Perception is reality Todd, and your mob is on the nose with fans

I think a lot of what you are saying is on the fringes. I think its a breach of privacy to know what players are paid and i don't want to know. I don't want it like the USA. i want to have the mistaken belief that they are playing for the love of the club, jersey and area. I don't like them changing clubs 18 m months out either. What we need to do is get these discussions off the front page. maybe a trade window is the thing. Sure there will be discussions outside that but they know it must be kept out of the media. Then what we really need to do is expand the game to new areas in the heartland and encourage the transition of at least 2 of the Sydney clubs to those areas. That growth will bring positive news to the NRL.

Have tier 1-10 players based subjectively on how they played the year before (rep honours, dally m points etc rookies are a 1 or 0((not sure if a 0 would help teams retain their own juniour stars or encourage poaching)) ) and have the tier ratings displayed publicly. Add these points collectively for each team and have a points cap. You can go over the cap if you are resigning players who improved, however cannot go over when signing a free agent. Example say the Roosters are 95/100 points (have not predetermined a realistic figure) and have to choose between Mitchell Pearce and Cooper Cronk. Mitchell Pearce being a 9, Cronk a 10. Because Roosters are resigning Pearce their score would legally go to 104, but would illegally go to 105 by improving with Cronk. To not sign Mitchell Pearce they would have to sign a player rated 5 or lower. **not thought out in any huge detail but I believe a system in similarity could hold merit** Of anything that has annoyed me with the concept of the salary cap is player improvement and development (mostly Melbourne) gets punished, where it should be celebrated. I absolutely despise Melbourne but they did not simply go out and buy their dominance during the salary scandal. They developed Inglis, Folau, Hoffman, Cronk, Smith, Slater etc and were retaining their own rights.

The NRL can stop players earning money outside the game. They just need to agree in the CBA with a sufficient pay off to avoid court action. Look at the strict conditions that the AFL players abide by. They have actual restraints of trade found illegal in place. I would also argue the NRL has a huge amount of evidence to support the idea that a strict TPA cap is a reasonable restraint to ensure the integrity of the game, given every Salary cap breach has been based around TPA's at the core.

Actually the AFL opened up sponsor servicing agreements, capped them high enough that the players would agree in the CBA, and bingo, their TPA woes disappeared. It's a simple solution.

No, they align based on club loyalty. The Roosters sit in the middle of wealthiest area in Australia. The reality is the majority of TPA's are not genuine promotional deals and they are designed to make money for no one but the Player involved.

This makes the assumption that TPA's are genuine endorsement deals. The evidence is that there are many dodgey ones where players are overpaid to do nothing or very little. Based on the only numbets the NRL use to publish, registered TPA's went from a few million to 15 million+ in 5 years. Did the amount of promotion players were doing multiply by the same amount?

Most other codes have drafts, which offset most of this issue, or are full of clubs with a 100/1 shot of winning every year.

People conclude the people and systems are good after clubs have success, but the reality is most clubs that are successful do so on the back of recruiting players that many clubs in the league just don't have equal access to, or retaining players through their prime that many clubs struggle to keep. Just putting it all down to how well a club is run is a cop out and greatly simplifies the situation.

There are huge inherent advantages for a club like the Roosters over a club like Canberra that cannot be overcome through been more "professionally run". If both clubs were equally well run off the park (and I would argue they are), Canberra still could not compete in the player market with the Roosters, even before the TPA's come into it. That's why the Roosters have signed 10 Origin players since the NRL started and Canberra has signed 0. At the very least everyone should support transparency on how big the gap is between clubs. There are zero good reasons not to provide this regardless of where you sit on the TPA argument. The only reason people are against it is that it brings into question the idea that what clubs achieve is based on merit alone.

