on players that weren't worth it.

if only it were so simple and we could be so naive, it would be easy

This system would not work in SL or for NZ.
NZ Warriors, Catalans and Crusaders would have a squad made up of rep players as any French or Welsh players make the national squad and more NZ Warriors would be involved in their national side than you would expect from other NRL sides.
Possibly a reverse points system for Rep players of developing countries, or Expansion countries having a discount on their rep players.

though this would be countered by the fact that these players these clubs brought through to international representation would be discounted as developed players


i would think this was a good idea anyway

As Roofaldo said the Salary Cap was put into place to save clubs from themselves to prevent them spending more than they could to compete and going to the wall. It's just that since then the RFL and SKY have chosen to focus on the secondary effect (a by-product in reality) of evening the competition so most people have forgotten the real reason that the SC exists.

While the points system would mean clubs couldn't hoard the top players it does not mean that the other clubs could afford to take those discarded players. For sake of example :- Harlequins and Salford make enquiries about a (non-rep) centre at Leeds but on finding out his salary demands cannot afford him due to their finances (no cap limit added to Leeds much larger turnover means they can price out most other clubs by paying larger average salaries without risking meltdown). Said centre gains international caps and as a result Leeds cannot keep him due to the points increase. He has to go, Quins and Salford have the points to spare but know that they cannot afford his salary (and will face financial ruin if they buy him) so he ends up going to Warrington who can afford his wage and they offload two fringe players to get under the points. The fringe players end up at Quins and Salford. Top player still goes to a bigger club and the poorer clubs feed off the scraps.

You cannot expect any player to take a pay cut simply because the clubs that can afford his points cannot meet his current wage. To attempt to compete and without the restraints of a cash cap clubs like Salford and Quins would be forced to spend more than they could afford and risk folding. Players like the centre in my example would be more likely to end up going to RU as the only RL clubs that were rich enough to pay their salary would not be able to employ them due to the points system. Such players would then have only two options take a (pretty much enforced) pay cut or cross codes and get their current wage.

yet the SC has no relevance to how much a club can afford to pay, it is much higher than some, much lower than others.

this example would happen the same under an a salary cap. If Leeds cannot afford him under the cap, and Salford/quins cannot afford him anyway yet Warrington can he will go to warrington, whether you use a points system or a salary cap.

besides, the limit on points would also have the affect of limiting wages, not through an arbitrary number of a total wage bill, but through the market affects of supply and demand. If Leeds have 2 rep centres, whether the 3rd rep centre wants £100k or £1M Leeds cant keep him as his value to the squad is less about his wage demands and more about the players elsewhere in the squad they would need to let go to accomodate a rep centre in reserve

you can expect that because thats what would have to happen. A players value is only their value on the open market, if a club isnt willing to pay them £100k then they will have to accept less whether you have a points system or a hard cap

A points system would limit the wage escalation between RL clubs because the price is limited by the points but it would allow them to compete with RU, and even offer an alternative to RU for RU players.

in your example, player A plays for Leeds as a junior and progresses to a first team player and then to international level. Under this proposal he would be worth 4 points on the points cap as a developed player to Leeds and 6 to everyone else.

This would mean when negotiating his next contract, Leeds can afford to keep him under the points cap (regardless of wage) but Warrington would likely need to release either 1 developed rep player, or 2 experienced non rep players to fit player A under their cap. This has the affect of not only reducing his value to Warrington but also reducing the amount of players on which Warrington could afford to pay under the cap. So any extra they pay to Player A is offset by the fact they would need to release players B and C (though maybe not fully) this would limit the escalation in wages for player A.

This would also limit the amount of rep players at one club which would ensure an even spread of talent as it would limit which clubs could be in for which players meaning clubs like Quins and Salford would be more likely to pick up a star as there would be more who couldnt get a gig at each club, its simple supply and demand

That's true, but these teams might still be disadvantaged. Say Catalans bring a player through to represent France at an early age and then for one reason or another the player is no longer needed (or wanted), perhaps a new coach and new systems or loss of form etc. Would that player be more difficult for Catalans to move on because he would be more expensive to other clubs? Might they be stuck with him?

My point was that changing from a cash salary cap to a points quota system would not alleviate the problems that we have with differences in squad standards due to vast differences in income for different clubs. The cash ceiling as it currently stands fixes the average salary at £60k - £65K. Removing the cash ceiling would allow previously restricted salaries to climb above that. You only have to look at RL pre SC to see that clubs with larger turnovers will offer players more cash to price out competitors and that the smaller clubs will overspend to get players to keep up and will ultimately fail and go to the wall. Most of the SL clubs cannot pay full cap.

You are fooling yourself if you think that with only so many points to use and no rule to restrict squad salary that bigger clubs will say to their players "we can keep you here but your wage is limited to a certain amount" due to the points quota and that players will meekly accept. The principal deciding factor in player wages is what the player's agent can get any club in either code (or even AFL) to pay him. Agents will play off one club against another as they do in sports with no SC like soccer and as they still do in RL with the SC. The pay cut hits the agent as well as the player so he will steer his client into RU with the guarantee of the same salary if needing to.

The next Keith Senior or Martin Gleeson wil still require a similar level of salary to those two. A player getting representative honours will still demand a higher wage than one who hasn't played representative RL. Regardless of the number of points they have on their quota a club like Quins or Salford is still unlikely to be able to pay more than one top level player (if they can even afford to do that) without facing going out of business. There is also still going to be the type of Richie Myler situation, he was getting Rep honours at Salford but still couldn't wait to get away and join a bigger club with more hope of silverware. This despite Salford offering in their words to make him the best paid player ever at Salford. He still wanted to play for a bigger club over one of the smaller ones and other players will feel the same. You cannot force players to join any club against their wishes

Changing to a points quota will not solve any problems we have now, they will still exist. The only way the squad strengths will balance is by every club growing their businesses to a point where all are able to pay the same total salary (full cap ideally). Then a player will be able to go to any club and get the same wage and all clubs will have an equal chance of competing for honours by being able to pay players of the same standard as the other clubs throughout their squad.

Bringing in a salary cap floor at a low level initially and requiring all SL clubs to be able to prove they can pay that minimum amount to get a licence would be a way to work towards a truly even playing field. The floor could then be raised over a sequence of licence cycles. This would drive all clubs to grow their businesses and increase turnover to get in and would have more chance of eventually evening all 14 clubs than any points quota would.

Nop. Sorry, I've read this four times and still don't see the logic.

Quite simply, some clubs in SL cannot afford to pay as much in salaries for their squad as others. Salford for example do not have the resources of Leeds. Not all clubs can afford to spend full cap and so do not.

Changing to a points system rather than a salary cap to constrain club squads may mean that one big club will have to release a player to fit into the points quota (as they have to with the SC anyway). It does not however alter the fact that the smaller clubs cannot afford to pay these players so the top players will still gravitate towards bigger clubs with bigger turnover.