history has told us that when clubs need to spend more than they have to create a competitive squad they will, and when they dont they dont. Under a points system they dont

Less than they are now

no they dont. Warrington can pay Matt King £80m a season if they want, it doesnt mean leeds need to pay Keith Senior any more.
it was an example of your premise, the figures were picked out of the air. Use any figures you like the premise is the same, Use pounds, shillings, drachma, euros, dollars, whatever you please, the premise stays the same

so no worse than the current cap then
Did you miss the whole part where we limit the amount and quality of players a club can sign?

But they do, players demand more when more is available, and unless a club pays it, the players don't sign. You appear to be attempting to portray RL as a closed shop in respect of a points system, but not in an monetary cap system.



Why are you wittering on about currency when that has nothing to do with the point made?



And no better, so what's the point?



The only definitive way of assessing quality is international caps, everything else is opinion. You can't have a cap based on opinion.

SmokeyTA

You are either too stubborn to admit you may be wrong as you were the OP or you are simply unable to understand that other people are able to see and identify reasons why this system would not be any better at levelling the spread of quality through the clubs. Myself and Billinge Lump have given examples and the reasons why removing the cash ceiling in favour of a points quota would not help the smaller clubs to recruit those players the top clubs couldn't keep and you have added your own arbitrary figures to try to dispute them. You also seem to be under a delusion that with no upper limit to restrict their spending that clubs (and rival codes) will start to pay players less than they do now. Your arbitrary figures are put in to follow that fanciful idea.

Leaving aside monetary reasons there is another salient reason why this system would be no better at creating parity. The stated points values give no differentiation between quality of representative honours (so somebody representing Australia in a World Cup Final costs no more points than somebody who represents Serbia in a test match with Netherlands). Under that system Eamonn O' Carroll and Karl Fitzpatrick (academy produced, number of years service, represented Ireland) incur the same points cost for Wigan and Salford as James Graham for Saints and more incredibly the same points as Billy Slater, Greg Inglis and Cameron Smith cost Melbourne. No disrespect to Eamonn or Karl but whilst good for their clubs they are not in the same league as those others. Equal points does not mean equal standard of player. Six players that have represented Serbia or Jamaica within Wakefield's squad (for example) cost the same points as Wigan having the entire World Cup winning pack in their squad.

I am not saying that the SC is a lot better at keeping the competition closer, it isn't, but this system as can be demonstrated in two important ways is no better at doing it either.

Also there is no benchmark for what equates to having "NRL experience" or in our case SL experience. Does Jonny Walker with his one sub appearance for Wigan count as SL experienced, if he does not then how many appearances can Walker make before he takes up two precious quota points. Does Liam Farrell count with 4 appearances? Or Jamie Foster with 3 appearances?

What happens if as at clubs like Quins, Saints and Leeds you suffer a large amount of injuries at once and are forced to play young players. In such a situation a player may have to be used once at aged 17 but never appear again for the club until he is 20 (when he is deemed ready rather than necessity forcing his selection). Does that player count as SL experienced and take up two quota points for the intervening 3 years?

not at all, clubs are limited in their spending by an arbitrary total that bares no relation to their financial position. But they are limited in what they can spend. Under a points system they would only be limited by their financial position and common sense. The prices wouldnt be forced up because they wouldnt need to go out and spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on every player because every player they were allowed to attract simply wouldnt be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds and any club stupid enough to do that would deserve to go bust, we wouldnt lose by having clubs which are that poorly run leaving the top tier of the game


you surely cannot be that stupid, i can only assume you are avoiding the point (which is actually two points you are oh so subtly trying to avoid)

because it does allow clubs, where they see fit, to pay some players more, it also allows us to compete with union when a club decides it has the financial clout to do so

well had you actually read the article you would see all criteria was definitive not opinion based.

You can have a cap based on opinion. The best subjective measure of a player's value is how much clubs are willing to pay him. So put a cap on total spending and let the clubs decide which players are higher quality and so worthy of a higher salary. Sorted.
Any objective measure will be far too co to be effective.

what you are failling to understand is that under a monetary ceiling players still need to leave the big clubs, they still then need to go join the smaller clubs, under a points system the smaller clubs cant offer anymore or less they an offer exactly the same so for a player moving from a big club to a small club union is no more attractive. It is completely irrelevant.

you also now seem to be arguing that we need to concentrate all the good players at the big clubs because the smaller clubs cant afford them and if they were to leave the big clubs they would likely go to union. But proposing that lowering the amount of money we offer each player (which is what a monetary cap does) will somehow stop this, Which is blatantly nonsense.

