Saddened! wrote:
It depends what happens now. If it's a one off for Wigan to keep Tomkins in the sport I don't agree with it at all. If it's something the other clubs have voted in favour of and have been consulted on, then we can't really complain too much.
I suspect however that rather than the other clubs announcing how they'll benefit from the change and what they will do with it, that it will just go quiet. Wigan will benefit but no one else will and they'll spend £100k more than anyone else, which is how they have always wanted it to be.
What annoys me though is Leneghan's comments today about how Wigan now have enough room for a £100,000+ NRL centre. Although he said they don't want one, you get the feeling that's only because there are no decent player available due to the timing of it.
A salary cap ammendment that enables British young players to stay in the sport is good, but it shouldn't be a loophole that enables clubs to add further overseas players.
Exactly - as it stands it is a rule change
specifically to allow Wigan to cheat and gain an unfair advantage once again. Even if the rule
is applied globally and other clubs do eventually also benefit from it, there are only 3 or 4 clubs in the entire league in a strong enough financial position to be able to use it, as for every other club that is losing tonnes of money each and every year the old cap is too high for them to be able to afford already. Every non-"Big 4" club will now be faced with the prospect of either eternal mid-table mediocrity, or bankrupting themselves trying to keep up, exactly as per the '80s/'90s Wigan "glory years". It can serve no purpose but to give an unfair advantage to an elite few clubs and utterly annihilates the whole point of having a cap in the first place.
The simple fact is British RL can simply not compete with RU or the NRL for wages. Not by a long, long way. This move will do and can do nothing to change that until another 10 million a year in sponsorship magically appears for the league from somewhere. We all have to face up to the simple financial facts - British RL will only survive in the longer term at an inexorably lower talent level than it does currently and there's bugger all that any non-billionaire can do about it. Tomkins will still end up in RU or the NRL in a few seasons' time. All this does is make an already preposterous, random and deeply unfair league much, much less fair still.
