Warrington Wolves • Re: Steve Price's blind spot ?

I would agree the player quality has plummeted, probably due to the fall in youngsters playing the game and the neglect of grass roots rugby over the last 20 years or so (which clubs are now desperately trying to rectify).

But on the money front we have several clubs in SL who barely have enough money to pay the bills (HKR, Salford, Widnes from 2018 season). So if you increase the salary cap the better supported clubs will inevitably draw away the cream of what little talent we have left in RL, probably undermining the next level of less affluent clubs such as Wakey and Castleford. We have already dropped from 14 to 12 clubs in SL - partially because of the quality gap, but mainly to divide the Sky pot of money into 1/12ths rather than 1/14ths. So I suspect we would probably further reduce the number of clubs in SL if we increased the cap by a significant amount. How many 'loop games' would we then see in the season ? I was already sick of the sight of Wire v Widnes games last year.

So I think RL is existing on a knife edge atm. We need to spend money on Academies, supporting grass roots rugby and paying our players more. But as most clubs don't have the money to do this, we are in a catch 22 situation... and the noises about the likely size of the next TV deal are not sounding very good at all. I think our club is showing the way forward with advertising and promotion, using the ground as a commercial asset rather than just a sports pitch and engaging / supporting the local RL community. I am not so sure that other clubs have got rid of the Eddie Waring image of RL however.