If the sport is going to get anywhere we need to attract a wider range of talented athlete beyond the limited areas of Wigan, Featherstone etc. and with a choice of career to choose from including football, RU, athletics, boxing etc which all pay better money to the top and middle employees than RL we will continue to find ourselves with a diminishing talent pool if RL isn't perceived as a good career choice for the aspiring athlete.

what a strange post,

perhaps working a 9-5 won't be as exciting or as enjoyable as playing rugby for a living, but if he's found a profession which will sustain him for the rest of his life then he should be applauded for doing so. many in the game I dare say wouldn't have the bottle to do the same thing, good luck to Bryn

But rugby League doesn't work beyond the north of England

Look at Quins they have Union and Football around them they wont bring in big crowds, the only reason the talent comes from these areas is cause we are passionate about the sport from being young just like young kids down south they play football from being young

What a load of tosh.

RL as a professional sport should easily be offering wages to it's top league players that are well above normal private sector salaries.

It can't do that because of the inept attitude of the people running our sport.

The only reason Sam earns a good living is because Wigan had to go the extra mile to persuade the RFL that special measures were needed in order to keep him. So the message going out to the game's youth now is: "You can make a lot of money in this game - providing: a) you turn out to be a really, really good player; and b) your club chairman is able to convince the RFL that you should be a special case."

It kind of makes that golden goose of 'a lucrative career in sport' seem that much further away.

Now in Union, on the other hand ... you can earn a lot more, a lot more quickly, and for doing a whole lot less.

That's why we should be looking at the young talent in London and Wales who are now becoming league players first and foremost and paying them a decent wage and offering good career prospects.

Or we could just give up.

If you are saying the cap should increase or have no cap i agree but you will have teams on their asses that will be against this saying stuff like 'oh they will chuck big bucks at our best players' but the truth is it happens now with the cap not the cash side but if your playing at Cas and Wigan,Leeds or Saints offer you the same ££ to play for them your not going to turn this down are you?

Will Bryn earn more cash doing what he plans? Maybe but i tell you what he will earn it working 7 days a week none stop players these days train 5 days a week for 5 hours a day on average they get days off and they get a good 3 months break in the off season it's a very good lifestyle which i would put my house on he will miss 12 months down the line

Not all teams can afford it though if you get a scout from one of the big clubs go looking there might be decent players but they compare them to the talent up here when a smaller club would sign them and they could turn into a good player with the right coaching

I wouldn't give up i just think the rfl do a **** poor job of running our sport and i'm taking lol bad

The people at fault here are the RL marketing team.

The on field product is first class. The RFL marketing department fifth class.

Sadly the view of RL as an "inferior" product runs deep.

On London radio last month the commentator compared the Paralympics to the RL World Cup whilst the standard Olympics was the RU World Cup. In fairness to him he was actually using the analagy to promote the Paralympics, but in truth it goes to show the perception of RL in this country.

His talent compared to the likes of say a Lima or a Morely has got nothing to do with it. He is not retiring because he isn't good enough fior SL - he is. The fact it isn't a regular occurrance is not relevant either.

The fact it has happened at all is cause for concern. I dare say the RFL will consider it a one off and brush any concerns under the carpet but don't you think it at least a bit strange that a sport that gets BBC prime time coverage for the CC and is a major part of Sky Sports loses a player to a plastering job?

If another star player had gone to RU on mega-bucks we would all be saying how can we compete with that. What this says is the sport isn't able to offer a level of wages to its regular professional players that can compete with pretty ordinary careers outside of sport. I think that is a very different scenario and more concerning than being outbid by RU or NRL clubs for the likes of Sam T or whoever.

The fact is that sportsmen and women in lots of sports don't earn life changing sums of money , although some do . Someone mentioned boxing , one of the toughest sports in the world and unless your at world level the money offered is pretty poor . In all sports your going to get the top earners and the lower earners . Had Bryn not gone through the Bradford shambles I recon he would still be playing . At 26 he had probable a maximum of six years left . That time would soon fly past then he could take up a career doing something else . The fact he has chosen to retire is probably more a reflection on what he has gone through with Bradford than rugby league as a whole . Sadly he will probable miss the game far more than the game will miss him . Good luck to him whatever he chooses to do .

