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Thread: Salary Cap

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ralph Fridge View Post
    That's a bit of good news
    If Bower is right, the bad news is that next year the Players Union will actively work with the clubs to possibly reduce the salary cap, I suppose that was part of the trade off with the Yorkshire Clubs, wait a season to let the dust settle and see how each clubs finances stand, in other words kicking the can down the street, good luck with negotiating a wage reduction! Details on his Twitter page

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    Quote Originally Posted by Woolyback View Post
    If Bower is right, the bad news is that next year the Players Union will actively work with the clubs to possibly reduce the salary cap, I suppose that was part of the trade off with the Yorkshire Clubs, wait a season to let the dust settle and see how each clubs finances stand, in other words kicking the can down the street, good luck with negotiating a wage reduction! Details on his Twitter page
    I see. Cheers for the heads up I'll have a butchers

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cyprus View Post
    Hethringtons arse is going because Leeds RL have made a decent stadium for the home fans and it needs paying for. Like he normally does he has got the outside bog brigade behind him.

    He didn't give a stuff about caps when they beat us five times on the trot when we had one eye or more on Langtree. The man is a poison who will eat into the sport for his and his wife's agendas. Lucky people those two and don't worry Nige is still lurking to bring Bradfort back in SL.
    Amen to that

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    Is this the first step towards a semi-professional game?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Woolyback View Post
    If Bower is right, the bad news is that next year the Players Union will actively work with the clubs to possibly reduce the salary cap, I suppose that was part of the trade off with the Yorkshire Clubs, wait a season to let the dust settle and see how each clubs finances stand, in other words kicking the can down the street, good luck with negotiating a wage reduction! Details on his Twitter page
    That is bad news. If I was a decdent player I'd be scrambling to sign a new contract now before any reduction comes in.

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    Quote Originally Posted by brook View Post
    It's an interesting topic for sure,but the way i see it is if nrl clubs are prepared to try the likes of Jordan Turner,Andre Savelio and the likes then a competition of part time players becomes even more attractive to them. Just for arguments sake lets say a semi pro player has a £20k real job and gets £20k for playing (obviously this will vary with career and club ). The NRL and also RU can then offer the top players £20k more per year and to them they can get the best players over here for what to them is peanuts.The NRL has a minimum wage of $100k that works out right now at near enough £54k. They would just cherry pick the best players and also the best up and coming players.

    We have a new sky deal ( or other broadcaster ) to negotiate,we should be looking to slightly raise the cap if anything and make some more exemptions for club produced players,i can't see the game going back to semi pro and if it did then every team would have to do it otherwise we could have the situation of 3 or 4 clubs being full time and dominating everything.
    Fully agree with this post. We should be looking to raise the cap and persuade sky that more players are likely to stay in this country for a higher salary, and therefore the standard could rise.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Belgian Saint View Post
    That is bad news. If I was a decdent player I'd be scrambling to sign a new contract now before any reduction comes in.
    That's another good point,how do you lower the cap with existing contracts in place ?

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    Oliver Gildart has hired an Aussie agent, so he may be the next player off to the NRL to get paid what he is worth.
    I could agree with you but then we would both be wrong.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Blobbynator View Post
    I'm sorry, but just no.

    If the game goes back to part time or semi pro, the talent drain will just flood further to the NRL or Union and Rugby League over here will just fall to a level of insignificance. It's a completely different landscape now to 30 years ago, sport has moved on massively since then and all big sports are professional now, no exceptions.

    The game needs to grow not shrink. It needs investment and ambition across the board. The cap had increased by £300k in 20 years which is well under inflation. Lowering the cap would be a massive step back for the game here and would give players more incentives to go to Union or the NRL.
    Rugby League does seem to have a lot of "flat earthers", they think it is only time before we all go back to playing part-time in winter.

    The argument for a salary cap and no increases to it, was that many clubs couldn't be trusted to spend money on players until they went bust (Bradford and Leigh mainly). In short it exists because our administrators are untrustworthy/incompetent.