And you are just wrong, there is no other way of describing it. If Leeds, Quins, Salford and Wire are all competing for a player, taking Leeds and Wire out of the equation makes it much easier for quins and Salford to sign them, it also puts quins and salford in a better bargaining position with the player so they can strike a better bargain.

there would of course be a set criteria for international honours, i would agree it would be silly to equate a kangeroo cap in a 4 nations final with playing for malta in the Mediterranean cup
leaving aside your demonstration being full of holes, counter-intuitive and contradictory it would keep the competition closer because clubs would be forced to invest in youth just to fill a squad of 25, this would mean more players, a stronger base, more spread and as such a more even competition


read the article, it tells you the benchmark and sets the criteria, you are aware of it because you mention it below, which is a little strange
there would be a set number of appearances in a season, i would say 10, 3 years after you make 10 appearances in a season you become a fully fledged player

except a cap based on total spending means the decision the club makes isnt on that players quality, but that players quality in relation to the space the have left on the cap ONLY.

A club may very well be of the opinion a player is worth £200k but if they only have £100k left then they cant offer than player a contract subjectively measured against his value

Both sides of this argument have some merit and like most it would seem, initially im not pro this system. Some great points have been made though and it COULD be worth a closer look at some point.
I also get the impression it could work a lot better in Australia.

Further to the union point; to be honest I think their raids on RL have been stopped to a large extent by a) their financial position and b) the failures of most who have gone. When we see people like Tomkins, Eastmond etc go, then we should be worried. Lee Smith? hmm not really

Lastly I'd be much more in favour of artificially raising the cap in time with a bonus system dependant on youth policy and a raise (not financially but a ten percent gain in theory) on overseas players. Teams still spend the same money but it 'costs' more cap to have an overseas player and you can pay a youth player more but the cap cost would be fifteen percent discounted.
Problem. Solved.

for a country that produces next to no back 5 players of quality we do seem awfully blasé about losing our best young back five players

You might have the answer there. 50% "luxury tax" on "foreign" (however we define that....another debate entirely) players. Whether it's real and that tax goes to the RFL to distribute elsewhere (development officers and community coaches please) or just a virtual dent in the clubs spending capacity. Either way, it discourages the use of imports.

The club is measuring that player's quality in relation to all the other players they could sign with that money. The salary cap just means clubs are using the same scale.

wouldnt that make cheaper imports even more attractive than top quality ones?

Only in the same way that cheaper players are more attractive now than more expensive players.

well not really, that player may be exceptional value for money, if they dont have the space on the cap he cannot be signed so any measurement of his quality becomes immaterial, also clubs arent using the same scale because all clubs cant afford the cap and players have shown a willingness to play for the big clubs for less money

now this is a principle that stretches across both caps, and even in a none capped world (no club is working with a bottomless budget).

where they differ is that A) players like Ellis would be less likely and less able to play for less money at the bigger clubs under a points system,
B) youth development and bang for your buck become much more important under a points system because it wont be your 6-10 internationals who win you trophies but the other 15-19 players who are the vast majority of the squad
c) if a club wants to compete with union they can
D) we would be more likely to see the very top quality overseas players come over, as they count highly on the points cap but clubs would be able to offer them more money
E) there is no possible way of fudging the cap, we can all see every week where clubs are, its a much more open and transparent cap

surely 50% more so?

if overseas player A's £50k a year contract now costs them £75k on the cap, he becomes a fair bit more attractive than overseas player B's £200k a year contract which now costs £300k on the cap

Yes, really. That club has decided they value the other players (the ones they have signed) higher.



As more clubs are becoming able to spend to the cap we are getting more competition at the top end of the league with more big clubs. This is what I want to see.



A would be a bad thing, hindering player's career progression. As for B, bang for your buck is less important if you can afford to send more bucks - clubs spending the most on salaries would get the best players in each point category. C isn't an issue, seriously, Smith is back now you can chill out about it. D would clearly benefit the few clubs who spend the most. E is irrelevant as there would be no need to fudge the cap as it wouldn't stop clubs from trying to buy success.

No change then. Cheaper player has less impact on the available cap space.
Would you be so worried about in increase in NICs or a clamdown on image rights or offshore payments?

