I agree, but the fact that our chairman doesn't want the cap raised muddies the waters somewhat.

In the current set up Wigan are probably the strongest BUT without a cap

you then have Wire, Leeds, Hull FC, Salford, London, Widnes, Catalan and Huddersfield with a decent bit of money behind them.

Wigan's main strength is its overall setup, youth and facilities.

The best players in RL would be retained, more youngsters encouraged to take up the sport and more talent from RU attracted leading to an overall increase in the standard of the game?

Would you accept that though if it was still detrimental to Wigan?

Say we bought Sam and Lockers, would you be happy?

That probably explains why Lenagan is quite happy with the current cap arrangement. I think he is satisfied with being a big fish in a small pond, whilst not spending a fortune of his own £££ to push the club / sport further. I can't think why else he would not want the cap raising at all.

I would expect a club of the size and reputation of Wigan to attract a chairman who would be happy to put his hand in his pocket in a similar way.

Of course that's the reason. Surely everyone must realise this? It's not rocket science.

Would you expect a club of the size and reputation of Man United to be able to attract a wealthier chairman than a club of the size and reputation of say Man City?

I would say that doing everything right is the WHOLE part of the market.

Sally, are you in WUM mode or are you being serious? If you are being serious then I have totally fallen out of love and no longer want to marry you. (That is if you are a woman, if you are a bloke then I never wanted to marry you anyway.)

You are correct Sally but rightly or wrongly that would be the inevitable consequence of getting rid of the cap. The salary cap in Super League will only work if there is similar restraint in the wider market, which of course consists of Rugby Union and NRL. Unfortunately because we (as a game - not just Wigan) are in danger of losing our best players the cap issue needs to be addressed by the RFL.

I am not in favour of unfettered capitalism by the way. I don't think the world is in too healthy a place right now due to the antics of the bankers, so some control over the markety is needed. However Super League can't control Union or the NRL, so keeping the cap is like tieing one hand behind the back of clubs like Wigan and Warrington.

Wigan's mistake seems to be having good youngsters who are wanted by other clubs, whereas Warrington is built around older guys (maybe in the current climate they think why bother developing youth if it's only going to end up elsewhere - I don't know).

IF Man United were losing ground then, frankly yes.

The reality is that Man United are still in a position to attract higher quality players than Man City, so it's less of an issue.

What is it about the players/teams/performances that underwhelm people so? Compared to the older teams mentioned?

There just seems to be a general lack of special players in the league now. We used to have Farrell, Renouf and Radlinski, Saints had Long, Lyon, Cunningham and Sculthorpe, Bradford had Vainikolo, Fielden and Peacock. Each of them were close to being the best in the world at their position, an absolute joy to watch, unstoppable when on form and they all stayed in the Super League until retirement bar Vainikolo, Lyon and Farrell (although his career was pretty much finished when he left). I'm underwhelmed because all those players would be in the NRL or Union had they been born a decade later.

IMO next season we will not have a single player in the league who is up there with those 10 (I know Fielden and Peacock will still be here but they're not the players they were then), and that's not through not producing them either, but our best have left for places where they will get a top wage, and we can't bring over stars from the NRL like we used to either. All of the teams are just too average compared to a decade ago.

But we've got the world's best player, Sir Kev.

Most of what you say is plausible. But just to play devil's advocate who have we lost to Union recently who is that calibre of player?

Secondly it's often easier to look back with hindsight and say so-and-so is a great player when at the time people felt that ten years before that was better and so on and so on. Maybe in ten years we will think Roby, Charnley, Hall, Crabtree, Watkins, Ellis and Chase are great players.

Trying to convince myself as much as you here! But worth a thought?

joel tomkins could have been immense by now. but i know what you mean.

We lost S.Tomkins, Graham and S.Burgess to the NRL, all young players who would be up there with those 10 already. Eastmond, J.Tomkins and O.Farrell could all be up there too IMO if they had stuck around. That's 6 we lost, before we get onto who we might have signed in. Crabtree, Ellis and Chase have all paid their best rugby, Crabtree isn't quite there, the other two were in the NRL in their prime, and again there's no way Chase is/will be anywhere near the likes of Long. I'd be amazed if the rest stayed in the SL for the rest of their careers unless something changes. Watkins is already off isn't he?

A bit of poetic licence here maybe. Eastmond showed nothing to suggest that, neither did Owen Farrell, Joel I agree with you. Personally i think he could have played anywhere he wanted, great athlete, future captain etc. but that's ONE to Union.

My point was that you only judge players to be great retrospectively. If Sean Long had played for Cas would he have looked as good as Chase, I doubt it somehow. Sean Long was surrounded by quality players. People dislike Chase because he won MoS when Sam was nailed on and because he's a dirty so-and-so but FWIW I think he'd show genuine class in a better team (please don't compare his form for England against Sean Long's cos we'd be here all day)

Kyle Eastmond was quality for Saints before he announced he was going to union, in fact in 08 I would say he was better than Sam Tomkins at club and international level. As for Owen Farrell, I take it you never watched amateur rugby? The lad captained the age above at St Pats and stood out a mile as the best player. According to wiki he's already picked up 16 caps and 154 caps for England RU now at 21 years of age. There is no doubt in mind that he would be tearing it up in the Super League now if he had stayed at Wigan.