    In the year it has been in existence it seems to have been changed to allow owner to run clubs without having to contribute anything. They now want to keep the status quo to keep their money/power safe. This to start was not a bad thing as it made us sustainable and a sport, however potential owners like Argyle and Koucash have come into the sport and have been hounded out by other owner and the RFL because they don't want to have to compete financially. While every football club is owned by a Billionaire our local businessmen owners are trying to cling onto their fragile power.

    We have become a bargain bin league for investors, the league has been rigged so the big 4 win all the trophies and no amount of money can actually buy meaningful success.

    The reality is that David Argyle has more money than all the other owners combined (that includes Simon Moran at Warrington, who probably has more than the rest combined). If we are really this financially fragile as a sport we would be better off selling out to him and allowing him to own the whole league like Bernie Ecclestone in F1.
    I could agree with you but then we would both be wrong.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Noel Cleal View Post
    Rugby League does seem to have a lot of "flat earthers", they think it is only time before we all go back to playing part-time in winter.

    The argument for a salary cap and no increases to it, was that many clubs couldn't be trusted to spend money on players until they went bust (Bradford and Leigh mainly). In short it exists because our administrators are untrustworthy/incompetent.

    In the year it has been in existence it seems to have been changed to allow owner to run clubs without having to contribute anything. They now want to keep the status quo to keep their money/power safe. This to start was not a bad thing as it made us sustainable and a sport, however potential owners like Argyle and Koucash have come into the sport and have been hounded out by other owner and the RFL because they don't want to have to compete financially. While every football club is owned by a Billionaire our local businessmen owners are trying to cling onto their fragile power.

    We have become a bargain bin league for investors, the league has been rigged so the big 4 win all the trophies and no amount of money can actually buy meaningful success.

    The reality is that David Argyle has more money than all the other owners combined (that includes Simon Moran at Warrington, who probably has more than the rest combined). If we are really this financially fragile as a sport we would be better off selling out to him and allowing him to own the whole league like Bernie Ecclestone in F1.
    Very good post and hard to disagree with any of it. You also can't blame the likes of Gildart for hiring Aussie agents, we could potentially lose the likes of Percival, Makinson, Lees, Knowles and Bentley, plus however many of the younger lads if we start with this carry on.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Noel Cleal View Post
    the league has been rigged so the big 4 win all the trophies
    I agreed with everything else in the post more or less, but disagree with this bit. How has a salary cap and a play-off system rigged the league in favour of 4 clubs? Surely both of those things have been designed to rig the system away from that happening? It wasn't long ago that we had 8 from 14 making the play-offs, with pure mediocrity being told they'd achieved something by making the 8.

    Surely a FPTP system would be 'rigging it' for the top clubs, because their consistency over 25-30 games would show, and the mediocre clubs would be out of contention half way through the season. Instead we have a system were a club that loses 50% of its games is still in it going into the latter stages, and therefore good planning, good ownership, good recruitment, good youth development etc can be defeated by some half-arsed club hitting form for 5-6 weeks in Sept and Oct.

    Of course, the fact is that outside of the 4 clubs mentioned, the league is fairly poor (Cas an exception) and all of the attempts to produce a level playing field have failed because none of them could ever consistently compete through their own mis-management or mistakes. But that is a failing of those clubs, not some attempt to rig it in favour of the big 4 or 5 IMO.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Gray77 View Post
    I agreed with everything else in the post more or less, but disagree with this bit. How has a salary cap and a play-off system rigged the league in favour of 4 clubs? Surely both of those things have been designed to rig the system away from that happening? It wasn't long ago that we had 8 from 14 making the play-offs, with pure mediocrity being told they'd achieved something by making the 8.

    Surely a FPTP system would be 'rigging it' for the top clubs, because their consistency over 25-30 games would show, and the mediocre clubs would be out of contention half way through the season. Instead we have a system were a club that loses 50% of its games is still in it going into the latter stages, and therefore good planning, good ownership, good recruitment, good youth development etc can be defeated by some half-arsed club hitting form for 5-6 weeks in Sept and Oct.

