Just a side point from me...

Prestige of Club seems to count heavily towards a bias of young lads veering towards the top four Clubs. While the likes of Leeds and Wigan produce decent youngsters, these youngsters are often from outside of those Clubs local 'influence'. The prestige of these Clubs attracts youngsters. Those that make it are then shown to be products of that Club, and rightly so. Things are made a lot easier for top four Clubs when most young lads are chomping at the bit to play for them. This isn't the fault of those Clubs merely a by product of success, but it shows how uneven it is for lower league teams to attract and retain young lads when faced with the carrot that is a top four team.

Lower teams still face a battle to retain lads that have gone through their system due to the same reason. Looking at my own side Salford, as an example, we've lost the likes of Sneyd, Turner, Fages, Ratchford, Myler (With a nod to Widnes) just in the last few seasons. We'll face a tough battle if Evalds continues on the path he's going to, and a few of the new crop of young lads coming through like Lannon are going to be tough to hold onto. It's nobodies fault that these players want to move on for the chance to win things but it shows how difficult, even after retaining a young lad, it is for lower Clubs to build around homegrown talent.

SL really needs a few other Clubs to win the GF. As the superiority of the top four diminishes, even slightly, it will slowly change the dynamics of youth development and retention and strengthen the competition as a whole. Like others have said though, it's a catch 22 scenario in that there just isn't a catalyst that can get the ball rolling.

Maybe there should be regional academies brought in with a draft pick system to even things out or maybe clubs should be allocated areas where they can sign players from. This would stop the likes of Wigan signing players from Yorkshire and Leeds signing players from the other side of the Pennines. each club could also be allocated a development area where they can sign players from. So Wigan could get the south west and Saints the south east.

If clubs pass on players then they are free to the open market.

I await to be shot down by Leeds/Wigan/Saints fans.

Good post, Butcher. Dunno how accurate the RFL's assessment of the academies is, but there are still clubs apparently not operating at the level they perhaps should be (not a dig at any club as I can't recall whose are deemed satisfactory). that too may be a factor that determines how attractive they are to youngsters. But I accept the premise that the possibility of success is probably the greatest determinant of all.

It's also not just how the academy operates, it's how the club as a whole operates.

It's why I'm very much against a binning of the salary cap because I think, unless clubs drastically increase their income then less needs spending on players wages and more on club infrastructure.

Sort the clubs out off the pitch and they'll succeed on it.

why is that responsibility on the players? why isnt the onus on the fans to pay more or the owners to invest in their businesses?

There is no responsibility on the players. There is responsibility on the clubs as to how much they pay players.

There is nothing stopping owners investing in their businesses. They can invest it in sorely needed areas such as management, marketing, commercial, sports science and training and playing facilities.

They all desperately need financial input. If we don't do that our clubs will never reach a point were they can actually pay their players more.

We currently have Wakefield who at one point this year were only spending roughly a third of the salary cap.
Inflating wages does not help the sport. We cannot compete with Union or the NRL on wages without doubling what we pay our players. Something the richest club in our competition can't afford never mind the rest of the clubs.

Sort our clubs out off the pitch first, then we can raise wages as club incomes rise. You can't do it the other way around without destabilising clubs.

But with regard to growing the game, owners of clubs such as Northampton RU or Bath RU are very unlikely to start an RL venture as part of their club unless they know they will be allowed to spend enough on players to ensure success in League 1, then in the Championship and then in Super League. So, the salary cap has to be scrapped and be replaced by a control based on a club's audited available financial resources; a term that would exclude loans, directors' or otherwise. I.e. Genuinely put money in that you in effect write off without a legal right to get it back, and you can then spend it all on players if you wish.

The way most clubs are run the term "audited available financial resources" would in practice mean that the salary cap value of your players cannot be more than you receive each season in central funding.

But, if any club can show that it has the money to pay players more then it can.

All the game has to show to the outside world (inc HMRC) is that we have a rule that basically says don't pay your players (which are always the biggest expense anyway) more than you can afford.

