Winslade's Offload wrote:
It's a dilemma I suppose. If you allow the rich clubs to load their teams with top class players then you restrict the chances of other teams winning any pots. On the other hand my instinct would be that the main cause of lower attendances is the quality of the football on offer. I am pretty sure if we employed the entire Aussie footy team even the Thursday night games would bring in a full house, so more quality should bring in more attendees and viewers.
Usually I would lean towards restricting the ability of a club to buy their silverware, but I think unless rl gets a quick injection of publicity, support and funding we will wither away. Desperate situations require urgent and fundamental change. The SL chairmen have seen the car crash at the end of the road and have taken back control from the RFL, so if they decide to go ahead with this change lets back them and hope it works.
Good post.
Personally I'd like to see more clubs utilising the rule before we expand it, but it is a little 'Chicken & Egg', will we get the funding if we dont get more 'star players'? Wakey, Cas, Hull, Salford, London, Huddersfield either don't have a big backer to pay for a marquee (Hull, Cas), or their backer is already pumping in loads to keep the club at full cap (Hudds) or they are struggling financially as it is (London, Salford, Wakey?). Bringing in a marquee for those clubs would be a risk if that player doesn't bring with it an immediate £200k uplift in revenues.
I think we should wait and see what the impact is for the two marquees before we expand it again. A third marquee would be too late realistically anyway to have an impact for a new 2021 TV deal. Lets wait and see where we are financially before we commit to more, then it can be part of a wider discussion of Salary Cap increases and marquee allowances when clubs have greater visibility of TV revenues going forward and how the new structure beds in for attendances.
