Karen wrote:
You can raise the salary cap all you want, all it will do is revert the sport back to the 80s/90s when the rich clubs took over. A higher salary cap doesn't mean that clubs can actually afford to pay the higher wages/have a bigger squad. All it will do is bankrupt clubs trying to compete with those lucky enough to have sugar daddies at the helm which really isn't what this sport needs.
The trouble is we live in a capitalist society and sugar daddies compete against one another in all big team sports; football, American football, cricket- whatever. My local teams Wigan, Saints and Warrington all exist because of sugar daddies so this current system has made no difference to us at all in that regard. This is also the same scenario with my local football teams in as far as Manchester and Liverpool.
The marquee system is rubbish if all we can do to attract a Ben Barba player is to wait for one to be banned - so for me the issue is to raise the salary cap & create a better quality product to attract viewers and advertisers. In the 80 & 90s we had decent advertisers and recently, well it's been abysmal. Would you want to fund Superleague? Well if the answer is no then something has to change. We walked into the summer rugby sky deal thinking things would get better but be honest with yourself....
We need to attract big backers to the sport but look at how people ridicule a backer who tried in a difficult area i.e. " the good doctor".