I'd prefer us to rely on the responsibility of club directors to live within their means and have no controls at all on spending on players. But it reflects badly on the sport (in terms of getting future grants etc) if our clubs keep going bust (even if we do impose a sanction of relegation if it happens).

whatever semantic gymnastics you wish to indulge in wont alter the fact you expect the players to accept less in the hope clubs spend more elsewhere. You expect that the earnings of the players should be the opportunity cost of investment in other areas of the business.

If clubs need financial input that comes from selling their product or it comes from owner investment, it shouldnt come from setting up a cartel to lower employees wages.

Not being able to compete with Union or the NRL or anything else is irrelevant.

There are many many many players who will leave our game with not a lot of money, at a disadvantage to the rest of the workforce in terms of skills and experience, whose bodies are shattered and broken by our game and who will struggle for the rest of their lives. That Wakefield might want pay managers more, or spend more on the club shop is pretty irrelevant to that.

If fans and owners want to see something, they pay for it. Players have no responsibility to earn less so fans and owners dont have to pay as much.

Again, stop being daft just because you don't like the salary cap.

I think players should be paid as much as clubs can afford whilst properly funding other aspects of their business. The problem we have is that there is a highly sought after amount of RL playing talent and so the costs of acquiring that talent (ie wages) can be easily and highly artificially inflated and, due to the low amount of clubs in RL, that inflation can be triggered by just 1 source (eg a Koukash).
That inflation can be hugely destabilising to clubs. We saw it happen in the 80's and 90's where clubs were trying to outdo each other to keep up with Wigan. The problem is this led to 2 of the sports biggest and richest clubs nearly going under in Leeds and Wigan. It took Leeds a decade and Wigan even longer to recover financially. If better, longer term decisions had been made in the 80's and 90's then both Leeds and Wigan would be in better situations now. Wigan could have either redeveloped Central Park or sold it on their own terms and Headingley would have had at least 1 other stand rebuilt by now.

Sports clubs aren't like regular businesses. The mobile phone industry didn't suffer when Nokia struggled/failed despite being previously the industry leader. Their customers don't have anything close to the brand loyalty that sport clubs enjoy. If Leeds go under their fans are largely lost to the sport, they don't go to another club/company.

So our companies/clubs need more protections than regular businesses, especially due to the very limited number of RL clubs.
If Salford pay significantly more than the average then everyone has to eventually. Just because Koukash is prepared to lose millions of pounds a year doesn't mean everyone can or should.
If we had 12 or even 6 Koukash's at our clubs then fine scrap the cap, but we don't. We have owners often benevolently loaning or writing off relatively small amounts of money in order to keep their dream from dying.

Unless you think that RL clubs currently spend enough on and properly prioritise areas such as management, marketing, commercial, sports science etc then those areas need funding more than currently.
I'm all for clubs increasing their turnover, let's do that absolutely, who wouldn't be for that? But I think that money should go into the massively under-invested areas of RL clubs that I've mentioned rather than players wages, which it would if the SC were scrapped.

I know your come back is that why would clubs alter their current business strategy and start losing money.
Well that's pretty simple to answer, because what's the alternative?
The alternative is accept you aren't going to win things. So the choice is:
1 - spend more on players wages to try and compete and rely on winning to make up the financial gap.
2 - reduce spending elsewhere. Club revenues fall and player performance suffers. Again rely on winning to bridge the financial gap.
3 - accept you're not going to compete. Keep spending where it is. Best case scenario an odd flukey win here or there but more likely is reduced club revenue as supporter expectation falls.

The point is, to raise players wages we HAVE to increase club revenues first. There's no magic wand to do that, it means hiring good people into the clubs. That costs money. And they require a budget which also costs money.

The best signings Leeds ever made weren't Kevin Sinfield or Jamie Peacock but Gary Hetherington and Rob Oates. They enabled Leeds to compete on the pitch by sorting it out off the pitch.

Do that at other clubs and they'll thrive too relatively speaking. Then when we've got enough clubs properly resourced and run then we can look at the salary cap and raising players wages. Until then the clubs can't afford to pay them more, even if some would decide to if there were no SC.

