Im in agreement with Penguin. We must keep SL competitive and avoid people spending more than they can afford. Salford on their own cannot spend money like he is suggesting without the Doc dipping into his pocket even more. If the game had been expanded like Lindsay's original plan intended then we would have had SL clubs in other cities throughout the UK including 2 in London maybe 1 each in Leeds Bradford Hull Liverool Manchester Birmingham Nottingam, Leicester Newcastle Derby Sheffield Bristol. This IMO should have been the aim if what we wanted was to make our sport to grow. Big clubs in big cities with big crowds attracting media attention and similar sponsorship deals and TV rights. Then you can have your marquee player and a bigger SC as they should all be on a level playing field apart from those not managing properly.

Of course it cannot happen because the small northern clubs will never embrace expansion if its at their clubs expence even if they have another club 5 miles down the road to watch.

And the new Sky deal was thought through in 24 hours. Sometimes Rugby league deserves itself!

Problem is, Snoopy, the cap hasn't prevented London, Bradford, Widnes and others from getting in trouble. There may be an answer, but I don't think it's the cap.

The cap only refers to players payments. There are other costs as you know such as club and stadium admin, development of academy players, stadium maintenance costs etc. all these have to be paid by the clubs as well. This is why expansion to the big cities is important as a sucessful club (or at least competitive one) will have above your small town attendances to cover these costs. Look at the crowds of Huddersfield - a succesfull club in a small town only getting 5,000 gates. If we had developed a club in Nottingham which was as succesfull you would surely expect that if the game established itself as any expansion club there as it needs to do, they would surely have 10,000+ gates.

At the end of the day some 'bigger' clubs will still get themselves into trouble due to financial mismanagement or errors of judgement in hiring coaches/players etc. which affects performance on the pitch which affects attendaces and therefore the income it generates. you are never going to get perfection when human beings are in control.

Huddersfield population about 150000, gates around 5000. Wigan 80000, gates 15000. London 8000000 gates 1200. So it's not just about the size of the town...