Re: Worst SL season EVER? Or the best? : Sat Aug 02, 2014 11:08 am  

The main problem is that the salary cap hasn't gone up for over a decade. Buy £1 worth of bread in 2004 and £1 worth of bread now and see what you get for your money.

Re: Worst SL season EVER? Or the best? : Sat Aug 02, 2014 11:09 am  

Albion wrote:

Tbf tho it's like that in any sport, so I don't think it can be used as an indicator of anything. The premier league is probably the most competitive football league yet only a select few have won it.

But they don't have a salary cap in football to even it out. Football is usually who spends most wins the league but super league we are all suppose to be on level playing field.

Re: Worst SL season EVER? Or the best? : Sat Aug 02, 2014 11:12 am  

Whilst the winners have been restricted in the GF. You look at the CC and the league leaders and there has been a lot more variation in recent years.

Relegation team Huddersfield topping the table.

Warrington who always pretend to be good, winning back to back CC's and topping the table.

It's not as stagnant as the GF suggests.

Re: Worst SL season EVER? Or the best? : Sat Aug 02, 2014 11:14 am  

It probably highlights that certain teams are able to cope with the big high pressure games more than others? That's a culture thing more than anything

Re: Worst SL season EVER? Or the best? : Sat Aug 02, 2014 12:49 pm  

craigizzard wrote:

The main problem is that the salary cap hasn't gone up for over a decade. Buy £1 worth of bread in 2004 and £1 worth of bread now and see what you get for your money.

Thats correct, clubs have looked away from real long term quality. Instead of shopping at Marks and Spencers its a short term fix at Poundland instead.

Re: Worst SL season EVER? Or the best? : Sat Aug 02, 2014 3:32 pm  

The quality across the board is considerably less than a few years ago. Put our current strongest 17 up against 2006 strongest 17 and it would be an embarrassing scoreline

Re: Worst SL season EVER? Or the best? : Sat Aug 02, 2014 7:36 pm  

craigizzard wrote:

Put the Leeds or Saints sides from the mid 2000s into this league and they'd go comfortably unbeaten.

Leeds, who've been awful for months, could have gone top yesterday if they'd have hung on for 5 minutes against the worst Bradford team in history. That would have been laughable. Standards have dropped off a cliff.

Put the Saints side from the 60's (Murphy,Van Vollenhoven, Karalius,Watson,Killeen,Mantle) in, and they would give some of these teams a run for their money !!!!

Re: Worst SL season EVER? Or the best? : Sat Aug 02, 2014 8:52 pm  

I think that whilst the competition is closer than it has ever been up at the top the reason for that is simply the top clubs becoming weaker rather than the lower clubs getting better. Go back 10 years and the likes of Wigan, St's, Leeds, Bulls, would walk the competition in it's current state, I'm glad that its a more even playing field, But it's an even playing field for all the wrong reasons.

Go back a decade and we had real stars in the game and some top quality imports from aus (albeit it usually at the end of their career) . We struggle to even hold onto those kind of players now.

The current wigan/saints teams wouldn't have got near the top of superleague 10 years ago.

Re: Worst SL season EVER? Or the best? : Sun Aug 03, 2014 11:21 pm  

Saint Simon wrote:

Its true though, how the hell are we top the way we've been playing? It could be argued that SL is better than ever as anyone can beat anyone, but its more a case of the better teams getting worse than the lower teams getting better

Too right! Holding the cap at its current level for years has made it a more even playing field by bringing the top teams down to the lowest common denominator rather than raising the quality of the poorer teams. If we carry on like this we'll all end up playing like London.

Re: Worst SL season EVER? Or the best? : Mon Aug 04, 2014 10:31 am  

St pete wrote:

But they don't have a salary cap in football to even it out. Football is usually who spends most wins the league but super league we are all suppose to be on level playing field.

Germany domestic league have a cap in place and they won the world cup.