On the contrary. They are more likely to invest if they can be confident there will be control over player salaries, and they will not find themselves competing against spiraling uncontrolled wage demands, competing too see who can spend the most on player salaries.

Players wages would not be artificially inflated, they would just no longer be artificially deflated as they are now. When a man has a set of special skills, he gets to sell them to the highest bidder, thats how a labour market works. The rarer and more valuable your skills, the more  you can sell them for. If Koukash wants to pay £1m a year to Sam Burgess, that is Sam Burgess value. He hasnt artificially inflated it in any way, shape or form. And yes, clubs will outdo each other, just like every other company in every other industry in every free country on the planet. Its not only the basis of business its the basis of sport as well. 


Our clubs arent asking for extra protection, they are asking for someone else to take the responsibility and that isnt fair or morally justifiable. Leeds Rhinos made £1m last year off the back of their employees. Their employees are banned from benefitting from the fruits of their labour. The salary cap literally stops some RL club employees from being rewarded for the success they created. 


You even contradict yourself here, whilst the mobile phone industry wasnt decimated by nokia's struggles, nokia's struggles didnt force Samsung and Apple to join together and agree to pay their employees less. 


You are also drawing a false dichotomy between players wages and investment in other areas of the business. Those two things are not mutually exclusive, they are not intrinsically linked, they are two separate issues. What you are doing is playing an emotional argument of framing the opportunity cost of players wages as long term investment in infrastructure when that isnt the vase at all. You might as well be screaming "wont somebody please think of the children"


Your argument is wrong for many reasons, 1)there are many other opportunity costs to investing in players, 2) there is no reason whatsoever to suppose that increased wages for players cannot me a catalyst for increase in revenue, 3) you draw a direct correlation between reducing spending elsewhere ant club revenue falling when there is no evidence that is necessarily the case 4) you draw a correlation between the SC and clubs 'accepting they arent going to compete' when even with a salary cap the majority of clubs accept they cannot compete. 5) you argue that clubs need to raise revenue first before they raise players wages, which even if we put reason 2 of this to one side, Leeds Rhinos made £1m last year, the salary cap stops the players upon whose backs that money was made sharing in that. It literally stops them sharing in the fruit of their labour. 6) this has created a situation whereby the players are expected to earn less so that clubs can lose less, but when that club makes money, that money still goes in to an owners pocket. You are putting the responsibility for not making a loss on the back of the players but the benefits of making a profit in rich mens pockets. 


Rob Oates seems a very capable man, very good at his job, but there are tens of thousands of good commercial managers out there, there are thousands of companies with bigger commercial turnover and bigger growth than leeds rhinos, the idea that his skills are more valuable or less fungible that JP or Kevin Sinfield is utter nonsense. You are comparing an MD and Commercial guy at a relatively small company to generational talents. It's just silly.

One the contrary, owners have less control over players salaries because of the salary cap

FFS Smokey! What is wrong with you? Is there any point attempting a debate if you're going to be this daft?

It is artificially inflated. Because Salford can't afford to pay that. Koukash can. He is distorting the market (in this hypothetical).
In the same way as Chinese steel currently flooding the market and being sold at below cost price is artificially deflating the market.
In the same way as a large supermarket opening up and selling things below cost-price eg beer, distorts and artificially deflates the local market.

But sport is very very different from every other industry on earth. It's basis is to win, not make money. An ordinary business will strive to ensure a solid business and to reduce costs in order to make higher profits. There's no such incentive for sports clubs. Because their motive isn't profit, it's success on the pitch.
Unlike football we can't afford clubs going under so we have to realign clubs priorities away from purely chasing success. It's much the same as governments introducing workplace or industry regulations, because those things are often neglected by ordinary businesses in the quest for profit. In sport what is sacrificed is financial stability.

In a small sport financial stability is absolutely vital.
Take a look at the top RL clubs. All are relatively financially stable. Take a look at the bottom of the table, it's a different picture.

