Why Super league sucks

[final say]

The same three sides always win..
Please NRL, buy Super league and fix this mess!!!

Sky Sports publish estimated 'salary spend' of all Super League teams: Salford second-lowest, Wigan highest

Sky Sports have published what they believe to be the estimated spend of every Super League club this year on player salaries.

www.loverugbyleague.com

 

[Perth Red]

The same three sides always win..
Please NRL, buy Super league and fix this mess!!!

Sky Sports publish estimated 'salary spend' of all Super League teams: Salford second-lowest, Wigan highest

Sky Sports have published what they believe to be the estimated spend of every Super League club this year on player salaries.

www.loverugbyleague.com

Pure guesswork By them.

but you have some degree of point. Without a large tv grant to clubs the clubs with bigger fanbases and richest owners can afford the best players. There are currently 5 clubs in that category, St’s, wigan, warrington, Catalans and Leeds.
the two hull clubs sit on the fringe with hfc having had occasional success and HKR breaking into the top 5 group at the moment.
outside of that there isn’t any other clubs who can consistently financially challenge.

RFL not having much money and therefore not having the resources to actually police the cap properly isn’t helping either.

re nrl taking over, yeh it’s not like roosters, panthers, broncos and Storm haven’t dominated nrl for years is it? We get the occasional one off club breakthrough but not then consistently be good.

 

[final say]

Pure guesswork By them.

but you have some degree of point. Without a large tv grant to clubs the clubs with bigger fanbases and richest owners can afford the best players. There are currently 5 clubs in that category, St’s, wigan, warrington, Catalans and Leeds.
the two hull clubs sit on the fringe with hfc having had occasional success and HKR breaking into the top 5 group at the moment.
outside of that there isn’t any other clubs who can consistently financially challenge.

RFL not having much money and therefore not having the resources to actually police the cap properly isn’t helping either.

re nrl taking over, yeh it’s not like roosters, panthers, broncos and Storm haven’t dominated nrl for years is it? We get the occasional one off club breakthrough but not then consistently be good.

There's no comparison.
There's only 3 clubs in Super league that have won it...
There's only a very small amount of NRL clubs who haven't spent a few years around the top and winning it!
Titans and the Warriors come to mind but even the Warriors have been in grand finals...
And that's all in my lifetime..
15 out of 17 and 2 of those are new clubs!

But the real trouble is just week to week. I watch in the mornings some times on weekends and it's so predictable. Hate to see the betting market.. half the time I'd be $1.05 St Helens $12 Salford ect... who wants to watch that? Men vs boys- rubbish.

Saints win the comp ... then buy players..
The sooner someone steps in and fixes it the better.

 

[Perth Red]

There's no comparison.
There's only 3 clubs in Super league that have won it...
There's only a very small amount of NRL clubs who haven't spent a few years around the top and winning it!
Titans and the Warriors come to mind but even the Warriors have been in grand finals...
And that's all in my lifetime..
15 out of 17 and 2 of those are new clubs!

But the real trouble is just week to week. I watch in the mornings some times on weekends and it's so predictable. Hate to see the betting market.. half the time I'd be $1.05 St Helens $12 Salford ect... who wants to watch that? Men vs boys- rubbish.

Saints win the comp ... then buy players..
The sooner someone steps in and fixes it the better.

You think the nrl is going to step in to give some clubs more money than others to even out the spending Power?

not sure if you’ve looked at the SL table but 8 of 12 teams are within 2 wins of each other.
the problem is the bottom 4 who are well well off the pace.
London are there by a fluke so you can discount them.
So we have 8 teams close to each other and 3 who are struggling.

 

[taste2taste]

SL desperately need to find a way to spread the talent...or at least enforce the cap.

Why bother watching or attending games if you aren't a supporter of the big 3.

 

[Perth Red]

SL desperately need to find a way to spread the talent...or at least enforce the cap.

Why bother watching or attending games if you aren't a supporter of the big 3.

In the last ten years 7 clubs have made the GF and 11 clubs have made the challenge cup final. The problem lies in revenue gap between the top and bottom clubs. That is not an easy problem to fis.

 

[final say]

SL desperately need to find a way to spread the talent...or at least enforce the cap.

Why bother watching or attending games if you aren't a supporter of the big 3.

Exactly.
In a way I'm afraid we could lose fans. Most of them are used to losing all the time and the biggest clubs are used to winning all the time.
These people are going to find it strange when they don't already know who wins lol.

 

[final say]

In the last ten years 7 clubs have made the GF and 11 clubs have made the challenge cup final. The problem lies in revenue gap between the top and bottom clubs. That is not an easy problem to fis.

You can at least stop the clubs at the top spending double on their roster.. not rocket science.
Having a marquee signing loophole when only 3 or 4 clubs can afford a marquee signing?? You could start by f**king that off.

