Makes sense really. They probably fancy their chances against the teams in the league below and rather than risk one or two teams facing definite relegation, they prefer the scenario presented by the split league which could, and probably will, end up generally with no one moving up or down. I'd wager the so called 'lesser' teams who voted it did it for the sake of self-preservation as they surely couldn't have voted for it on the basis of it being a good idea...

Socialism Super League.

Democracy in action

There is a fair chance that Wakefield, London and Bradford may have been "encouraged" to vote in favour due to being "helped" in recent times.

Go on then........tell me how LOndon have been helped in comparison to Bradford?

Are you being serious? the amount of times exemptions have been made for London through out super league is a joke. If the Franchising system was correctly implemented London would of been one of a few who had no license.

You mean London were breaking the spirit of the franchise?

I think we can take it as read that almost all the clubs have broken the rules, been given exemptions, allowed to bend the rules etc over the past 20 years.

You cannot single out 1 club more than almost all the others.

making exemptions and not agree with somebody method of business is completely different, didn't St helens just get caught flat out cheating the salary cap but still got to keep the title champions of that year? different subject totally but you can PM the response if u like.

I think we can take it as read that almost all the clubs have broken the rules, been given exemptions, allowed to bend the rules etc over the past 20 years.

You cannot single out 1 club more than almost all the others.

Remind us again why Castleford fans more than most resent Wigan?

Sure they have a saying about glass houses.

They have been allowed to move to the ' Iconic ' Hive

Whilst I'm no massive fan of London, I'm still not sure what exemptions London have received above and beyond the rest of the league. Huddersfield for many years came bottom and weren't relegated on red halls say so. Bradford had their stadium lease bought out, by the same people. Is your issue with the increased cap they get? (Try living in London!) (also on that, Catalans negotiated a very nice conversion rate from a couple of years back now so they get even more I'd say). Whilst barnet probably wouldn't meet the stadium criteria the stoop did. Whilst there finances have been shaky, they've never gone into administration (to my knowledge). Also they didn't finish bottom.

If red hall were in the habit of granting them exemptions wouldn't they of granted them their request to sign more non fed trained players?

As for the Wigan and saints thing, saints spent over the cap in 2006 as they paid out more than expected in international bonus' because we wiped the floor with everyone that year. Wigan signed all and sundry to avoid relegation and then used "creative accounting" to make it okay (at least in their own eyes) - but agreed that's off topic.

If Swiss football is so massively out of reach for us we should probably just give up. They are talking about a league which went from 7/8k averages to 12k averages. That is almost exactly the figures we are looking at or were looking at, we will now be looking at a league where 6-8 clubs will be aiming for 12k averages or to get there, and 4-6 clubs will be looking at 4k as a wonderful achievement.

There is a massive amount of hypocrisy in relation to Wigan and the SC (Pretty much from every angle). Both Saints and Wigan tried to spend as much as they legally thought they were allowed, both stretched the cap to its breaking point and fell foul of a technicality, just as Castleford did the next year in the lower leagues.

True, and both now spend a comfortably amount under just in case.

The simplification of the cap rules will be a good outcome of the structure changes. It will be interesting to see whether the super league clubs will shout for an increase in cap size first or the championship clubs say it's unfair the super league clubs get more

The cap has got infinitely more complicated with home-grown rules etc, and will take the likes of Leeds, Saints and Wigan miles away from everyone else.

I wouldn’t be surprised for that £1.7m cap to start looking like a £2.2m cap for those clubs, that’s just too far away from what the top of the championship clubs could ever hope to compete with, and for this league to work, the top of the championships has to be able to compete with that because if they cant, it is guaranteed that one of two things will happen. We will have a 23round league where the top SL clubs blow away the bottom SL clubs and a competitive 7 round league at the end or we will have a competitive 23 round initial league, and a 7 round blow out.

Gone are international appearance exemptions, development allowances, liabilities and all the rest of the add ons and throw ins that have come about through the years. It's now, the cap + home grown cap cap.

The new rule will take Leeds saints and Wigan away from the rest of the pack initially. But if that encourages the rest to invest heavily in producing English talent to catch up surely that's a good thing? I think there's a misconception amongst fans that the salary cap is to make the league "fair" - it's not, it's to make the clubs do what the rfl want. And it's a great way to make everyone produce a lot more talent (without blithely just taking away the foreign talent we have in the league which is borderline illegal)

Realistically how often are we going to see a team promoted and not be blown away? Saints put 50 on hull kr the season they were promoted (I believe I may have my games mixed up it was a while ago!) there are always going to be scores like that. There is no way to make the bottom of the championship competitive with the top of super league - but it's a door for championship clubs to be competitive.

I'm not sure that Wigan's was a technicality, unless I am remembering it incorrectly.

They were at the limit then went and signed Dobson and Fielden because they were worried of the threat of relegation, but they decided it was Ok to do that and defer their wages till another season. If anyone in their right mind believes the players ACTUALLY deferred their wages as opposed to it being a neat accounting trick then they are very gullible in my eyes.
That's not getting caught out by a technicality, that's blatant cheating of the Salary cap system.


EDIT: Oh, I almost forgot Kris Radlinski coming back to play "for free"

As I have put on the other thread, a simple rule stating that every game played must be to the ' lower ' clubs overseas quota would make it very dangerous for any club to fill its squad with overseas players or to neglect their junior development

It would not prevent the ' top ' clubs signing marquee players, but would discourage lower clubs signing ' journeymen '

I have no problem with that, Im very comfortable with us using the cap in this way, it is one of our levers to force clubs to improve.
You wouldn’t expect a promoted team to be beating the top SL clubs, but for this league to work the top championship clubs have to be competitive with the top SL clubs. If for simplicities sake we assume a direct correlation between spending and on field quality, then what we are looking for is a league where are clubs are spending roughly the same so that the league is pretty equal. Instead, with what has been proposed, we are looking at a league where the top championship clubs will be spending a max of £900k on £600k funding, the bottom SL clubs can spend up to £1.6m and possibly a little more on £1.2m funding, and the top SL clubs spending upwards of £2m and more (pretty much!) guaranteed income from their additional matches against each other. Those are pretty big gaps.

For the first 23 rounds to be competitive we need the lower SL clubs to be spending £1.5/£1.6m so that they aren’t going to be blown away by the top SL clubs, if they are spending £1.5/£1.6m then they are going to be spending almost double the championship clubs and that isn’t going to be competitive. If they are spending around £1.1/£1.2m then the top Championship clubs could be competitive with them, but those sides will get absolutely destroyed by the top SL clubs, we are talking about a difference there of the entire championship SC.

That’s not quite what Wigan did, which was to have players contracted at a lower wage that season, with a new contract at a higher wage seasons after. There was nothing particularly wrong with that an many clubs back and forward loaded contracts. What the RFL decided however was that the renegotiation of existing contracts to do this was against the spirit of the cap.

The current Salary cap is fine, top clubs with great academies can spent easily 2 million.
What we need to do is market the game much much better.
We need a lot more money from the next TV deal and that is very possible with much improved competition between TV companies.
We need an actual and decent sponsor.
Add these extra funds into clubs and we'll get no more clubs going bust and the championship clubs having a chance of building

Hull KR would have to field their under 16's just to legally play Leigh.

Except they wouldn’t because under championship quota rules, Lovegrove, Costigan, Larroyer, Panui and Maki would all be exempt, and Burns, Keating, Poore and Weyman would likely find themselves applying for a nice new british passport.