I haven't contradicted myself at all with the Nokia example. It was an example of where sport and RL is different to ordinary businesses. When Nokia failed their customers didn't just stop buying mobile phones, they moved to Google or Apple or whoever. That doesn't happen in sport. If Leeds go under their 15k fans aren't suddenly all going to go and watch Cas. They're lost to the sport/industry.

We, as a sport, cannot afford that. We nearly killed ourselves in the 80's and 90's with high player wages compared to low incomes. We have to rebalance that.

As for your comments about Rob Oates, your dismissal of the effect of his and Hetheringtons impact on the club is very naive.
How do you think we signed Jamie Peacock? How do you think we plough over a million pounds a year into our youth development that produces such good young players?
Where do you think the money comes from to build new stands and new facilities at Headingley?
It's the professionalism and skill of managers like Hetherington and Oates that produces the company environment and revenues to enable Leeds to do those things.

They don't come cheaply and many clubs are doing their operations on the cheap and so get cheap results. Put more money into those areas to get better people and you get better results.

And again, don't be daft about players wages and more money on other areas not being mutually exclusive.
That's just utter batsh|t and you know it. The only way to do both is to increase revenues. Which doesn't just happen by accident. You have to invest in those areas of the club that produce revenue to increase them.
If you do it the other way around we're back to the 80's and 90's approach of betting on spending more on players will bring trophies. The problem comes when that doesn't happen.

It's the difference between investing and speculating. We desperately, desperately as a sport need much more investing and less speculating.

Grow up, It is fact. You may not like it but that doesn't change it.

You seem to have a passion for staff getting paid wages rather than businesses making profits.
Businesses are there to make profits.

So are you a champion of the working man, demanding an end to businesses making profits and paying their workers a pitance?
Or are you a champion of the freemarket which encorages wage suppression and businesses making a profit for shareholders?

You can't be both.

If anything the free market suggests that we should pay players who are effectively staff even less. We should export the league to china and get teams of people to play for $1 a day, just like Apple do with their staff and then export that product, produced at rock bottom prices back to the UK via TV were people will pay a premium to watch and give up on the sport being a spectator sport in the UK at all.

No. You are wrong. Just plain and factually wrong. If Koukash is prepared to pay Burgess £1m then that is his value. That you may disagree is neither here nor there. You want to define it is artificially inflated because it frames your argument as solving a problem. But it is still wrong. If a new big spending entrant to a market is prepared to spend more for a limited resource that isn't an artificial inflation of its value. It's the natural inflation of a market working properly as is value falling when there is a glut in the market. The salary cap is one sided corporate welfare.

Sport is not vastly different to every other business is the world. Also a normal business does not necessarily reduce costs to increase profits.

You again draw a correlation between spending on wages and a clubs viability, a correlation which simply does not exist.

You can state it is bat to deny the correlation between players Wages and other ares but it doesn't make it so.

As for your point re JP/rob Oates. It is utter utter nonsense. In fact your entire narrative about the rhinos and our outlook is entirely wrong. Prior to rob Oates even joining and a within a year of Gary Hetherington doing so we had broken the world record for a transfer fee. We used the signing of a big name as a catalyst for our growth and it worked very well. We had no problem spending money on Ellis or Lauitiiti, and why on earth do we deserve praise for spending a million pounds on youth development if that million pound comes from underpaying players? Its not Paul Caddick who has gone without, he has a million pounds in his pocket and a company he took over for next to nothing which is now worth tens of millions of pounds, all largely on the back of avoiding paying his employees their market worth. Im not sure why i should be impressed by that.

And there is a difference between speculating and investing, but that difference is a vague one and often only visible after the fact. So let's make sure those responsible for the decisions not only benefit from getting them right, but are also the ones responsible for when they get it wrong instead of under paying players.

I would be perfectly happy with Leeds rhinos making a billion pounds in profits if it was paying it's workers a their market value.

A free market does not suppress wages. And if you wish to export it to china then go ahead. But I think what you would find is that I could bring in more money here paying wages congruent with quality as people would pay more to watch my higher quality game than your low quality one.