    Of course, the fact is that outside of the 4 clubs mentioned, the league is fairly poor (Cas an exception) and all of the attempts to produce a level playing field have failed because none of them could ever consistently compete through their own mis-management or mistakes. But that is a failing of those clubs, not some attempt to rig it in favour of the big 4 or 5 IMO.
    If you look at the names on the minor premiership over the years, though, we'd have had Cas, Wire and Huddersfield added to the list of recent champions if FPTP was in place (I know it's not a 100% accurate picture of what would have happened, given loop fixtures and so on, but it's as good an indication as any).

    And I also think that, counter-intuitively, the salary cap is more of a hindrance than a help to the clubs trying to catch up with the big 4/5. The salary cap means that clubs are generally going to offer similar amounts to similar sorts of players. In those circumstances, players are always going to choose the big clubs over the others. For smaller clubs to attract big players, they need to pay over the odds (at least until they've had enough sustained success to be considered one of the big clubs themselves). The salary cap stops them from doing that.

    The SC does produce more competitive matches, IMO, because it stops clubs from stockpiling players, but it also means that the smaller clubs have little chance of beating the big clubs to the bests players, and thus ensures that, barring some kind of mismanagement calamity, the top clubs stay at the top. I suspect that this is an unintended consequence rather than a grand conspiracy, but nonetheless that seems to me to be how it is.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Gray77 View Post
    I agreed with everything else in the post more or less, but disagree with this bit. How has a salary cap and a play-off system rigged the league in favour of 4 clubs? Surely both of those things have been designed to rig the system away from that happening? It wasn't long ago that we had 8 from 14 making the play-offs, with pure mediocrity being told they'd achieved something by making the 8.

    Surely a FPTP system would be 'rigging it' for the top clubs, because their consistency over 25-30 games would show, and the mediocre clubs would be out of contention half way through the season. Instead we have a system were a club that loses 50% of its games is still in it going into the latter stages, and therefore good planning, good ownership, good recruitment, good youth development etc can be defeated by some half-arsed club hitting form for 5-6 weeks in Sept and Oct.

    Of course, the fact is that outside of the 4 clubs mentioned, the league is fairly poor (Cas an exception) and all of the attempts to produce a level playing field have failed because none of them could ever consistently compete through their own mis-management or mistakes. But that is a failing of those clubs, not some attempt to rig it in favour of the big 4 or 5 IMO.
    Yeah, I meant to say, I didn't agree with that part. There's some clubs that are basically irrelevant other than they make up the numbers.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Dux View Post
    If you look at the names on the minor premiership over the years, though, we'd have had Cas, Wire and Huddersfield added to the list of recent champions if FPTP was in place (I know it's not a 100% accurate picture of what would have happened, given loop fixtures and so on, but it's as good an indication as any)
    Yeah, good point, although no guarantee they'd have finished 1st under FPTP. But you are right that smaller clubs have competed at the top in odd seasons, usually when for a short time they've made the right decisions. But they've been unable to do that consistently despite the system being in place to prevent anyone else from doing what Wigan did in the 80s and early 90s.

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    The Salary Cap would be better if it had followed the rate of inflation since 2002, it has increased by £300,000 where as the rate of inflation would have had it increase by £1.2million. The lack of increase in the cap has stagnated the game and asked clubs to do more with far less resources, gimmicks like the Marquee player rule do little to plug the gap.

    If clubs do not want to spend the full amount they are allowed then thats fine, but to try and reduce it to stop teams being able to retain talent they have produced with fair wages for their skills is completely wrong. A fair Salary Cap should stop clubs hoarding the best talent but also allow clubs to fairly reward their players, especially the ones they produce themselves.

