Re: Ellery hanley has his say : Sat Jun 16, 2012 10:01 pm  

sergeant pepper wrote:

Its a simple equation of

Poor on field product = lack of mainstream interest off it.

We need a 10 team SL where realistically all the teams are equal, playing to a equally high standard in modern looking stadia.

A league where ever game is of the highest quality and you've got 5 top games played over a weekend and fans are spoilt for choice.

That's how you market British RL as having the most competative league in the world. If it raises the level of the championship then even better for us.

I'd also go one step further with SL clubs linking up with league two sides and having A teams in that league mixed in with some others.

Make that the exciting young league where you can see the next Tomkins etc play.

Poor on field product = lack of mainstream interest off it.


And that explains why RU is so well viewed? The club rugby is very poorly viewed and the quality is whatever the opposite of elite is. How players like Farrel go from barely able to make the team to international is beyond me as an example.

A league where ever game is of the highest quality and you've got 5 top games played over a weekend and fans are spoilt for choice.


Just like the football? They have a number of good games (or so I hear, I don't like watching) but they have a bigger league where the decent clash happens more frequently because of the size of the league. Imagine the premiership with 10 teams.

That's how you market British RL as having the most competative league in the world. If it raises the level of the championship then even better for us.


I don't! We don't have the most competitive league in the world, and if we did who actually cares in the world? Are the Aussies tuning in en mass? How about the Germans?


I'd also go one step further with SL clubs linking up with league two sides and having A teams in that league mixed in with some others.


So you would reduce the size of SL and make L2 feeder clubs? So that's 1xSL and 1xL2 squads rather than 2xSL and 2xL2? Reducing the oppertunity to shine isn't the way to encourage improvement.

Re: Ellery hanley has his say : Sat Jun 16, 2012 10:22 pm  

Famous wrote:

This is something that I have always argued. Unlike yourself I actually like the salary cap and think that it is a good idea that just needs tweaking a little. However one must is that it should be linked to inflation so it doesnt decrease in real terms. If this was the case and we had a salary cap of £2.3 million we would have certainly kept a lot more players in the game and could compete with RU much better. It is a joke that some players from the 90s got paid more than players today when TV deals, sponsorship deals, crowds, ticket prices etc have all gone up considerably. Where has all the money gone? It doesnt make sense or add up to me.

The SC is a great way to cap the achievement of the top teams and level the league. The associated rules were a good way to prevent insolvency.

I'm not sure that the RU competition actually matters on the whole, look at the players that have been lost. Has RL lost a player that has the media's eye gone? Not in my opinion, because RL hasn't had the media focus nationally to start with. How much of a loss to RL was Andy Farrel/Paul Sculthorpe (not RU) at the time? Is anything Scully was worse due to his Gillette sponsorship loss.

Raising the cap may make more Aussies arrive, but the UK a players have to compete against them to play. Does this make the league improve or get worse?

Re: Ellery hanley has his say : Sat Jun 16, 2012 10:26 pm  

goobervision wrote:

Poor on field product = lack of mainstream interest off it.


And that explains why RU is so well viewed? The club rugby is very poorly viewed and the quality is whatever the opposite of elite is. How players like Farrel go from barely able to make the team to international is beyond me as an example.

A league where ever game is of the highest quality and you've got 5 top games played over a weekend and fans are spoilt for choice.


Just like the football? They have a number of good games (or so I hear, I don't like watching) but they have a bigger league where the decent clash happens more frequently because of the size of the league. Imagine the premiership with 10 teams.

That's how you market British RL as having the most competative league in the world. If it raises the level of the championship then even better for us.


I don't! We don't have the most competitive league in the world, and if we did who actually cares in the world? Are the Aussies tuning in en mass? How about the Germans?


I'd also go one step further with SL clubs linking up with league two sides and having A teams in that league mixed in with some others.


So you would reduce the size of SL and make L2 feeder clubs? So that's 1xSL and 1xL2 squads rather than 2xSL and 2xL2? Reducing the oppertunity to shine isn't the way to encourage improvement.

No but having the current concept is working right?

You talk about RU because YOU think its boring. I personally like the game and love the six nations/world cup tournaments as its competative and will hold your interest.

British RL is in a desperate state due to a lack of high level RL being played every week like it is in the NRL.

I don't believe that the crops of quality youngsters we produce season after season who beat their Aussie counterparts at youth level suddenly turn poor before they hit their peak.

What happens is their development is hindered as they stop being tested to the level NRL players do each week.

I'd love a comp as big and as good as the NRL but sadly we don't have the playing pool to achieve it. Instead of reducing the teams, cutting away the also rans and raising the weekly intensity level we instead dilute the comp with championship level players who we pretend are a lot better than they are.

It baffles me how blind some people are. We can watch standards slip further away season after season but yet some RL fans have their head in the sand.

Re: Ellery hanley has his say : Sat Jun 16, 2012 10:32 pm  

goobervision wrote:

The SC is a great way to cap the achievement of the top teams and level the league. The associated rules were a good way to prevent insolvency.