 

[Perth Red]

You can at least stop the clubs at the top spending double on their roster.. not rocket science.
Having a marquee signing loophole when only 3 or 4 clubs can afford a marquee signing?? You could start by f**king that off.

and lose all our best talent to union and NRL? Yeh that'll solve the problem! Its up to the lower clubs to reimagine themselves to be more appealing to investors, fans and sponsors and get the revenue up where they can be competing with the top 5 big clubs.
HKR are showing the way and that it is possible.
Leigh had a bright start and hopefully can pick up their form again.
HFC are in a very weird spiral at the moment for a club with such good backing and presumably at some time will get their sht back together.
Cas, Salford, Hudds, London are the problem children. Be interesting to see if Wakey come back up if their new backer and stadium improvements can lift them to be more competitive than previously.

The key issue of local player development remains as big an issue as the cap. Until all the SL clubs have the resources to run proper academies and reserve grade sides then the cream will always be too thin to have 12 or 14 competitive clubs.

Its a catch 22 at the moment. Poor clubs cant get fans and backing as they keep losing, and they cant get better as they dont have the backing and fans. Its a hard circle to get out of unless you are lucky enough to have some new investment come in and make some smart business decisions.

 

[Perth Red]

SL desperately need to find a way to spread the talent...or at least enforce the cap.

Why bother watching or attending games if you aren't a supporter of the big 3.

Hope springs eternal! Why do 400k go to F1 at the moment? Why does anyone watch their team play the Panthers or Storm? Why do 40k WC Eagles fans still turn up to games? Sport is a funny thing, we are willing to put up with really poor entertainment at times in the hope what we love will get better.

 

[taste2taste]

You can at least stop the clubs at the top spending double on their roster.. not rocket science.
Having a marquee signing loophole when only 3 or 4 clubs can afford a marquee signing?? You could start by f**king that off.

Can't get rid of marquee players, there's an argument the number could should even be increased to 3 or 4 a team.

As Perth says, loose Marquee players and the SL will loose its top dozen players to NRL or Southern Kick and Clap.

 

[final say]

Can't get rid of marquee players, there's an argument the number could should even be increased to 3 or 4 a team.

As Perth says, loose Marquee players and the SL will loose its top dozen players to NRL or Southern Kick and Clap.

The NRL pays a price for having a cap. Sualii to Wallabies, Manu to France..
Small price to pay when the competition is even and the TV rights is the biggest deal across both codes in the world.

Even up the comp, every games a contest, you get more bums on seats, you get more TV money- you have more money... then you can pay more for players.
If only 3 clubs can afford these players then the comp can't afford them..
Imagine if we afforded the Broncos and the Roosters some give? The NRL would be a joke.
Like the Super league, a joke.

 

[Perth Red]

The NRL pays a price for having a cap. Sualii to Wallabies, Manu to France..
Small price to pay when the competition is even and the TV rights is the biggest deal across both codes in the world.

Even up the comp, every games a contest, you get more bums on seats, you get more TV money- you have more money... then you can pay more for players.
If only 3 clubs can afford these players then the comp can't afford them..
Imagine if we afforded the Broncos and the Roosters some give? The NRL would be a joke.
Like the Super league, a joke.

Its very easy to say even up the comp but you havent come up with any solutions other than to stop the better run clubs holding on to better players. Without it they are probably losing them to outside Sl and weakening the whole comp in the process!

And it isnt just 3 clubs using marquee allowances, there's at least Wigan, St's, HKR, Leeds, Catalans and Warrington who have max marquee usage, and I suspect some of the others who can and are spending above baseline cap using some of the marquee allowance.

Your analogy makes no sense as all, the NRL clubs can spend a max cap that's massive making Ru and SL little competition for the most talented players.
Now imagine if the cap in NRl was 1/4 what it is and the NRl was losing many star players to RU and SL. Would you rather NRL lose many star players and have a lessor quality but more equal comp overall, or that those clubs that could afford to spend more than the cap were allowed to do so in order to keep the best players in the comp? Thats the scenario the SL is facing.

The answer for Sl is to have all clubs able to spend full cap and marquee allowances and a much deeper talent pool to call on. Getting to that answer is much much harder.

And having said all that SL is still great to watch a lot of the time. There's been some great games this season. St's v Cats and Cas v Salford were both great games in the last round.

 

[final say]

Its very easy to say even up the comp but you havent come up with any solutions other than to stop the better run clubs holding on to better players. Without it they are probably losing them to outside Sl and weakening the whole comp in the process!

And it isnt just 3 clubs using marquee allowances, there's at least Wigan, St's, HKR, Leeds, Catalans and Warrington who have max marquee usage, and I suspect some of the others who can and are spending above baseline cap using some of the marquee allowance.

