Jeff salary caps 2012/13

Whilst privately researching next year's salary caps, I stumbled upon this:

http://www.espnscrum.com/premiership-2010-11/rugby/story/140449.html

The key proposals are

"In 2012-13, the base salary cap will increase to £4.26m, rising to a
maximum of £4.5m with the continuation of the academy credits. In
addition however, a club may choose to nominate a 'qualifying' player to
be excluded from the salary cap.


The exact detail of the qualification criteria has yet to be agreed but
the "rough parameters" agreed by the clubs allow for an overseas signing
to excluded from the salary cap or for a player acquired from a rival
English club to be discounted. However, in the case of the latter, the
player has to have been with the club for "a period of time".



Premiership Rugby explained that the policy, that for example could see
Leicester could exclude Ben Youngs if they wished but not Newcastle
immediately after signing him, is intended to, "ensure as far as
possible that clubs keep players they have developed and there isn't an
inflationary market in top English players moving from club to club".



"This will provide all the clubs with further capacity to retain our
world-class English talent as well as attract some of the most talented
foreign players," the original statement said. "At the same time, we
shall be able to maintain the clubs' success and protect the basic
competitiveness of the competition."



In order to manage the overall financial position in a sustainable way,
Premiership Rugby has also revealed that for 2013-14 and 2014-15 the
level of the base salary cap will be linked directly to annual central
revenue distributions to the clubs."


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But the report should be read before drawing any conclusions - and even then the outcomes of any unresolved issues remaining in the report at the time must by now have been resolved.

Leaving aside the obvious fact that English clubs have shown a steady decline in European success since the introduction of wage caps and that the self-perpetuating oligopoly that is the PRL maintains it's own artificial barriers to market entry in a fashion that would be illegal in any non-sporting field of endeavour, do you feel that the RFU/PRL shot itself in the foot by not negotiating central contracts in the first place was a mistake?

Bring on SCW to the heart of RFU decision making.

English clubs have won 6 out of 16 Heineken Cups and have taken part in 3 of the last 5 finals winning the last HEC five years ago (Wasps vs Leicester Final). We struggled last year and this year due to the French league being able to out finance everybody and the strength of the Irish provinces. The changes in the salary cap should allow for English clubs to retain more of their prise assets and build the strength of theirs squads so as to be able to compete in multiple competitions.

Central contracts would have been a bad idea, the RFU are incompetent in the upper levels and would have made an undoubted mess of things.

Ah, but what if we played the AP with clubs and admitted franchises to the HC - that could see an improvement in performance - maybe.

The LV cup could then be expanded and played on HC weekends as well as Internationals to ensure clubs get regular home matches.

(ps not necessarily a fan or proposing this seriously as for it to really work we would need the HC to be played as a continuous tranche of matches similar to S15)

LondonTiger wrote:Ah, but what if we played the AP with clubs and admitted franchises to the HC - that could see an improvement in performance - maybe.

The LV cup could then be expanded and played on HC weekends as well as Internationals to ensure clubs get regular home matches.

(ps not necessarily a fan or proposing this seriously as for it to really work we would need the HC to be played as a continuous tranche of matches similar to S15)

One of the problems with that is the franchises would only be together for a few weeks. We could have an inter-frachise mini-cup before hand but that's eating further into the domestic stuff.

Where would the franchises play the big games? A midlands franchise with Tigers and Saints would cause no end of arguments.

Keep it as is and let the clubs redevelop some strength, there's some real talent coming through the age grade systems in England now to help that.

Saints would obviously be secondary to Tigers

Well that would be the logical point of view but since when was the RFU logical in it's thinking? The Saints chairman is hardly known for his unbias view either (no comment on the Tigers board) so he's unlikely to take it lying down either.

If you did go Franchise route, then you would also have big arguements about how Club A got shafted by the franchise as the franchise called up all their stars/journeymen when Club A had a big game on, and allowed Club B to hang onto their stars for a different big game.

This is true SS or we could just keep all our players and concentrate on berating the refs.

Why would you every think of going down the franchise route. Your system is fine now, don't change it. Its only working for the Irish.

I'm not suggesting the franchise route. That way has already proven to a failure for Scottish and Welsh sides (clubs).

But I would be interested in exploring a way of English clubs to confront the European challenge though.

But through a sustainable business model.

To be fair I am not too sure how much of an issue the salary cap really is when it comes to Europe. I appreciate that the French have more money to throw at their players than anyone else. But if you look at other sports, football in particular, it has been shown time and time again that simply throwing money at a side doesn't really mean that you will be anymore successful. It all comes down to having a good mix of quality, determination and desire.

ScarletSpiderman wrote:To be fair I am not too sure how much of an issue the salary cap really is when it comes to Europe. I appreciate that the French have more money to throw at their players than anyone else. But if you look at other sports, football in particular, it has been shown time and time again that simply throwing money at a side doesn't really mean that you will be anymore successful. It all comes down to having a good mix of quality, determination and desire.

The football model is having to change because of the lack of wage caps. You can't sustain a model in which for instance, the salary budget exceeds the income stream.

Just chucking money willy-nilly at a problem without record to affordability is a nonsense.

ScarletSpiderman wrote:To be fair I am not too sure how much of an issue the salary cap really is when it comes to Europe. I appreciate that the French have more money to throw at their players than anyone else. But if you look at other sports, football in particular, it has been shown time and time again that simply throwing money at a side doesn't really mean that you will be anymore successful. It all comes down to having a good mix of quality, determination and desire.

