Time for Wigan to stand up and fight the cap?

[butt monkey]

Check it out for yourself!

http://www.nrl.com/SalaryCap/tabid/272/Default.aspx

Here is an interesting part though, taken from it:

Are there any allowances?

There are two allowances that a Club can use to pay players outside of the $3.366m Salary Cap for 2006. These are:

1. The Sponsor Servicing Allowance - Clubs can qualify to spend up to an additional $200,000 on players if they can prove that they have raised additional cash sponsorships through players providing additional services to these sponsors.

2. The Long Serving Player or Veterans' Allowance - This allowance takes effect for the 2003 season onwards. The allowance provides an exemption of up to $100,000 for each Club if they have a player or players that have been at their Club for ten years since they first played grade for their Club. For the Storm, Cowboys and Warriors the player must have been at the Club since its inception.

[cpwigan]

Lazy J as you rightly point out Wigan faced a unique set of circumstances. The Wembley roulette concept is somewhat of a red herring. It is a set of circumstances that coincided at the worst possible moment.

Escalating stadia costs due to the New Stand overspend, the SL War (which concentrated largely upon star players. Hence Wigan), the professionalisation of Union (which clubs had union converts) and the war to assume control of the club between Robinson and Whelan. Wigan had an awesome team around 1994 / 1995 and it was subsequently ripped apart as we needed to be in the strongest position possible with the advent of Summer rugby / SL / Salary cap.

Pre salary cap. The game had its highest media profile for 2 decades or more. Sponsorship and attendances were improving. Internationally, we had closed the gap on Australia and were firmly second best ahead of NZ. In 1990 we were minutes from winning the ashes until Stuart produced a freakish run to send Meninga over. Yes, Wigan had been dominant. Superclubs are actually good for sport. St George, Parramatta, Canberra and Brisbane all in turn raised the profile of RFL in Australia. The most dominant team ever, St George, remain the most famous. However, Widnes had matched Wigan and surpassed us at times. Leeds/Bradford/Saints all competed for the league title. In the early 80's clubs like Featherstone showed that every club could have its day.

Under a salary cap achieving success from a poor starting point is incredibly arduous and very much long term. The restrictions place clubs in a bad start position with a mountain to climb. So, we got 3 clubs repeatedly dominating RL.

We want expansion BUT no new club is going to make a rapid advancement with the restrictions in place. No club will ever benefit from philanthropy. Imagine, Catalan backed by a wealthy benefactor. A Welsh club having world class stars in its team.

RFL has always had to draw star players from non RFL backgrounds. Sullivan, Boston et al for Wigan. Every club had these Union converts and GB benefitted from them. What do we have now? No union players. We even lose talent we cannot afford to lose to Union. Union are now stealing our best youngsters. If this sport loses Owen Farrell (a futute all time great) then that IMO would be a far greater crime than overspending on the cap. We sign overseas players more on their passport / KOLPAK credentials than playing quality. Is exploiting KOLPAK in the spirit of the game? Surely RFL clubs do not operate such double standards and hypocrisy Internationally we have become 3rd rate with little or no hope of beating Australia.

We still got clubs going under. London in past, Doncaster this year. Rochdale likely to follow suit. WE struggle to gain media attention and sponsorship seems harder to come by.

Are things really any better or are they worse?

[Susi]

I agree rugby league is rapidly being superseeded by union,the cap is supposed to serve a purpose, but i don't see how leeds and warrington get away with not being over.Considering the amount of overseas players they have both recruited in the past coulple of years
I do however feel it is time for us to have players sponsered by various companies/ individuals. You take note those clubs who do this don't seem to get penalised or if they do by very little.

[Fujiman]

Does anybody know if the sky contract is up this year. If so were does the game go from there :conf:

[thegimble]

I think that this is now a very likely path that Wigan should follow.

Only thing the cap does is dumb down SL. We no longer have 1 side pushing along all the others as they are all practically stationary now.

If the sides that can't live without the cap they should go to NL1 and let the players get the wages they deserve.

[cpwigan]

They will never do it Gimble BUT I think RL would be better off with an 8 team top division playing each other 3 times and then divisions of 12 playing each other twice.

[wigan/pier]

Lazy J posted:
It is not time to "scrap the cap" (i do like the sound of that)it does its job, the problem is it has been manipulated by the lowest common denominator, the cap was brought in to stop clubs going bust and appart from lahndan ( who have always been different) it has worked.

It needs to be linked to income, and that way will motivate teams to try and generate cash and market the club, at the moment any team can spend 1.6 million no matter how much revenue they generate, so if you are a big club with lots of income you are locked to the spending of a smaller club, it does not reflect real life.

Spot on IMO

[cpwigan]

If clubs are allowed to spend what they want based on income. Surely that negates the whole raison d'etre of the cap

[jammie]

do the teams lower down sl bring any talent through there own acadamy ranks NO,all they do is sit round like vultures waiting to see how many good youngsters the top clubs are having to let go each season becuase they cannot fit them in under the stupid salary cap.some of those players could one day have been some of the best players in the world had they been able to stay,learn and nurtured by a bigger club,but instead we toss them out to play in team of nobobbys learning nothing in facilitys that belong in the middle ages

[jammie]

yes but they have gone to decent clubs what about wakefield,hkr,salford,london,widnes,cas,warrington