But why would they when they're can do very nicely thank you by picking up players who can't make the grade or fit under the cap from the small number of clubs who develop their own players.

I don't see the current system changing anytime soon over here.

The RFL would argue that (1) we don't have a sufficient pool of players on a national level, (2) some clubs (like ourselves) have an advantage because youth talent (nationally) is concentrated in our catchment areas and (3) clubs in new development areas like the Crusaders or the Catalans are at a distinct disadvantage because they don't any pool of local talent to draw from.

It's typical of the RFL that they restrict clubs in (2) in order to "protect" those clubs who fall into (3). As one poster put it earlier, it's like the tail wagging the dog. Also, as Gallop pointed out in that clip, it ensures that the excess of talent produced at a small number of clubs is 'spread' through the competition (or go to rugby union).

Of course the main problem is (1) - the lack of sufficient RL talent at a national level to support the competition. And we'll never have that until ALL clubs are forced to invest a substantial youth programme (including links with amateur clubs, proper scouting system etc.)

In the meantime, we'll develop our own players at Wigan and do our best to make the club the kind of place where they wouldn't want to be anywhere else.

Should we look into this?

[urlhttp://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/nrl/new-salary-cap-plan/story-e6frexnr-1225860995509[/url

Harrison Hansen would count as a 10% discount with next year being 20%.
Sean O'loughlin would count as a 20% discount and in two years rising to 50%.
Joel Tomkins would count as a 10% discount.
Paul Prescott would count as a 10% discount with next year rising to 20%
Darrell Goulding would count as a 10% discount.
Next year Eamon O'carroll would count as a 10% discount.

What do people think?

There is no way that the RL is going to change the SC system if the changes would benefit Wigan, unfortunately.

In fact if we had a couple of seasons of success (possibly even 1 season) I would expect the RL to introduce some kind of compulsory transfer system to effectively force us to part with our home grown players even before they earned so much that we couldn't pay them enough to keep them happy. They'll find some way to hamstring Wigan so that we don't "win everything/destroy the game" etc etc.

The fact is that SC was never about a "level playing field", "fairness" or the development of the player base or the protection and growth of club's finances (the trojan horse when the SC was brought in was that it would stop financial mismanagement, which of course it didn't, and then of course the SC morphed into having a "level playing field" objective, as if by magic).

The SC was and remains about limiting ambition in the typically parochial, short-sighted and inept way of RL management and frankly about saving on wage bills, the part that makes me the most angry about the whole SC farce. Here's a predicition: no SC supporter will be able to justify the outrageous failure to at least link the SC to inflation (let alone average earnings). So much for "fairness"....

Agree with all of that.

Teams like Wigan and saints should be rewarded more for their youth development. All we get right now is an extra point on the stupid tick list for the entrance to super league!

RL would benefit as whole from change like this.

Cant believe Gallop tried to defend that crap, you cant defend the indefensible, He basically described it as a communist-cap with the sole aim of redistribution of talent. We need more people like Gould to start making noises



and even the points system does not matter to bigger clubs, Wigan and Saints are never going to be evicted from the SL under its current franchise format

Warning - Long winded post:

Let's look at what was said, because I can't believe some of the cr@p that Gallop came out with either.

This is the list of players that Melbourne gave first-team debuts to, all around age 18-21 at the time, as quoted by Phil Gould:


Now, let's equate those to Wigan shall we? (Not comparing talent, just numbers of first team players that came through the ranks and made SL debuts with us - And feel free to add/remove/correct any that I get wrong):
Goulding
Locky
Hansen
S Tomkins
J Tomkins
Mossop
Prescott
McIllorum
O'Carroll
Then throw in the next generation - Farrell, Ainscough, etc.. the list keeps going

In David Gallop's "defence" of the cap, when asked why should Melbourne be forced to sell the players that they put all of their time and resources into, the following drivel spewed forth:


So basically, he is saying that Melbourne - Despite NOT BEING IN A RUGBY LEAGUE AREA OF AUSTRALIA, is somehow in the priveleged position of having a multitude of young players to choose from. The man talks bollorcks.

He then says Thank You to Melbourne for developing Australia's finest Test stars of the day, but now that you have spent a VAST amount of time and money on them, you HAVE to donate them to somebody that can't be ärsed to do it for themselves.

Any of this sound familiar? Clubs just living (mostly) off other people's cast-offs? Castleford/Wakefield/Huddersfield FFS - Brown, Hodgson, Robinson, Wild & Gilmour all played against us on Sunday, having been released by us, (mostly) due to salary cap restraints.




Therein lies the ENTIRE PROBLEM David. You need to FORCE clubs to develop talent, or at the very least incentivise it to the point where only an utter moron would choose NOT to.
Instead, it's easier to penalise clubs that put in all the hard work, and expect them to simply hand over the finished articles to clubs that can't/don't/won't.