I'm not sure that the RU competition actually matters on the whole, look at the players that have been lost. Has RL lost a player that has the media's eye gone? Not in my opinion, because RL hasn't had the media focus nationally to start with. How much of a loss to RL was Andy Farrel/Paul Sculthorpe (not RU) at the time? Is anything Scully was worse due to his Gillette sponsorship loss.

Raising the cap may make more Aussies arrive, but the UK a players have to compete against them to play. Does this make the league improve or get worse?

Linking the cap to inflation and letting it rise with that isnt raising the cap though in real terms. The cap may be the same as 10 years ago but players today are being paid far less.

Re: Ellery hanley has his say : Sat Jun 16, 2012 11:58 pm  

Famous wrote:

Linking the cap to inflation and letting it rise with that isnt raising the cap though in real terms. The cap may be the same as 10 years ago but players today are being paid far less.

a point that most fans fail to understand.

players are getting poorer in real terms, why would they chose to stay in the competition.

Re: Ellery hanley has his say : Sun Jun 17, 2012 6:12 am  

goobervision wrote:

The SC is a great way to cap the achievement of the top teams and level the league. The associated rules were a good way to prevent insolvency.

You can't believe this, surely.

How many small clubs have won the SL in the SC era?

How many clubs have gone bust or had serious financial difficulties in the SC era?

Are you actually a member of the board of directors of the RFL?

Re: Ellery hanley has his say : Sun Jun 17, 2012 6:19 am  

Famous wrote:

This is something that I have always argued. Unlike yourself I actually like the salary cap and think that it is a good idea that just needs tweaking a little. However one must is that it should be linked to inflation so it doesnt decrease in real terms. If this was the case and we had a salary cap of £2.3 million we would have certainly kept a lot more players in the game and could compete with RU much better. It is a joke that some players from the 90s got paid more than players today when TV deals, sponsorship deals, crowds, ticket prices etc have all gone up considerably. Where has all the money gone? It doesnt make sense or add up to me.

I don't like the SC in it's current form, but it is only a symptom of a wider disease. Even if the SC were reformed in the way it should be - to encourage growth, ensure financial stability of clubs with additional financial controls and monitoring and reward clubs for developing players - the SL would still always be weak financially because of the people and culture at the RFL and clubs (and in the wider RL world - as shown by a poster on this thread claiming the SC has done a good job to protect clubs from insolvency!!)

Some of the cash has gone into new stadiums (Wigan's deal diverts a lot of revenue - more than IL has yet admitted publicly - to the stadium company), but it is a bit of a mystery as to where the money has gone, until you realise that clubs have just got used to the status quo under the SC and waste money because they can't spend it on players...

Re: Ellery hanley has his say : Sun Jun 17, 2012 7:03 am  

Deano G wrote:

You can't believe this, surely.

How many small clubs have won the SL in the SC era?

How many clubs have gone bust or had serious financial difficulties in the SC era?

Are you actually a member of the board of directors of the RFL?

So you are of the opinion that the Salary Cap doesn't restrict the larger clubs and that teams like Wigan haven't lost players as a result of the cap?

I don't know how many have had financial difficulties? Are you trying to say that no cap would prevent this? I can't see how a reduced number of teams would fix this, as less games = less cash while fixed costs remain the same (ground maintenance / wages).

Where would the additional fans in a reduced league come from? Lets take Widnes and London out, where do their players go? Where to the bigger clubs players get SL experience? Would Wigan be developing a full back right now, and if so how often would they get a game?

Re: Ellery hanley has his say : Sun Jun 17, 2012 7:08 am  

Deano G wrote:

- as shown by a poster on this thread claiming the SC has done a good job to protect clubs from insolvency!!)

I wrote " The SC is a great way to cap the achievement of the top teams and level the league. The associated rules were a good way to prevent insolvency."

I neither stated that the SC prevented insolvency, nor that they did a good job. I do think that the maximum spending limits which took into account the clubs revenues were a good way, I think that this route with more financial governance would help but I don't think the RFL executed this well.

Re: Ellery hanley has his say : Sun Jun 17, 2012 7:45 am  

goobervision wrote:

I wrote " The SC is a great way to cap the achievement of the top teams and level the league. The associated rules were a good way to prevent insolvency."

I neither stated that the SC prevented insolvency, nor that they did a good job. I do think that the maximum spending limits which took into account the clubs revenues were a good way, I think that this route with more financial governance would help but I don't think the RFL executed this well.

"The associated rules were a good way to prevent insolvency".

Clubs that have got into serious financial difficulties in the SC era include: London, Bradford, Widnes, Halifax, Crusaders, Wakefield, Salford, Gateshead, Sheffield. There may well be others, but that'll do for starters!

As for the mythical level playing field - it remains mythical. The league title is held by the club with the highest revenue in the competition and the SL this year is likely to be won either by the club with the biggest fan base or the club with the richest owner. I ask again - how many clubs have won the title since the SC came in?

Where did I advocate reducing the number of clubs in the league? Actually I think the issue is not so much the number of clubs but whether we have the right clubs making the right contribution. So, for example, if I were in charge of the SL one of my top priorities would be to get a sustainable Toulouse side into SL.