Your analogy makes no sense as all, the NRL clubs can spend a max cap that's massive making Ru and SL little competition for the most talented players.
Now imagine if the cap in NRl was 1/4 what it is and the NRl was losing many star players to RU and SL. Would you rather NRL lose many star players and have a lessor quality but more equal comp overall, or that those clubs that could afford to spend more than the cap were allowed to do so in order to keep the best players in the comp? Thats the scenario the SL is facing.

The answer for Sl is to have all clubs able to spend full cap and marquee allowances and a much deeper talent pool to call on. Getting to that answer is much much harder.

And having said all that SL is still great to watch a lot of the time. There's been some great games this season. St's v Cats and Cas v Salford were both great games in the last round.

At the end of the day SL needs the NRL to buy it. A central funding model that basically covers a decent percentage of player payments and an even cap at that.
Ideally now for instance the top clubs are spending 3 million pounds roughly. If all clubs had a grant of 2.5 and that was the cap, there would actually be more money overall to spend on players, it would simply be spread throughout the competition.

Possibly that would exceed the revenue for the sport putting the comp in negative around 10 million pounds ( these are very rough guesses) but the NRL have that and it would serve as a good investment.
An even quality comp would double its current revenue in 10 years.

For the mean time though, there needs to be some middle ground.
The bottom teams are spending half of the top teams..
Imagine today that the Broncos has 24 million to spend on players while a new club like Perth has 12 ...

 

[Perth Red]

At the end of the day SL needs the NRL to buy it. A central funding model that basically covers a decent percentage of player payments and an even cap at that.
Ideally now for instance the top clubs are spending 3 million pounds roughly. If all clubs had a grant of 2.5 and that was the cap, there would actually be more money overall to spend on players, it would simply be spread throughout the competition.

Possibly that would exceed the revenue for the sport putting the comp in negative around 10 million pounds ( these are very rough guesses) but the NRL have that and it would serve as a good investment.
An even quality comp would double its current revenue in 10 years.

For the mean time though, there needs to be some middle ground.
The bottom teams are spending half of the top teams..
Imagine today that the Broncos has 24 million to spend on players while a new club like Perth has 12 ...

Its not a charity, NRL wont by it unless there is something in it for them. Whats the RoI for the NRL?

Thatd would work but where's the extra 18 million pound a year coming from to do that? You think NRl is just going to give SL $36mill a year?

Current cap is 2.1million pound + 3 marquees if you can afford them, and grant is 1 million pound.

We can only hope IMG can weave its magic and turn the SL into an eventual strong 14 team viable comp. Licensing with most of the focus on revenue generation is a great step in the right direction imo.

Im all for giving clubs 3 years to build their businesses to be able to spend to full cap and if they cant their licenses grade should be downgraded by 1. If you cant afford a 2.1mill cap maybe you shouldn't be in SL and should make room for a club that can? Bring in a 90% cap spend min like NRL has.

 

[final say]

Its not a charity, NRL wont by it unless there is something in it for them. Whats the RoI for the NRL?

Thatd would work but where's the extra 18 million pound a year coming from to do that? You think NRl is just going to give SL $36mill a year?

Current cap is 2.1million pound + 3 marquees if you can afford them, and grant is 1 million pound.

We can only hope IMG can weave its magic and turn the SL into an eventual strong 14 team viable comp. Licensing with most of the focus on revenue generation is a great step in the right direction imo.

Im all for giving clubs 3 years to build their businesses to be able to spend to full cap and if they cant their licenses grade should be downgraded by 1. If you cant afford a 2.1mill cap maybe you shouldn't be in SL and should make room for a club that can? Bring in a 90% cap spend min like NRL has.

Whatever it is mate, you can't have the bottom teams spending half of the top teams.
That has to change, no question.

 

[Ride the Lion to Zion]

Why bother watching or attending games if you aren't a supporter of the big 3.

To support your club and enjoy a game of Rugby League Football.

 

[Perth Red]

To support your club and enjoy a game of Rugby League Football.

And following a team is all about hope! Even if your teams crap you turn up in the hope they might pull off an upset. Ive followed my club through some pretty dire times and some of the best games where in those times when we pulled off a win against the odds.

 

[Ride the Lion to Zion]

And following a team is all about hope! Even if your teams crap you turn up in the hope they might pull off an upset. Ive followed my club through some pretty dire times and some of the best games where in those times when we pulled off a win against the odds.

As a fan of a smaller club, my experience is slightly different. Swinton promotion from the old second division was automatically followed by Swinton relegation the following year. We had no hope of survival in the top tier. However, most of the first division games we lost were a lot more exciting and enthralling than those we routinely won the year before.

Alternative forces at play for clubs when a season in a lower division is the exception. Can act as a means of renewal. Pressure is off. Respite from desperation and short-term fixes. Bit of time and space to see the bigger picture. Happening to some extent for Wakefield this year. Helped by long-overdue ground improvements imparting a sense of progress.