I don't like the concept of a salary cap. Think it holds back RL in the UK. Soccer doesn't have one.

Now the RFL has a qualified and experienced salary cap policeman, there are a couple of alternative regimes I could live with as a move in the right direction:

1. Scrap the salary cap - but RFL to reserve the right to refuse to register a player's contract if it appears from the club's most recent accounts and most recent business plan that it cannot prudently afford the contract.

2. Keep the salary cap for clubs in the traditional heartland:
Yorkshire
Cumbria
Lancashire/Manchester/Liverpool/Cheshire

But adopt approach in 1. above for clubs outside the heartlands (and there are a lot of them even now - see draw for Kingston Press League One Cup).

Perhaps replacing it with a financial fair play system similar to that which has been introduced in football.

That would at least prevent sugar daddy run clubs running roughshod over the rest of the league and buying up every top player they can get a hold of.

Within a season most clubs would be trading illegally, some probably are at the moment, in soccer that is definitely the case.

It hasn't prevented that though has it.

Why, who has been buying "top players"? No one that I can see!!

Its not illegal to trade when you make or loss, or when your liabilities exceed your assets

Regards

King James

Yeh great idea, and lets have a 4 club SL. Better bet would be to allow a marquee signing, any player as much as you like, one per club.
If you wanted to boost wages you could also add in 3rd party allowance ie clubs who can attract corporate support to pay players can spend more
thirdly to counteract big clubs signing everyone you could have a home grown allowance meaning clubs that produce their own and invest in jnr development can pay their home grown players more.

Reality is 80% of clubs can't afford to pay more than they are doing and we arent losing heaps of talent out of SL.

If you wanted to ensure clubs didnt throw all their money at the top and neglect development of English players you could have a 75-25 incentive. For every 75 pound spent on jnr programs you can spend an extra 25 pounds on your salary cap.

I don't know why everyone gets so het-up over "sugar daddies".

If I won the Euro Millions, or had an investment mature in an amazing way or just a great business idea that took off, here in BRITAIN, I'd expect to be allowed to spend my money on what I want....This is NOT North Korea!

Too true Pete. Unfortunately, if you let clubs become too reliant on sugar daddies you end up with situations like we had in London. 2007.......real hope and a chance to put down strong roots with a landlord who wanted to partner with us.......to 2013, when the owner, who had ignored everyone for 7 years and wasted millions of his and the RFL/sky's money decided he'd had enough, before being convinced to "Save" us at the 11th hour......but by then, 2014 was already a forgone conclusion. Now we have a club that is even more reliant on him for income as he's given all our ticketing revenue to a landlord who doesn't want to partner with us......but sees us as a way to finance his soccer club.
Having cash doesn't equal being able to run a sports club Pete.......

I believe for club trained players, only the first £100000 now counts on the salary cap. So in effect there is no ceiling to how much clubs can spend on players wages, they just need to produce the star players and they can pay them what they like. I think this is the right route to go down, perhaps allow one player who is not club trained per club the same allowance.

I don't think that can come in at the moment as that too will only benefit 4 teams, once more sides get stronger academy's then yeah It'll be a good idea.

If they were going to get shot, they should just get shot. No fiddly rules and definately no RFL assessments.
I like it as it maintains some vague semblance of competitive balance. As a tool that stops clubs doing financial self-harm, I don't think it is much use.
There is a case that clubs that can't compete with the top teams shouldn't be in the top league. I think you need 10 teams at least though to make a viable league.

At the same time they should relax or remove other restrictions and quotas. Set the clubs free and let the market decide, innit?

A simpler rule would be a zero-debt rule.

ie: A club owner/owners can spend as much as they like, however under no circumstances can it be in the form of a "loan" nor can any monies be "borrowed" against "club assets, and MUST be underwritten by each individual owner/owners.

Its easier to enforce, it means no club faces debt repayment it can't afford and owners are free to buy who and what they like!

I repeat my mantra on Salary-Caps..... THIS IS NOT NORTH KOREA!

Why hamstring owners in such a way when their money can be put to more pertinent things like infrastructure? If it was a choice between signing x10 "superstars" and Langtree Park, the stadium should take presidence every time...