    As for competition there will always be teams that will be more successful, that is the nature of sport, teams that have success are more likely to draw players who want to win things to them, for other clubs to entice players they need to be able to have a greater financial clout available to them, something a larger Salary Cap would assist with, for example when Cas finished league leaders a larger cap would have allowed them to go out and attempt to push on if they wanted to, improving competition.

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    If they don’t increase the salary cap soon, the impact on the sport will be more obvious in the next few years than it’s been yet IMO. All the changes to the game on the field have been about making the game faster (shot clock, reduction of interchanges etc). IMO that’ll only keep going in the next few years, they’ll reduce the interchanges again I’d imagine and you’d expect Super League to adopt the set restart as well if it improves the game in Australia.

    If the game gets faster though the balls in play for longer, players will be more fatigued week to week and it feels to me like injuries are more frequent than they have been. Teams will need bigger squads to cover that or the quality will just get less and less as the season goes on.
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    In relation to smaller clubs as in most sports they will have an occasional good run before their best players are poached by bigger clubs. Players want to play for the bigger teams as they want to win trophies and earn as much money as they can.

    The fact that only 4 teams have won the league recently isn't necessarily a bad thing. Winning Championships is hard, it should be hard. Championships shouldn't be distributed around so it is fair. Clubs should be in a position to be competitive. It is unlikely you will ever have 12 world class sides all with a chance of winning the league. Reducing the cap will just lead to mediocrity.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Noel Cleal View Post
    Rugby League does seem to have a lot of "flat earthers", they think it is only time before we all go back to playing part-time in winter.

    .....
    I have to take some offence to being referred to as a flat earther albeit indirectly.
    Nobody that I have read has advocated Winter Rugby but yes I have stated that part time
    is an option I would not be unhappy with.

    I would prefer a fully professional game but with every club running at a loss then all talk
    of Salary Cap just seems to a be safe space/concept where people can pretend that economic realities don't apply.

    Yes we (insert most clubs) are losing (£XK to £XM) per season including a £1.8M subsidy but we must increase the salary cap.
    Clearly the salary cap doesn't count and you can ignore the underlying financial position.

    The precedent was set at the inception of SL double the salary cap and you merely double the wages of existing players.
    Improvements do come though but that takes time , and comes at the cost of overpaying the average.


    The point that always gets glossed over is the contradiction over supply and capacity.

    Asked to fund two more clubs , the existing clubs state there are not enough quality so better
    not top slice them £200K each rather maintain the status quo. However the same clubs lobby for a higher
    salary cap to go out and recruit the players that they claim don't exist.

    The game has changed , society has changed , the world has changed. In the 80/early 90s clubs had a more
    sedentary fanbase with few choices over their recreational time. People today will pay a premium and
    come in numbers to something of value but there is stiff competition for the recreational £.
    Just increasing the cost base and passing it on is not increased value.

    Providing the Jon Wilkin's of this world with
    a Land Rover lifestyle didn't make him Gordon Tallis, just a very well paid Jon Wilkin.

    If it is a choice between Walter Mitty fantasies and flat earth ,
    then reluctantly I would take the Sophie's choice of flat earth,
    if that is how realism is now branded.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Noel Cleal View Post
    Rugby League does seem to have a lot of "flat earthers", they think it is only time before we all go back to playing part-time in winter.

    The argument for a salary cap and no increases to it, was that many clubs couldn't be trusted to spend money on players until they went bust (Bradford and Leigh mainly). In short it exists because our administrators are untrustworthy/incompetent.

    In the year it has been in existence it seems to have been changed to allow owner to run clubs without having to contribute anything. They now want to keep the status quo to keep their money/power safe. This to start was not a bad thing as it made us sustainable and a sport, however potential owners like Argyle and Koucash have come into the sport and have been hounded out by other owner and the RFL because they don't want to have to compete financially. While every football club is owned by a Billionaire our local businessmen owners are trying to cling onto their fragile power.

    We have become a bargain bin league for investors, the league has been rigged so the big 4 win all the trophies and no amount of money can actually buy meaningful success.

