Mac's views on the "Marquee" rule : Fri Feb 28, 2014 5:11 pm  

http://m.saintsrlfc.com/news/page/3849 How can the clubs vote to scrap the u21 academies to save £30k a year and then want to spend unlimited money on one "marquee" player?? I agree with Mac on this

http://m.saintsrlfc.com/news/page/3849 How can the clubs vote to scrap the u21 academies to save £30k a year and then want to spend unlimited money on one "marquee" player?? I agree with Mac on this

Re: Mac's views on the "Marquee" rule : Fri Feb 28, 2014 5:24 pm  

If he didn't have six overseas players in his squad he may have a point. And three of those teams have actually won something at academy level over the past six years.

Re: Mac's views on the "Marquee" rule : Fri Feb 28, 2014 5:30 pm  

Rogues Gallery wrote:

If he didn't have six overseas players in his squad he may have a point.

Or have 19 club trained players in the squad. Wait...

I thought this is something you'd actually agree about! We cut the u21s so clubs could "save". Now they want to go and spend x10 that saving on 1 player? Does it not seem ludicrous?

Cue the "saints don't have the money" responses ...

Re: Mac's views on the "Marquee" rule : Fri Feb 28, 2014 5:38 pm  

Magic Superbeetle wrote:

Or have 19 club trained players in the squad. Wait...

I thought this is something you'd actually agree about! We cut the u21s so clubs could "save". Now they want to go and spend x10 that saving on 1 player? Does it not seem ludicrous?

Cue the "saints don't have the money" responses ...

You know my views on U21's/reserves rugby. I was/am totally against getting rid of it. We should have U18's and U23/reserves.
I don't like the Golden ticket idea, but the marquee player could work. And clubs don't have to use it if they don't want or can't afford it.

Re: Mac's views on the "Marquee" rule : Fri Feb 28, 2014 5:44 pm  

Rogues Gallery wrote:

And clubs don't have to use it if they don't want or can't afford it.

And I totally agree with you about our reserves/ u23s - and so does McManus!

But, with regards to the above, there's a fantastically long list to prove, that just because a club can't, they still might! If we had 10/12 club who have 30 years of solid commercial and business acumen backing, we might be in a position to say, clubs can be trusted not to spend money they don't have. But we're not, and I'd rather see a return of the reserves than a 42 year old Freddie fittler running out for <insert mediocre team here> "because they can".

Re: Mac's views on the "Marquee" rule : Fri Feb 28, 2014 5:50 pm  

My view on the Marquee rule, depends one what was actually proposed. If it was a club buying a MArquee player then I'm dead against it.

If it was the clubs have to stick to a salary cap. But if an outside party wanted to pay a players wages for a club, then I would be happy with that.

The cap should be based on the clubs financial sides. If someone wants to throw their money about fine.

But letting the clubs do it, means that owners will promise the earth, whilst unknown to the fans they are saddling the clubs with debts that no number of future fans can ever pay off.

If the owner is spending the money outside of club accounts on a marquee player. Then when they get bored or run out of cash the club is still a viable going concern. If they manage the impossible and make money they can get their money back from the club profits.

Re: Mac's views on the "Marquee" rule : Fri Feb 28, 2014 6:12 pm  

I think your chair is spot on. Somewhere in the future i like the idea of a marquee player but the time is not right. Also an U23/reserve league needs to be brought back pronto.

Re: Mac's views on the "Marquee" rule : Fri Feb 28, 2014 6:34 pm  

Eastbourne Warrior wrote:

I think your chair is spot on. Somewhere in the future i like the idea of a marquee player but the time is not right. Also an U23/reserve league needs to be brought back pronto.

Re: Mac's views on the "Marquee" rule : Fri Feb 28, 2014 8:18 pm  

I've been thinking about it and although Mac's view are for the better of the game. There is a problem that needs to be resolved.

The incumbents in SL will have had more time to hold their own players. Naturally clubs lower down will have had pressure from above clubs to sell on their players. So any new club to the league would be at a disadvantage for a long period and may not survive long enough to get to a point where their junior set up matches long standing clubs.

I see no reason why there can't be a balance between the two. I would not have any player exempt from the cap completely. But newer entrants to the league could have say a higher Marquee player ratio.

So your Wigans/Saints would have the ability to have 1 Marquee player only cost £100,000 on the club accounts. They would also be allowed to have say up to 10 club grown players cost again only £100,000 on the accounts.

This encourages teams to develop their own players.

However brand new entrants to the league would be allowed say 3 - 4 Marquee players again only costing £100,000 on the cap as it is unlikely they would have 10 academy players at the very top standard.

But their Marquee allowance would drop by one player every 3 years. So by year 10, they would be at the same place as other mature clubs, developing their own players and not just buying in.

Going to either extreme gives too much to short termism or too much to the incumbents in the market place.

However, I still maintain that the overall club cap should be limited to £2million and any additional payment to Marquee player or academy grown player that goes over this £2million figure would need to come from outside the club accounts. Whether that be sponsorship, or owner payments.

So Koukash could have 3 marquee players currently. The Salford club would pay £100,000 of their wages, the rest comes from elsewhere. But the Salford club could not pay over £2million in total for the squad. In another 3 years they would be down to 2 marquee players, then 1, 3 years after that. In the mean time they would need to build up their own academy players to replace these marquee players.

Re: Mac's views on the "Marquee" rule : Fri Feb 28, 2014 9:00 pm  

He makes sense on this for once. But you do get the nagging doubts creeping in that he just doesn't want to spend the money on one.

He'd probably make Paul Wellens our marquee player.