Quote ="Magic Superbeetle"when did the league clubs sit down with the nrl and union to fix prices? Oh, and who says that the vast majority of players in SL arent getting their market value? I think thats a fallacy in itself.'" your own arguments undermine each other. If the players were getting their market value then removing the SC would have no effect on wages. You can't on one hand argue that the SC is necessary to prevent overspending but that players are already getting their market rate. Those two this re clearly mutually exclusive. The nrl and RU are not Leeds Rhinos competitors. The other SL clubs are. The same argument that is applied to say players could become an RU player or NRL player could also be applied to literally any other job, they could be builders, doctors, plumbers, whatever. These PEOPLE are British RL players that is the market in which they operate. Quote You can look for yourself: www.therfl.co.uk/the-rfl/rules/i ... section=E1 Im not sure what its convenient for but there you go...'" It's convenient foe the clubs that the information is out there.

Quote ="Magic Superbeetle"when did the league clubs sit down with the nrl and union to fix prices? Oh, and who says that the vast majority of players in SL arent getting their market value? I think thats a fallacy in itself.'" your own arguments undermine each other. If the players were getting their market value then removing the SC would have no effect on wages. You can't on one hand argue that the SC is necessary to prevent overspending but that players are already getting their market rate. Those two this re clearly mutually exclusive. The nrl and RU are not Leeds Rhinos competitors. The other SL clubs are. The same argument that is applied to say players could become an RU player or NRL player could also be applied to literally any other job, they could be builders, doctors, plumbers, whatever. These PEOPLE are British RL players that is the market in which they operate. Quote You can look for yourself: www.therfl.co.uk/the-rfl/rules/i ... section=E1 Im not sure what its convenient for but there you go...'" It's convenient foe the clubs that the information is out there.

The problem becomes if he goes out and signs 6 or 7 top stars and Salford win every competition for the next 5 years beating 75% of the teams by 40 points. I'm all for a marquee signing allowance. Pay one player anything you like outside the salary cap. Id love to see the Billy Slater's, $BW's $am Burgesses in SL. Having said that with the NRL salary cap the way it is going you would need to be paying this player in excess of 700,000 pounds a year to get them to move, doubt there is many clubs with that sort of money available. I also do question how big a draw card these players really are once the novelty has worn off? $BW was supposed to be the making of the Roosters. Despite winning a GF with him their crowds disappeared in the 2nd year. the $BW effect disappeared.

Not really, the SC is as much about protecting the clubs from themselves as creating an equal playing field. As a business I could give all my staff a 50% pay rise tomorrow, and be out of business in a year. In sport where your success or failure is measured on results, and there is a no result no customer growth mentality then clubs will always speculate to try and be successful. the games history is littered with such. The more we can stop it happening the better. At the end of the day SL isn't losing masses of players, we still attract some reasonable over seas players to the comp, clubs still have some left over money to sort out grounds and produce jnr programs. Not sure too much is broken with how it is.

We need to have a salary cap, they are common in a lot of sports now. However our cap has been at the same level for so long it needs to go up soon. With increased sky money, admission prices going up every year and the regular season extending to 30 games, clubs should have more to spend than 5-10 years ago.

I would use any increases in the salary cap to benefit the game as a whole in this country, and the England squad rather than just raising the base level. For example part salary exceptions could be given for club trained, federation trained, England knights squad and England Elite squad.

Something like
Club trained £10000 exception
Federation trained £5000 exception
England knights squad £10000 exception
England Elite squad £20000 exception

So a club trained England Elite player would have £30000 of his salary off the cap. This would give each club a different salary cap, encourage them to develop their own players and help keep England's best players from leaving the sport/ super league.

A couple of things

Paying somebody more money doesnt neccessarily make them any better at their job

An employee's worth is essentially defined by what profit they can make a business

And how on earth to you a) define and b) police such a nebulous concept as a "well run business" ?

Godammit, the North Koreans really have infiltrated!!!!

This is England, what I spend MY money on is MY f*****g business!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Whether I'm an astute business man, a local "wide-boy" or just a bloody lucky Lotto Winner, it's mine and no a******e should be able to tell me what I can or can't spend it on.

The rules should simply be there to STOP owners taking out loans against "club assets" or when spending money, doing it as a "loan" to the club and ensuring that taxes and all other legal commitments (ie Public Liabilty Insurance, etc) are paid promptly! Other than that, if I wanna spend £10,000,000 (of MY OWN Money) stuffing my squad with Mercenaries, thats my BLOODY Business!!!!!!

You may be able to give your 50% pay rise and go bust in a year. But you can't collude 20th your competitors to cut wages by 50% then declare yourself businessman of the year for cutting costs. You haven't cut costs. You have exploited someone.

