Cheers for the reference I will have a look at RL World after.CPWigan wrote:Rob we will never agree on this
The ex chief exec of Catalan went public in Australia about the use of offshore accounts. Have the Cats ever been punished? There is an article in this months Rugby League World about them.
I want improved standards of play. That has never come about by constraining clubs. We once had a level playing field, it was in the late 70's very early 80's. Everybody was garbage BUT we pretended otherwise. The RFL and the club officials said otherwise publicly. Thankfully, the 1982 Kangaroos came along and exposed British RFL as a bunch of fools who had no idea whatsoever. Raising standards come about by people pushing the bar higher and higher. That does not now happen we wallow in a mediocre league that is competitive by default.
I watch sport to be inspired. Whoever said domination is somehow wrong wants their head testing. We turn up in our thouands to watch the Australian RL Test Team, We watched Borg, we watch Fedderer, we watch Nadal, we watched Michael Johnson, we watched Brazil, we watched Steve Davis, we watch Phil Taylor.
If you want to talk about 'spirit of the game' then fine BUT lets get to the heart of that. What that means to me is every professional club / service area providing the highest standard of coaching education and opportunities to EVERY child within their catchment area. As it stand we know that does not happen. We know some professional clubs are parasites who sit on their behinds and feed like vultures off the work of others. We know and this has gone on for decades that amateur clubs and their volunteers who work for free never get rewarded properly for their efforts. If the game wants to be noble and honourable then it must start by A) any club signing a player from outside their own Service Area has to pay £20,000 to that Service Area. The professional club in that Service Area would pay £5000. Meaningful sums like that would at least allow those doing the hard graft to benefit by having more development officer, better resources etc. Do you honestly think the RFL community is fair? Read interviews re Castleford. That club for several years ignored their own Service Area. That is why they were in the mess they were in.
The cap or rich benefactors. Which will produce higher standards? I know and it aint the cap. We are the only sport that prevents people frtom investing in it. What a joke
As regards service area and amateur clubs feeding professional clubs. Aren't coaches at that level in it for the love of the sport, the want to take part? Isn't their payday when a child they brought through makes his SL debut? They do deserve to be paid but is there money available for this? I don't know.
A lot people say do away with cap but then you'd end up with a few big clubs and more smaller clubs, performing in the league relative to their spending power. You'd get two clubs with similar spending power to each other trying to out wrestle each other and pushing that little bit further to spend more on the best players. Pushing themselves closer to the brink.
On the other hand there are clubs who could do more on development of younger players and removing the cap may promote this, but at the cost of creating more of a gap between top and bottom of SL?
My opinion is that there is no simple answer, removing the cap is no sensible answer but some constraints especailly regarding homegrown players are too strong. A compromise is needed.