So basically, Gallop would like to keep things as they are, because it makes his life easier.

This man obviously has NO IDEA WHATSOEVER just how much (both in financial and time terms) it costs to develop kids into world-class players.

He should playback that tape while he writes his letter of resignation, as he is obviously incapable of administering this game. He knows nothing about it.

The trouble is that the RFL is run by morons, and I don't use that word lightly. ANYONE can see that the goal shouldn't be "a level playing field" anyway. The goal should be a "universally high standard" which is an entirely different thing. Last weekend, at a so-called 'show-piece event', we had a 50-odd to nil result, a 60-odd to nil result and not one single high quality, competative game! The closest we came was a close win for Leeds in a sub-standard encounter, where neither team looked like a quality rugby team. Even our own game which was 1st vs 4th could only manage 40 mins of competitive rugby before it became a largely one-sided affair! Huddersfield, themselves, have already registerd three wins where they nilled the opposition and we did the same to Catalans earlier in the season. I'm sure there'll be many more similar results this season. "level playing field" my a*s!

I'll say it again. The RFL is run by morons.

PHIL GOULD IS ABSOLUTELY CORRECT.

DAVID GALLOP IS DEAD WRONG.

The Storm are being punished for doing things the right way.

Gallop's replies to Phil Gould are pathetic.
"The salary cap need to spread out the talent." Gallop looked embarrassed when he said it.
There is only one way to spread the talent and that is for each club to produce it's own. Gallop says they can't, yes they can if they can if they want to.
It's no different over here.
We have clubs who produce talent and those who are unwilling and pretend they are unable. They bring in rules like the 20/20/25 and salary cap to force clubs who spend thousands on junior development to hand them over to clubs who don't spend on development but put all their playing resources into the first team squad.
Gould is dead right when he says they are punishing Melbourne because they have been good at what they do. Clubs who are lazy and useless at producing players are having their bone idleness rewarded.
The former 20/25, and the salary cap are the same here, it punishes the hard working and rewards the useless and bone idle!
The salary cap is wrong, it is rotten to the core and needs to be got rid of. Will it be binned? Not a chance due to the self interest of those who benefit from it irrespective of the damage it has done to Rugby League and will continue to do to the game.
Phil Gould talks more sense than Gallop or any NRL chairman could.

The Storm have been punished for breaking the rules.

Rules that, of course, have been put in place by the majoity of clubs who won't produce players and insist on a method of taking other clubs playing assets off them for their own club's benefit.

Ironic, they develop talent of the highest quality and the numpty Gallop wants them then to let them go to the other teams to strengthen weaker sides. Should it not be the case that all sides should develop their own players and not depend on others. If a team brings a young player through it ranks it should cost less on the cap to encourage more to do it.

All the present system and its in SL as well does is encourage lazyness and downright poor youth systems as some SL sides obviously have. Why should the Storm lose some of the best young talent in world rugby just to satisfy crappy clubs with poor methods. It was really a fascinating piece and shows that the RFL is not the only governing body that actually wants to restrict teams development but its in the NRL as well. If teams can support a cap that allows it to keep the best players it develops that should be encourage not let sides like Huddersfield, Cas, Wakey as well as NRL sides try to compete by letting it pinch players that we and others cant keep due to a cap that only supports the weaker clubs.

This is a very good article - sorry if the link been posted already:

[urlhttp://www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/league-news/parity-this-system-is-simply-a-reward-for-mediocrity-20100501-u04k.html[/url

Some very interesting points made about the original idea behind the salary cap in particular the notion that if clubs produce their own talent and get a diso for doing so then they [uwill be less likely to go and poach top players form other clubs.[/u

I think that is absolutely spot on. Here is a hypothetical example using Mylers move to Wire:

Lets say he could command £150K a season. A discount could mean it would only have cost Salford say £75K to match that. But that is only half the story. The important bit is Wire could, if they produced their own players, get to keep TWO home grown players worth £150K on the open market for the money they were prepared to pay Myler.

The other thing I liked was him stating the idea the aim of the salary cap is to even out the competition is absurd. As he said it's a [icompetition[/i and fans understand the cycle of success and failure and don't understand the idea it is virtually guaranteed a side that does everything right must be broken up.

The idea all sides can be in with an equal chance is a pipe dream:

"A competition of contrived parity and reduced player depth that resembles a lottery rather than rewarding excellence falls a long way short of what professional sport is supposed to be.

"After all, it's a competition. We are supposed to compete - not hold hands and walk side by side."

This crystallises what I have thought about the current form of s/c ever since it was introduced.

The best quote is this though:

"It (the salary cap) also punishes success and protects mediocrity."

Spot on.