As for it providing clubs with money for grounds and Jnr programmes a) what kind of business gets their staff to pay for cap ex? And b) where is it happening? We are 13 years in to the cap being as it is, where is this comp full of great grounds? Where are these brilliant Jnr programmes? Because after 13 years of the cap we are 3rd in a 3 horse race and some grounds are falling down around us and clubs have just decided to completely restructure our game to remove any responsibility for having good grounds or Jnr programmes

Paying a club trained player 500k a year us no cheaper than paying Inglis 500k a year. And with the situation we have now it would if anything make the playing field less level and it would be nigh on impossible for a promoted team to put anything like a competitive squad out.

We give them parameters to work within. No administrations, x amount min to be spent on marketing, facilities to be of x standard, x amount of juniors, x amount turnover etc etc etc.

and on the worth the employee places on it. It is fundamental wrong to not allow a man to sell his labour free from collusion.

Nobody on here would accept it it a smile on their face

Your first point I agree with, however the second is only true in some circumstances, an employee's worth is essentially defined by what someone is actually prepared to pay them most of the time.

There are many examples of companies employing a "high-profiler" at a loss, particularly in sport, sometimes hoping for more revenue returns but sometimes just to give a competitive edge.

Sounds like a 1950s soviet ten year plan to me!

I'm with CrusaderPete on this one - these are limited companies, owned by individuals or groups of shareholders and I just cannot see how some organisation like the RFL can impose a set of conditions that are by their nature arbirtrary - for instance define "marketing" - what do you do when a club comes up with some new idea that isn't on your prescribed list of "marketing activities"? What happens when a club misses your "x amount turnover" by £1

Sorry - but such ideas would never work.

Players are free to ply their trade wherever they want, they are free to move to wherever pays the most money or to modify their trade to earn more

If you want ' Charities ' rather than businesses , then yes, if thats the case remove all restrictions and have a truely open market

Except sport is different to business. There aren't dedicated fans of businesses like there are of sports clubs. And if BP, Tesco etc go under someone else rises to take their place, it doesn't spell the potential end of the oil or supermarket industry.

There are only a very small amount of pro RL clubs. For 1 to go under is a disaster for not only the company that owns that club but also the entire RL "industry".
So actually how much you spend, on what and the financial status of your club is very much someone else's business. It's the fans business, it's other clubs business and it's definitely the RFL's business.

I mentioned it earlier in the thread, but why shouldn't a club borrow against its assets? Leeds have considerable assets and need to upgrade the stadium. They'll have to borrow in some fashion to pay for the upgrade, why can't they borrow against their assets?

It's not where the money is raised from that's the issue, it's what it's spent on and how it's to be paid back.

Well except they aren't free to negotiate their wage in a free market as an RL player. There is a cap on salaries. We called it a salary cap. I see no point in the mental gymnastics that are required to pretend that a salary cap, called a salary cap, put in place to cap salaries, justified on the basis that it keeps wages low does not limit a players earnings.

If it doesn't limit players earnings there would literally be no point to it and it couldn't by any definition be called a salary cap.

More importantly it's the players livelihood.

And I'm pretty sure that BPs contractors would be effected by BP going under. And I'm certain Tescos suppliers would be effected by it

While we argue the rights and wrongs of our salary cap Saracens ceo calls for the total abolition of The RU cap in response to Dan Carters move to Racing Metro.

There's a salary cap in lots of jobs. No matter how well I perform in my current role I will not be allowed to negotiate a higher salary, there's an upper ceiling and it's fixed. So trying to use the argument that players are being hard done by just doesn't wash.

Indeed, if you work for the NHS, the 4th largest employer in the world your wage is restricted to the pay scales for your job.

Correct and of course 'old Smokey' knows this and to coin/paraphrase one of his phrases, more importantly so do the players. It will be no great shock to lads in the academy what their potential income will be, they won't reach 21 suddenly think where's my £20k per week.

Although I agree with the sentiment that there are plenty of players that deserve to be paid more, when you compare what they do week in week out to other sports, the market is what the market is.

I never said players are being hard done by, it is (as Malcolm McClaren points out for dairy farmers) their career choice.

Nor do I deny that there are many horrendously low paid , dead end jobs out there!

My disgruntlement is about people being told what they can and what they can't spend their money, a situation which has already proven to NOT protect clubs from financial difficulties/bankruptcy/insolvency etc.

Is that an internal policy for the company you work for or a binding agreement negotiated by your company and its competitors.

Yes they are, what % of a clubs cap they are paid is up to them and the club ,if they dont like it they can move clubs, move to another country or to a different industry, like anybody else

As has been alluded to, for any club to operate it needs other clubs, true businesses dont, if Toyota were the only maufacturer of cars it doesnt spell the end of motoring , with the introduction of ' financial fair play ' the vast majority of sports in the world have or are introducing salary caps of 1 form or another, for RL to contemplate doing the opposite would kill the sport stone dead