As DeanoG has pointed out on numerous occasions, the failure to increase the overall level of the CC has led to a very significant decrease in "real terms" income for players over the last 5 years.

Proponents of the CC, (when they weren't spending their time accusing us of adopting a "Pro Wigan, let's return to the 1990's" attitude), argued that the loss of players to RU was not a problem, and that there would always be a "production line" of players to fall back on.

They failed to grasp the real issue that is sadly beginning to materialise now.......

- The level of RL salaries is not only detering people from bothering to take up the game as a profession in the first place, but it seems are even low enough to result in current professionals quiting the game half way through their careers.

In the case of BH, if this was for a job in the city where he could be earning millions then it would be understandable, but, and with all due respect to plasterers, it isn't............


Forget RU "poaching" players, I believe this situation highlights the real cancer that is the CC.

Bryn is living in fantasy land, because of what went on at the bulls he's decided to jack it all in? He could easy earn £50,000 a year at Salford, Wakefield or Widnes yet he leaving to get a plasterers job?

Good move, with all due respect if your a plasterer on the tools especially in this recession your really going to struggle. Moving to the construction industry he's going to have to deal with the same that went on at Bradford a good few more times on a hell of a lot less money working 8 till 430 mon to fri all year round.

He's moving abroad and I really can's see him moving abroad to be a plasterer.

Hope for his sake he hasn't burnt his bridges with RL if things don't work out for him abroad. The grass ain't always greener!

so walls outside of the UK don't need plastering?

If a player defects to RU, we just shrug and assume there's nowt we can do about it .... How about if I tell you that a 14 yr old lad, who is well regarded at scholarship levels and is the son of a very high profile ex international RL player, has quit his junior RL team, despite them being top of their league, to concentrate on a career in athletics!!! .... One of the main reasons being that even his father admits he could earn more money from athletics than he would if he were to join a SL team .......

Now, if that doesn't get the RFL worried then I have to assume they don't care anymore ...!

I know it says hes moving abroad but still the average UK wage for men is 30k a year.

Now a RL player of his level is probably on Roughly 60k yes?

So basically he probably has 6-8 years left of 60k gradually dropping until he retires.

Or he can take roughly 30k a year now which will actually rise with inflation/promotions and he could do it for nearly the next 40 years until he retires. Im with him if the right opportunity came up there isnt enough money in RL to make it worth staying in and risking there not being a job to go to in 6-8 years.

The main point is that the financial security of the sport is in jeopardy and his job wasnt safe and he went a time without being paid this year. If I had been a Bradford player I would have been disillusioned too.

So what's the answer? We can't raise the Salary Cap because a good percentage of the league isn't spending to the limit of the current one and an even higher percentage would go under if they tried to.

There is simply no money in the game. It's due to a lack of sponsors and an unfavourable TV deal.

Union is utter, utter e but money rolls in because their marketing team is first rate.

Spreading the tv money over 14 teams isn't helping to sustain a high level with the money that comes in realistically the league probably needs to be 10 teams but that's not big enough and sky won't go for that. However I think it's a good idea as if we had 10 then they could have half the league in the playoffs and be the 5 team system again.

That then breeds the problem that we need to get rid of 4 teams which would be professional and that makes the championship unfair which is probably why their sky deal isn't so great.

Maybe we could do with a match being shown on all 3 days (sky having the monopoly on Monday nights aside from Easter Monday) on a channel like premier sports. That gives more league money and if it applied to the championship too maybe we could sustain two franchises leagues of SL and Championship each of ten teams and each all professional and have all leagues below semi professional.

Usually I would say "if its doable they'd have done it" but the way the rfl works they probably haven't even thought of it.

My mistake, he's not plastering he's flagging !!!!, I think its his girlfriends fathers building company he's going working for in the States, I'm sure she's American.

How's he got a VISA?

I agree, especially the last sentence. But athletics, is a bit like cricket (both sports I like), for the average event there is no-one there, save a few high profile games (& latterly 20/20). Cricket makes a fortune from the Indian limited over game but I struggle to understand how athletics pulls in so much money, unless it is from government.

I don't know, you'll have to ask him, maybe the Rugby Gods got it for him

50 k a year as a lower league propr for maximum 15 years or 30K a year for the next 30 years?

What youve got to take into account is that some of these guys bodies are ruined by the time they retire.