Dave

That's a brilliant article, I hadn't seen it before and thanks for putting it up. The other side of this is that the whole idea of sport is too find a way to be the best team/country in the world, and while a salary cap stops clubs just throwing money at the best players to dominate, which is the easy option, it's punished a team in this case for doing it the hard way, incredibly successfully.

I think the punishment for Melbourne should stand, they ultimatly broke the competition rules and so therefore shouldn't get away scot free, but the NRL should use this as a test case and look into changing the salary cap so that this doesn't happen agian, otherwise the clubs that are spending trying to devolop players might as well stop, and just wait for someone else to do it.

Firstly let me say that I the salary cap in its current state is unfeasible and a laughing stock. The quote posted above by Dave O nails it, "It (the salary cap) also punishes success and protects mediocrity."
However, the fact is that the rules are the rules and Melbourne broke them. We're not talking about a few cents either. The club cynically and willingly went well over the cap and they have been rightly punished for it.

What a great video.

Totally agree 100% and have been saying the same for years.

Or, to illustrate.

Wigan should put time, money and effort into producing great young players but when they turn 20 or 21 and they can't afford to keep them (under the rules of the CC mind, not necessarily per se), then they should give them to other clubs such as Wakefield and Castleford (where they will likely be paid less than they could earn at Wigan), or more likely leave RL altogether.


I wonder why the majority of "fans" of Wakey and Castleford support the CC. That's a puzzler.

I don't think anyone would argue with that. But Gould was talking about the bigger picture, and the overarching problems that a stringent salary cap, with no apparent flexibility in it, is now causing to our game. Melbourne are just the best illustration of it.

However, I'm heartened by both that interview, in which Gallop's defence of the cap was laughably unconvincing, and by the article Dave O refers to. If official bums are starting to twitch about the cap down in Aus, you can guarantee they'll soon be twitching here as well.

Yeah, technically correct. But in real terms they are being punished for making an outstanding contribution to the game.

I wouldn't hold your breath. Over the years contrary to popular belief there hasn't been uniform acceptance of the salary cap as a good thing in Oz and it isn't the first time it's been criticised down-under by senior figures in the game for being a disincentive to player development.

I suppose the difference this time is it's on the back of what has gone at the Storm which kind of proves the points that have been made in the past as well those now being highlighted by Gould. Whether that is enough to get any momentum behind any calls for the cap to be changes is another matter.

Dave

I think you're probably right. But I'm also heartened that the usual deluge of 'all hail the cap' trolls, who used to infest this forum, are thus far absent from this thread. That suggests to me that they're becoming more of a minority than they were.

St Helens used to provide the bulk of them, so perhaps the near inevitability that they'll be losing Eastmond in a year or so has concentrated a few minds there. I also think that it's pretty difficult to argue, from any kind of perspective, that what Phil Gould was saying was wrong. Melbourne broke the rules and have been rightly punished, but there is clearly no morality in imposing a system that forces clubs to give up the young talent they have nurtured (and paid for) to clubs who can't, or in most cases won't, do the same thing themselves. There is no question that this is rewarding the sort of unambitious mediocrity that has bedevilled the British game in particular for so many decades.

Gallop looked frazzled to be suddenly having to defend an indefensible position, and he didn't do a convincing job. In fact, he came out a poor second. And that will not have been lost on anyone, no matter what they think about the salary cap.

More of the same please, Gus.

Perhaps I'm being paranoid but I wonder if the stated desire for "a level playing field" is being dictated to the RFL by Sky. As Phil Gould points out, fans understand cycles of success and failure, but Sky aren't so tolerant - they have a vested interest in close, competitive games for the sake of viewing figures. Of course the salary cap doesn't guarantee close games any more than "a level playing field" or financial solvency for clubs or anything else - it's there because the last thing RFL and Sky want to see is the sort of dominance we had some years ago.

Great thread.

I note the absence of the usual pro-SC fanatics from the debate. They lost the argument on the SC years ago of course, but it must be particularly hard for them at present given that one of the central planks of the pro-SC case was that it worked in Oz and everyone thinks its great there....

I also note the failure to engage on the issue of the erosion of the GB SC due to inflation - at an annual rate of 2.5% inflation has eroded £100 of RL player's wages to £77.63 in real terms over the last 10 years. Of course wages have risen faster than 2.5% a year over the last decade, so comparatively RL players have done even worse than this.

This is a desperately unfair system that does nothing to encourage the development of players or the growth of clubs and the game as a whole.

Agreed BK, indeed the continuing erosion of pay in real terms for RL players will mean that increasing numbers of them will leave RL - not just to RU, many simply stop playing professional RL and will go and get a "normal" job - frankly the pay for many young players is so modest that its a tribute to their dedication and commitment to the game that they bother to put in the huge amount of work needed to be a professional player.

Phil Gould having a dig at Gallop/NRL is hardly a recent phenomenon. Gus is firmly an ARL man.