Perhaps now foreign player A at £75K seems poor value to english player C at £65K though. Or English players D, E and F can all be signed instead of player B. More English players playing pro.

Why does that matter?



I'm not avoiding anything, you brought imaginary figures that relate to nothing into the equation.



Ah, so we get back to big clubs being able to pay players more and reducing competition.

Let's be honest, this is all about keeping Leeds at the top isn't it?

With the current cap, you can't have a team of superstars, with this suggestion you can't have a team of superstars. There's no change. What can happen though is whereas now a club like Salford can compete with bigger clubs for signatures by offering more money, under the new one they couldn't because the bigger clubs would blow them out of the water. Where a squad man may take a chance at a smaller club and thrive, why bother when they could sit in a big squad earning a shed load more money with a slowly decreasing points cost?

to put it a bit more in the real world under the system proposed

Leeds would have 104 points (thats with 16 points exempted for 8 international players who were developed by them)
Saints would have 106 (with 14 points exempted)
Wigan would have 112 (with 6 points exempted)
Wire would have 106 (with 2 points exempted)
Hull would have 102 (with 6 points exempted)
Hull KR would have 108 (with 0 exemptions)
Quins would have 96 (with 2 points exempted)
and Salford 100 (with 0 exemptions)

as you can see, there isnt a massive difference in totals between clubs, but it shows how important developing your own quality players becomes, and how reliant the smaller clubs are on average overseas players

or they arent able to get rid of the other players,

really, which big clubs are these? ones backed by sugar daddies by any chance? ones which were traditionally big by anychance
so in our attempts to spread talent across the league it is a bad thing that all the best players dont congregate at the big clubs?
but only so many of them, so there would always be players of a similar quality that couldnt sign for the big clubs.

you are looking at it from the point of view that there are more points available than players of the necessary quality to improve the lower teams to fill them, I have put the some totals above to highlight this wouldnt be the case, that most of the top clubs would need to release experienced quality players just to be able to fit under the cap,

this would leave more players for the likes of Quins, increase the supply but not the demand.

besides anything it would force clubs to have more youngsters in their squad. Which would automatically mean there would be more experienced quality players available for lower clubs

well that is a good thing, and in the future if another club tried to sign a player like Smith, that club if they so wished would be in a position to compete

and everyone else in the league, as A)that club would not be able to compete for the players they would compete for now as they had signed better already, allowing other clubs to sign them. B) we would have better quality players throughout a more evenly spread league leading to a higher quality league, a better product and all the associated benefits that would bring

other than the points cap limiting the actual amount of players you can bring in from elsewhere, considering they cost more on the cap

i dont doubt this is the case, and would happily see fewer average overseas players come over

A side effect of this though would be it becoming virtually impossible to bring a top quality import over, we wouldnt see Barrett, Johnson, Lauitiiti, Eastwood, Buderus, Gidley, etc come over because they would simply be too expensive and i think our league would be poorer for it

it was a direct response to your assertion, you missed the last bit out, it would have pointed you in the direction

it was an example which highlighted the inaccuries in your premise

no you are confused, its about removing the link between these two things.

no, in fact, if you fully understood the cap, you would see that Leeds would be quite hard hit
WTF, no you have clubs who have less money offering more money? when did Salford last out bid Leeds or Saints for a star player? only for a very limited amount of players, and in a way that would mean there would need to be some 'give' elsewhere in the squad
their points cost wouldnt decrease firstly. Secondly why would a big club spend shed loads or money and 4 points on a player who couldnt get a game for them when it would mean should a better experienced non-international become available they have taken themselves out of the running?

I'm looking at it from the point of view that players will be grouped into categories, 6 point players, 5 point players etc. (with a little bit of fudging to make it easier for the top clubs to keep the top players). Clubs will be limited as to how many players they can sign from each group. Clubs who spend the most on salaries will get the best players from each group. Leading to the exact problems of clubs trying to buy success that the salary cap addresses (those problems primarily being clubs spending beyond their means and a lack of competitive fixtures).

well that is where you are going wrong.

Players would be worth the same amount of points to any club trying to buy them, the only club who would benefit from any exemption or dispensation are the club players are currently at.

Yes, I'm aware of that. My point still stands that the best players in each group will go to the club paying the highest wages. Short term wage inflation, long term clubs taking financial gambles as the only way to try to be successful.