As for your next point, we know that Burgess, Graham and Tomkins for example are great right now, we might look back in a few years and get a bit nostalgic, but we do recognise them as greats even now. Not really sure what you're getting at re: the club a player plays for. I agree that it can be hard for a good player to shine in a poor side (having said that I do think the top sides do a pretty good job of swooping in for the better players from the lower sides when they do show themselves) I just don't see the relevance to what we're talking about

You're probably right, and I'm coming over to your argument.

Just a few minor points - there are plenty of good youngsters who stand out at junior level and don't make the grade professionally so we can't really use examples of players lost to Union when they have never played League professionally.

You are right I don't watch amateur RL, I spend all of my spare time watching professional RL, there are only so many hours in the day! So we'll agree about Owen F FWIW.

I suppose what we are talking about is you were judging today's players against those from a previous era, always a difficult thing to do. I used the example of Chase against Sean Long. The top sides HAVE tried to buy him and I think you know that. I don't think it's a nailed on certainty that Long is the better player for the reasons already given.

Only idiots don't study history and learn from it. RL was at a very low ebb in the early to mid 70s which coincided with a ban on Aussies and Kiwis into our game combined with a lot of the best forwards defecting to Oz - Lowe, Stevo, Gray, Ashurst, Reilly spring to mind. Sounds famliiar? Crowds were incredibly low in this period - 4000 was the norm at Wigan, Saints, Leeds and Wire with internationals poorly supported.

The game and crowds only started to improve in the early 80s when Hull signed Ah Koi, Leluai, OHara and Kemble which paved the way for Sterling, Kenny, Meninga, Lewis etc. Top quality RU players followed in Davies, Tait, Offiah and top coaches entered the fray in Smith, Monie and Lowe as the game entered a pretty positive period. 50,000 attended an international at Old Trafford and more at Wembley. Top players were genuine household names.

Obviously a transformation would be more difficult now with the strength of RU, but one things for sure, the gradual drip drip of star names out of the game coupled with nothing much coming in the other direction will only result in the game going in one direction.

The clash of the SL and NRL seasons mean you won't get overseas players coming over in their prime in the numbers you had in the 80s and 90s. Back then they could play all year round.

Even if there was no salary cap over here I'm not convinced there are enough clubs with enough spending power to compete with the NRL clubs for top talent. Union recruits are out for the same reason.

So let's do nothing, then.

Where did I say that?

If want to make some progress we could do worse than make more of the international game. That gets more coverage than club rugby in the media. A higher profile game would attract more sponsors and help spread the game to new people and areas. When I was at Uni back in the late 80s early 90s lots of players in our RL team came from non RL areas but wanted to give the game a go having seen the likes of Hanley, Offiah etc on TV.

It was international RL that kick started the revival of the game here in 1982 when we saw the Kangaroos and realised how far behind we were. 4 years later there were crowds of 50k watching test matches. Give players the big stage to aspire to and they'll want to play the game.

You are right. I remember trying to argue this point a few years ago with people that were saying we should cut out the overseas players to increase standards of British RL. The reason clubs sign overseas players is because they are better than the British players they can get, thats a reflection on the relative quality of the British players at the time. If you stop or restrict imports that's not going to make your British players better.

The best British youngsters have always come through in to first team anyway. Compared to most sports RL has quite a high rate of bringing through home grown youngsters in to the first team. The real problem that for so many years people wanted to ignore is that at most clubs there are a lot of home grown players in SL teams that are just not up to it. When people say "top young talent can't get a chance because of the Aussies taking up spots" you could always point to a good 3/4 British players in most clubs that were no more than average journeyment pros, so they were taking the "top young talent" spot just as much as the overseas players were.

I think a lot of British fans lived in a dream world that there were these superstar youngsters that clubs were releasing because of overseas players, but the youngsters clubs were releasing were just the guys that ended up going down to National League. If there were any next-Robinson or next-Hanleys that got released to the NL, we would soon hear about them after they scored 80 tries in a season and got signed by an SL club.

Another big myth that hasn't helped us, is where people say "players just need to get more game time to get good". To be honest you can generally tell if players can handle SL within about 10 games or so. Warrington fans go on about Kevin Penny like this, Cullen/Lowes "ruined him", if we hadn't signed Hicks etc Penny could have had more experience and turned in to Martin Offiah. If you have guys that are just not up to it, then playing them again and again and again isn't going to turn them in to world beaters.

Unfortunately now the exchange rate and the new TV deal in Aus has effectively restricted our overseas purchases the way that lots of fans wanted, but this isn't heralding a load of new superstars, it is just meaning that guys like Danny Brough are being seen as the cream of the crop.