The salary cap should stay, but that doesn't mean it can't be bettered.

a) the value has stood still for far too long, and the vast majority if not all next year are spending up to the cap. Raise it to £2m in 2016 and £2.5m in 2018. A clear growth model that all teams are aware of should be implemented. By doing so, it should also remove the need for certain players to be off cap.

b) remove the complicating factors like the elite representative allowance (which is going) and long service bonuses. The current framework feels like a patchwork quilt of Addons as things happen.

c) in the same breath, rules should be brought in to suit SL current agenda. At the moment it would be capping homegrown players to 100k (and should be 75k after 1 England Knights appearance and 50k after a full England appearance). Just because it doesn't benefit the majority doesn't mean it shouldn't be brought in.

d) clubs should publish the list of their top 25 each year and thus who is applicable to each section of the cap. This is part of a wider push for more transparency, whilst respecting this is still people's livelyhoods.

e) the value of Australian players on the cap should be inversely tied to the value of the Aussie dollar, but set by SL. This stops us having peaks and troughs in terms of quality available overseas. The rate at which a player signs is the same throughout the time of his stay in the uk, regardless of moving clubs. Further, it can be set at different rates dependant on Aussie caps, SOO appearances, nrl appearances etc. so the rfl can artificially inflate prices if there are too many coming over, and deflate certain areas if there arent.

I don't have a problem with clubs borrowing against club assets, as long as it's spent correctly. Leeds are just about to borrow in order to rebuild the North Stand in the near future. It'll give Leeds more income for the long run.

that isn't the reality at all. If 80% of clubs were spending exactly the amount they could under the SC it would be an insane coincidence.

The reality is we are losing the best talent out of SL. Tomkins, Eastmond, Graham, 3x Burgess, would be 6 of the 10 best players in SL were they here. The other reality is that the salary cap has got precisely nothing to do with how much teams can afford. It is an arbitrary figure that bears no relationship at all to affordability. The RFL themselves came out earlier in the year crowing about how it was time for SL clubs to spend more, that some super stars were affordable. The true reality is that SL is made up of some clubs who cannot afford to be there with the cap as it is now.

The cap is solely a tool to hold back the top clubs and transfer the financial risk from owners to players.

Homegrown exemptions etc have nothing to do with affordability, 300k is no more affordable for a player you developed than one you didn't.

In a P+R league where there are next to no demands on facilities or youth development or any of the other demands for long term investment the game needs, a Salary Cap is entirely out of place.

In fact, I think it is pretty immoral. IF we place no demands on owners to invest in the long term development of the game then we shouldn't protect them from their own idiocy and we certainly shouldn't limit a players earning potential for the profitability of clubs who have in their wisdom voted to have 0 responsibility to the wider game.

If clubs, as they have voted, want the only deciding factor for their progression to be the side they put on the field, then the players that make up that side should have the market decide their value, not a cap on salaries.

What we have right now is the massively hypocritical and exploitative situation where the RFL and clubs are telling us that it is 'unfair' to have demands that a club get a decent stadium, or decent fan base and all the other demands that were there under franchising, and that the only deciding factor in a clubs progression is their results, yet those responsible for those results should have their earnings limited to an agreed level by a cooperating cabal, so that those self same clubs who didn't invest in a decent stadium, haven't grown their fanbase and haven't put in place a sustainable business model can afford to compete.

We should have the simplest rule, if you don't want your business to be run for the good of the game, then the game will not protect you from your own greed or the intrinsic limits in your business. No franchising, no high minimum standards, no additional demands in terms of investment in to the club, no salary cap. Its not up to the players to prop up your failing business you refuse to invest in.

The "game" would love no regulation, but the lack of regulation will mean no game in a very short period.

The current "top clubs" take all scenario, in this country, does the game no favours at all, it just moves the deckchairs on a sinking ship around.

Remove the cap and you essentially kill the professional game in the UK inside 10 years and in Australia within 20.

Fear: for when logic and reason have deserted you.

How do you know what would happen? You don't so don't go on like your an expert on how clubs are run.

The three pillars of sales are Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Create any or all of these and you will make a sale.

British Rugby League pre-superleague involved Wigan winning most things and other clubs going bust trying to match them. Remove the Salary cap and the game will become even more reliant on TV cash and benefactors. Leeds are probably the best run RL club in the northern Hemisphere, but if you let Marwan and Lenegan loose with their cheque books, it'll be back to the late 80's as quick as a flash....nice crowds for some, but bankruptcy for most.
The NRL already has clubs over-reaching to pay players more. The TV deal is becoming their own particular brand of opiate, with the idea of 4 quarter games being touted to allow for more adverts......

...yeah, let's put the lunatics in charge of the asylum. It won't end badly, I promise

Ian Lenegan has made tens of millions of pounds, so have Eamonn McManus and Ken Davy. Paul Caddick, Simon Moran and Marwan Koukash have made hundreds of millions of pounds. I trust them to run their business, to negotiate individually with players. I don't think they need an added advantage in negotiating with them.

Im confident that Carl Ablett is not some business Svengali and he isn't going to bankrupt them. Im sure they don't need protecting from his outstanding negotiating techniques, I think they can keep a lid on things.

I have 2 words for you[size=200. DAVID HUGHES [/size

Pssst.......... the salary cap didn't do anything to help him, his problem wasn't being outsmarted by players asking for too much money.