To an extent that is true, but the problem comes at contract renewal time. You can take a punt on a foreigner, with limited success i.e Britz, Waldrom and they can be real value for money, but after 1/2 good seasons, their stock is sky high and when it comes to renewing their contract, you can't afford them and/or can't compete with the French teams. On the other side, you can bring a youngster through the ranks, on a small contract, then during their 2 breakthrough seasons, they get internationally capped and therefore ask for double or triple the salary. Again, you can't compete or have to make sacrifices elsewhere in your squad. Think Attwood, Doran-Jones, Hape for examples of this. I think a lot of the time, players don't neccessarily want to leave, they just want the cash that they are worth and if their club can't provide it, who blames them for leaving, it is only a short career.

It's all very well saying you can't just buy in talent and make a galactico squad, but there is something to be said to prevent from talent leaving, as the welsh teams seem to be increasingly suffering from

There are ways around that those type of issues though Bathite, without completely removing the cap.

Very very simply if you removed any player who has come through the clubs academy from the constraints of the cap, then you would enable clubs to keep players that they have brought through once they have gone on and become internationals. You would also find clubs being more keen to promote good English talent. A by product would be that within the cap there would be more cash available meaning that foreign players coming in could be of higher quality, and therefore assist with raising standards fo youngsters coming through.

The counter argument to this would be that it would favour those clubs with existing excellent academies, but I would argue that the incentive would then be there for those who are not as good to improve.

Ozzy3213 wrote:There are ways around that those type of issues though Bathite, without completely removing the cap.

Very very simply if you removed any player who has come through the clubs academy from the constraints of the cap, then you would enable clubs to keep players that they have brought through once they have gone on and become internationals. You would also find clubs being more keen to promote good English talent. A by product would be that within the cap there would be more cash available meaning that foreign players coming in could be of higher quality, and therefore assist with raising standards fo youngsters coming through.

The counter argument to this would be that it would favour those clubs with existing excellent academies, but I would argue that the incentive would then be there for those who are not as good to improve.

Absolutely agree Oz on the academies front.

But I'd have to haul in my whole collection of broken records to argue the rest of my points.

Amongst which is the one that says that there should be a senior
Divisional academy funded centrally by the RFU to bring on the cream of
talent (whilst retaining feeder club affiliations).

There is that in effect though Portnoy in the England age grade teams. If you are amongst the best in the country at U16 U18 U20 you get selected for the national squad and during set periods train with them with elite coaches.

That could be given more extended training periods to closer reflect your point, but it's not that far of it as is.

The monies paid by the RFU for player release should not be divided up equally as it is now. Rather it should be paid based on the provision of players (with which club actually developed the player taken into account to some degree) to the EPs squads.

Thus tigers would get more for Cole/Croft/Youngs/Manu than Parling/Flood (and Falcons would get some cash for teh latter two).

LondonTiger wrote:The monies paid by the RFU for player release should not be divided up equally as it is now. Rather it should be paid based on the provision of players (with which club actually developed the player taken into account to some degree) to the EPs squads.

Thus tigers would get more for Cole/Croft/Youngs/Manu than Parling/Flood (and Falcons would get some cash for teh latter two).

That point is a major bugbear of mine - but I have to be careful not to put a quid coin in the juke-box about playing the No play whilst the Internationals are away track. I love that one.

I think that complicates matters to much LT, if you start working out who has developed the player and for how long.

As an example, James Lightfoot-Brown is an Eng U18 player. He has spent the past 2/3 seasons playing for the London Irish AASE side and being developed by the club. In the summer we let him go to Exeter Chiefs where he is doing well. If next year he breaks through, still aged only 18/19 and Tigers then decide they want him and he goes, but doesn't make it there so moves on to say Worcester, where in 5 years time he makes the EPS, how do you start dividing the EPS payment for him?

Whilst I can understand the frustration of the likes of Tigers and Saracens that the EPS payments do not reflect the number of players provided by each club, I think the current system shoudl remain otherwise you get into the position whereby you provide players for England you get richer and richer whilst the teams that don't get poorer, and all of a sudden we have a league like in football where the top 4 are so far ahead of everyone else it is not competitive.

I am thinking more about teams like Falcons and Leeds who develop players and see them bugger off. At least this way they would get some reward.

The last thing I want however is to reward clubs who develop nothing and poach ready made stars.

In the end the sport needs to be able to sustain itself in whichever country you look. The advantage of teh cap is that it limits how much a club can over-reach themselves using benefactor's cash.

There is a lot of good food for thought here.
Answering Portnoy's question first. I think central contracts always were, and will be for a long time to come, a non-starter. The clubs, which are separate and independent business entities, will not surrender control of their most marketable products, their top players, to anyone. Especially the RFU. And they cannot be compelled by anyone to do so. Not worth worrying about, since the chances of happenning are beneath low.

I also don't see franchises happenning for pretty much the same reason. The clubs are not going to yield their players to another team structure of any kind.

The purpose of the salary cap is to try to maintain some competitive balance within the Premeirship league structure. And to a certain degree this has worked. The first time I read the proposal to exclude a major signing from the cap I thought it a good idea. I still do. It takes the pressure off clubs to keep their best player and that drives fan interest.