    The reality is that David Argyle has more money than all the other owners combined (that includes Simon Moran at Warrington, who probably has more than the rest combined). If we are really this financially fragile as a sport we would be better off selling out to him and allowing him to own the whole league like Bernie Ecclestone in F1.
    Excellent point the issue here is the government loan. That is exactly what it is a loan. It is in effect an advance on central RFL funds. The HKR, Cas Wakey etc use this central grant to pay for their squad. Since they will be forced to take these loans they have realised that going forward their central grant will be reduced to pay back the loan. Hence the lobbying to reduce the cap.

    I’m all for a salary cap but it must be significantly higher than the central grants. If as it is now the salary cap is more or less covered by the central grant clubs can just drift along without doing anything to improve their commercial or community presence.

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    Would anyone see us go back to one division? Saints V Oldham etc etc. Race to the bottom £250.00 a game on top of your job as a drayman for Greenalls? Oh and Jon Wilkin on a bike. We have moved on game wise and stadium wise. The only change I would make is a 14 team comp with reduced SKY money for clubs like Wakey and Cas until they either build a new stadium or take a pay off to drop down. Clubs like Leigh with first class stadia and Halifax with a good stadium coming up.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cyprus View Post
    Would anyone see us go back to one division? Saints V Oldham etc etc. Race to the bottom £250.00 a game on top of your job as a drayman for Greenalls? Oh and Jon Wilkin on a bike. We have moved on game wise and stadium wise. The only change I would make is a 14 team comp with reduced SKY money for clubs like Wakey and Cas until they either build a new stadium or take a pay off to drop down. Clubs like Leigh with first class stadia and Halifax with a good stadium coming up.
    Bring back the Lancashire Cup

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cyprus View Post
    Would anyone see us go back to one division? Saints V Oldham etc etc. Race to the bottom £250.00 a game on top of your job as a drayman for Greenalls? Oh and Jon Wilkin on a bike. We have moved on game wise and stadium wise. The only change I would make is a 14 team comp with reduced SKY money for clubs like Wakey and Cas until they either build a new stadium or take a pay off to drop down. Clubs like Leigh with first class stadia and Halifax with a good stadium coming up.
    When people were working at Greenalls it was 20 for a win and 10 for a loss. A home draw counted as a loss and an away draw counted as a win. At Salford if you were down at HT the owner used to come into the dressing room and offer an extra tenner if you came back in the second half.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ralph Fridge View Post
    Bring back the Lancashire Cup
    I have been calling for the reintroduction of the league cup for a long time. 2 trophies isn't really enough to play for. The old northern rail cup formula for groups of four then a knock out competition. Given a choice between loop fixtures and pre season game.

    Quote Originally Posted by Gerry Mander View Post
    I have to take some offence to being referred to as a flat earther albeit indirectly.
    Sorry

    Quote Originally Posted by Gray77 View Post
    I agreed with everything else in the post more or less, but disagree with this bit.
    Regarding the the league being rigged for the top 4, OK there have been some near misses.

    Castleford had a great season but they are the exception that proves the rule. They had to take risks, an injury prone Luke Gale and a troubled Zak Hardacker. Their big season was ruined by Hardacker exploding when it mattered and then the next two by Gale being unreliable.

    Huddersfield had a good season but it was unsustainable with some of there top players moving on elsewhere or being over the hill. They took a risk in Danny Brough, who is again a player that is talented but also a big risk that backfires as well as it works.

    The point I am trying to make is any none top 4 success stories have been unsustainable and achieved by taking risks on toxic/unreliable players.

    The play-offs are supposed to the the RFLs attempt to random things up, in an attempt to make the sport more exciting. In the end it has just given the big clubs a second chance to make up for earlier mistakes and the smaller club wilt under the pressure.

    Achieving organic sustainable success is near impossible. To break it down most clubs go through the same stages.