Without a salary cap, the league would only have about three teams that would survive . No salary cap is league suicide

Who do you follow Barry? Rorters dodgy dealings have been happening since the 70s. Common knowledge in the league world. The admin is just one big ‘conflict of interest’. All the suits have their preferred team. Most suits at the NRL are recruited from clubland, thus the perceived conflict of interest that exists in the NRL building You are right, perception is important. Which clubs have their headquarters adjacent to the NRL? I no longer follow the game and returned my Dragons membership some years ago. Suits like Doust/Greenburg etc have ruined the game. It used to be about loyal/tribal fans watching all three grades on an afternoon. The club was there for its fans, not the fans being enslaved to the suits of a club and the league. Players used to respect fans and fans returned that respect. Now, they are more interested in cash and tattoos. I know of players feigning injury to their writing hand to avoid stopping and giving autographs. The game lost its integrity since the letters NRL emerged on the jerseys (since superleague)

Since 2000 the Roosters have won two titles been runners up four times and won the minor premiership four times also. That makes them very clearly one of the top clubs of recent times. They are also one of the favorites for next year and are therefore currently very strong. Independently the Roosters were rated as the most successful team of the NRL era about two years ago. Storm are now clearly but Manly haven't gone up. How much this is to do with TPA's I have no idea but they are highly successful based on their ability to attract players like SBW , Fittler and many others. If this recruitment is based on having better TPA's than other clubs then it is clearly a big part of their success. Because the Eagles have had success in other ways it doesn't prove much but just shows their is more than one way of winning a title. The Roosters way has had them in contention more than any team except the Storm would be my guess. Barry I think you are under rating the Roosters success to suit your view. The Eagles haven't won a minor premiership in 20 years which indicates how hard it is to consistently do well after going from a wealthy club to way back in the pack.

TB, I am not an easts fan either, but I do suppfort their feeder club who happen to have a very rich leagues club and strong junior base,so easts have made a very smartrich move not only with them but also having an arrangement with central coast rugby league without costing them anything.

The Roosters clearly aren’t the second most successful side of “recent years”. They’ve won one premiership since 2002. In that time Manly have won two and appeared in four grand finals. I don’t know how many ways to explain this but I’m not saying teams don’t get advantages from TPAs, I’m saying any advantage gained is grossly over rated. Your own club proves that. TPAs are the end result of a club being well managed.

The Roosters have to be one of the most successful clubs of recent years Barry. Storm are number one and Roosters probably second. Manly decimated Easts and Wests in the late 70's and early 80's which bought them plenty of success (hollow ) but they couldn't land the big one. Just because they didn't win a title doesn't mean that they didn't benefit greatly by doing it and also ruined the chances of those two clubs. I accept a lot of your points but it is commonsense that a team in general gains an advantage by having greater TPA's . I had a look at the Tigers proposed lineup for round one and it looks really average to me. Off topic but I'm hoping Ivan Cleary can weave some magic because to me they look like real contenders for the spoon.

The other thing is I don’t like the Roosters. But I really feel for the Roosters club, players and fans. If they win a comp in the next two years everyone will be banging on about salary sombreros and TPAs without a shred of evidence. It’s just jealous BS. Their top 17 is very good, but they’re very skinny after that. They’ve recruited smart and let a LOT of players go. They’re taking a punt on limited injuries. If they are found to be cheating, strip their points, strip their titles, kick em out. But don’t do it on the evidence of someone posting an internet meme.

I’m not saying don’t police it. I’m saying don’t jump at shadows because someone makes uninformed internet memes. TPAs have been around for ages. TPA is just a fancy name for a players personal sponsorship. Anyone who says ban TPAs is saying ban players having organisations like Nike, Gatorade, Gillette, Rexona etc sponsoring them. The Roosters actually suit my argument perfectly. Mention TPAs and salary cap and Roosters are the first team mentioned, with Brisbane not far behind. If these teams were getting such a massive advantage that TPAs are purported to be them they would have more than random distribution of titles between them. The argument that TPAs give clubs unfair advantages is flawed because there’s no evidence. There’s more evidence, including Manlys success, that recruiting and retaining well, having good people and good systems in place is far more beneficial than TPAs.

No they wouldn’t. Imagine what would happen if Greenberg came out and said the Roosters are salary cap compliant and they got busted two years later. He’d be accused of being complicit in it. They’d be saying don’t touch this with a ten foot barge pole.

I agree Barry :-)

Dragons fans complain about Peter Doust.