deluded pom? said:
Fairleigh Good! said:
On the whole though Super League has been a fantastic success for the sport. I seriously doubt we would have Rugby League in GB if it were not for that competition. ALL the decent players would be playing Union, and the supporters would have ebbed away to fence around a field status.
The Super League clubs are now demanding a lower salary cap. Whilst this may see the NRL and Zzzzzzzzurich Premiership benefit in the short term it would bring the league even closer than it is now. The only thing holding back Super League is the short-sightedness of idiots like Caisley :evil: , Lyndsey and Hetherington.
Ban the evil NRL players and Super League would have a chance...
I agree that SL has saved the game in the U.K. from going to the wall .Only some SL teams want a lower fixed salary cap .You can bet your last pound that the big four will dig their heels in so they can continue to dominate the game . I can`t see how a lower salary cap will benefit the NRL .If they think a player isn`t worth a contract then he won`t get one ,no questions .The fact that their bolt hole here in the U.K. is a lot harder to get into won`t bother the NRL one iota . Caisley ,Hetherington and Lyndsay are albatrosses round the neck of the British game and you only look at their like to see why we keep coming up short in Ashes Test series.
The big 4 being? I cannot see St Helens complaining if the cap was lowered. We have been bending over backwards to keep up with NZ, Wigan and Leeds and the balance sheet reflects this. I think Saints would welcome a lowering of the cap.
As for the NRL, if SL had a cap of £1m instead of the current level, then the clubs would need to maintain a squad of 20 or so players for £800k less. That would mean that star players would have to be offered less, meaning NRL clubs could get near what SL clubs are paying thus lowering the barriers to players moving to the NRL. Therefore players like Sculthorpe, Carney, Senior, Fielden, Peacock etc could be lost from SL as any NRL club would love to sign players of that quality. I didn't mean that it would stop second raters coming from the NRL to Super League.
The problems with GB run far, far deeper than Super League though. Apart from Bradford's Kiwi exile squad and the number of foreign players, the main problem is that no-one plays the game here when they are young. If you go into most schools, even in the heartlands, Rugby League is likely to have no presence whatsoever. It cannot get any better until that is sorted out as all the decent athletes in GB end up playing Sunday League football for their local pub rather than even attempting RL, a sport in which they could be the next Shane Webcke or Andrew Johns. The whole structure of the sport needs to be shaken up, not Super League.