    1. Pay the full salary cap to get on equal terms with the rest of the league.

    2. Realise you have to overpay top 4 quality players to come to a lower club. You therefore still have an inferior side.

    3. You work out the big 4 teams have academies and they produce more high quality youth players than you do. Gaining an even bigger advantage over you.

    4. You setup your own academy but you are either outside the heartlands and don't have access to quality juniors or you are getting the ones the big 4 don't want. You have inferior juniors.

    5. You hire Brian Noble and everything goes to sh*t

    The only exception is if you are a Hull FC type team that still has a big team feel about them and can attract players senior and junior otherwise organic growth is very slow and hard work. This leaves start up teams with the prospect of losing more games than winning which is a difficult. It has got to the point that Toronto are struggling to even compete in Super League while spending up the cap and being as creative as possible.

    In the end Chelsea and Man City bridged the gap between them and the top teams in the Premier League by spending more rather than the same amount.
    Last edited by Noel Cleal; 29th May 2020 at 23:26.
    I could agree with you but then we would both be wrong.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Noel Cleal View Post
    I have been calling for the reintroduction of the league cup for a long time. 2 trophies isn't really enough to play for. The old northern rail cup formula for groups of four then a knock out competition. Given a choice between loop fixtures and pre season game.



    Sorry



    Regarding the the league being rigged for the top 4, OK there have been some near misses.

    Castleford had a great season but they are the exception that proves the rule. They had to take risks, an injury prone Luke Gale and a troubled Zak Hardacker. Their big season was ruined by Hardacker exploding when it mattered and then the next two by Gale being unreliable.

    Huddersfield had a good season but it was unsustainable with some of there top players moving on elsewhere or being over the hill. They took a risk in Danny Brough, who is again a player that is talented but also a big risk that backfires as well as it works.

    The point I am trying to make is any none top 4 success stories have been unsustainable and achieved by taking risks on toxic/unreliable players.

    The play-offs are supposed to the the RFLs attempt to random things up, in an attempt to make the sport more exciting. In the end it has just given the big clubs a second chance to make up for earlier mistakes and the smaller club wilt under the pressure.

    Achieving organic sustainable success is near impossible. To break it down most clubs go through the same stages.

    1. Pay the full salary cap to get on equal terms with the rest of the league.

    2. Realise you have to overpay top 4 quality players to come to a lower club. You therefore still have an inferior side.

    3. You work out the big 4 teams have academies and they produce more high quality youth players than you do. Gaining an even bigger advantage over you.

    4. You setup your own academy but you are either outside the heartlands and don't have access to quality juniors or you are getting the ones the big 4 don't want. You have inferior juniors.

    5. You hire Brian Noble and everything goes to sh*t

    The only exception is if you are a Hull FC type team that still has a big team feel about them and can attract players senior and junior otherwise organic growth is very slow and hard work. This leaves start up teams with the prospect of losing more games than winning which is a difficult. It has got to the point that Toronto are struggling to even compete in Super League while spending up the cap and being as creative as possible.

    In the end Chelsea and Man City bridged the gap between them and the top teams in the Premier League by spending more rather than the same amount.

    I love how, whether by forgetfulness or design, you made no mention of Dire


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    Quote Originally Posted by Ralph Fridge View Post
    Bring back the Lancashire Cup
    We had some fun in the Lancashire Cup back when I was younger. The 1991 semi with Wigan at KR, 17000 on there, what a night that was. And the 1992 final with Wigan at KR, over 20000 that day, and what a game that was despite us losing 5-4. All good memories, and I wasn't too impressed when we got rid of it.

    But... I don't see any real benefits to bringing it back except for it being a pre-season comp. I just don't think younger fans would take it seriously, and I don't sense any real affiliation with "Lancashire" in a traditional sense these days. Yorkshire is different, there is still a sense of identity with that county mainly because when it was split up the smaller areas retained the Yorkshire name.

    As I say, as a pre-season comp it would be decent, and certainly better than friendlies, but given the woeful crowds we get now for anything not on the season ticket, I would fear it would die a death very quickly through lack of interest.

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