I'm also not sure I would use apples exploitation of Asian workers in an argument in favour of a salary cap.

I didn't know Ayn Rand was a Rugby League fan.

the truth is that my preference would be the complete opposite of any Randian thinking. I would rather we had a far more centralised structure trying to sell RL rather than the individual clubs, with the players as a stakeholder in partnership with the clubs. But we dont have that, so there is no justification for limiting players wages, they are expressly banned from being financial stakeholders in the game, have had their security removed by the reintroduction of P+R and a centralised structure which has distanced itself and absolved itself from all responsibility for the growth of the game at a pro level. What we have is simply incompatible with a fair and morally justifiable, none-exploitative salary cap.

Added to that the thing just doesnt work.

I think it's you who's got this wrong. There is research to demonstrate the very phenomenon that you're trying to suggest won't happen; it even has a name - destructive competition - and it clearly describes that sports team owners will, on average, overspend on playing talent if it means they are more likely to win. The result of destructive competition is wage inflation and bankruptcy for some teams.

I think that salary caps are an attempt to safeguard sports clubs from the comings and goings of various owners with different levels of wealth and/or sanity - and to maintain the interest of fans through a more even competition; and history seems to suggest that it works - it disaggregates playing talent and maintains the revenue of clubs (through ticket sales) due to continued interest from fans, who above all, are attracted to unpredictability.

There probably is a decent argument to suggest that in clubs that are profitable, the SC leaves a disproportionate amount of profit for the owner, but that's hardly an issue in RL - at least not in SL.

The salary cap gives you less control over wages... I just don't know how you debate with this Fox News style approach.

I'm out.

Destructive competition isnt as easily applicable to sport as your argument supposes. There are, after all, only 17 players in a matchday squad. And there are other barriers, as described earlier within the thread which would stop such a thing. It also could, certainly in the case of RL, that the salary cap encourages more star players to congregate at bigger clubs, giving them an even greater advantage.

The destructive competition argument assumes that all clubs are in the market for star players and it is the open bidding which would force them out. The unfortunate fact is that the lower SL clubs are not priced out of the market because of the lack of the SC but the SC acts as a barrier to market to them.

As i have said earlier in the thread, if destructive competition is a worry (which i dont believe it to be as big a worry as you suppose) there are far better, more natural, fairer and more targeted protections.

I would also clarify that the negatives of destructive competition do not equate to an artificial inflation of market value.

As for your procompetitive arguments in favour of the salary cap, this is the big problem the RFL would have if the case ever did go to court. All those arguments could certainly be made in favour of a salary cap. The problem is that they simply havent been borne out. The Salary Cap hasnt protected clubs from owners incompetence, hasnt maintained interest through a more even competition and hasnt either created an unpredictable competition nor can it point to having taken advantage of the opportunities having done so would have created.

With no salary cap you have complete control over players wages. With a Salary cap you are limited.

You may less able to strong arm players in to signing a contract for less than their open market value, but you have complete and utter control over what you offer.

Just look at football clubs if you want to see how rugby would be without a salary cap. In the past twenty years we have witnessed the players costs rocketing up with clubs over inflating players values in an attempt to get the players they want on their teams. success bred success and we now have a situation in the premiership where the only way a tem can challenge the status quo is if they have a millionaire sugar daddy to fund their spending. Unfortunately, as rugby doesn't have a much money as football, any teams that wished to compete for players against their more successful rivals will find they have to sink more of their money into the wages (Leading to the prices inflating) than they would into the stadium, back room staff, the club as a whole.

What you find with Leeds, (As Sinfield famously announced after winning one of his grand finals.) is that the players are being paid less than they could get from other clubs, but they come to Leeds because they believe they stand a better chance to win silverware there than they would elsewhere. Hetherington has his fixed wage structure that he is unwilling to break and he has shown that he would rather players leave than break it. For an example, look at Mark Calderwood. he was the leading try scorer but wanted more money than Hetherington would pay and so he ended up at Wigan and didn't win another trophy.