Salary cap destroying NRL: Johns

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Israel Folau has been a huge success in rugby union. Source: Colleen Petch / Herald Sun

WITH an alarming drop in crowds and television ratings this season, it's critically important the Australian Rugby League Commission addresses some major issues in the game immediately.

None is more important than a complete and utter restructuring of how it administers the salary cap.

For a number of seasons the people running the game have pointed to the evenness of the competition as evidence that the current salary cap structure is good for the game.

But don't confuse evenness for quality.

This year we are now faced with a competition in which too many teams and too many games lack genuine star power and quality.

Let me be more direct.

Life's too short to watch some of the matches on offer. Due to work commitments I take in every pass and every tackle, and it takes every ounce of self-discipline not to record some of the matches and fast forward through the muck.

It's time to lift the standard of the competition by rewarding successful clubs, rather than cutting them off at the knees.

The NRL needs to stop using the bottom clubs as a measuring stick to what everyone else can spend.

Sporting clubs like Manchester United and the New York Yankees are global brands because their governing bodies allow them to grow upon their financial and on-field success.

Our clubs work hard, win a premiership, then spend the next five years slowly being dismantled by a flawed system, which rewards mediocrity.

In American sports such as Major League Baseball, if a team is run better and is more financial than the team down the road, then they are allowed to spend more, as simple as that. Imagine the New York Yankees getting their cap cut in half, simply because half a dozen clubs were struggling to keep up?

The Israel Folau fiasco should be enough to trigger radical changes.

Here we have one of the NRL's most important teams, in Australian sport's most hotly contested region, western Sydney, and Parramatta weren't able to sign this superstar because he didn't quite fit under their cap.

The AFL had spent millions promoting Folau and we were about to get him back and his club of choice, Parramatta, couldn't have been more perfect, given they now can add the A-League's Western Sydney Wanderers to their long list of competitors.

Instead, he was allowed to go to rugby league's most traditional competitor, rugby union. And with the ease in which Folau has made the transition, he is basically a walking advertisement to other rugby league players, saying: "Come and join me. Half the work, twice the pay!"

Maybe that's what convinced Benji Marshall?

Meanwhile, Parramatta are hot favourites to collect another wooden spoon and hardly anyone's watching.

Anyone who doubts the impact Folau could've had at Parramatta need just look at what Josh Dugan has given the Dragons, Greg Inglis the Rabbitohs and Sonny Bill Williams the Sydney Roosters.

Speaking of Sonny Bill, what are we doing to try to convince him that he should forget about a return to rugby union?

It seems many at the NRL have taken it as a given that SBW will return to the All Blacks for the next World Cup. Well, change his mind, whatever it takes.

Another very important club which has completely lost its way is Brisbane.

If ever there was a rugby league team which had the money, the ambition and the success to become a global brand, it was these guys. That was their goal.

Now look at them, they are the perfect example of how the current system submits even the most ambitious into mediocrity. The Broncos are attempting to punch out of the corner by making a bold bid for the game's most influential player, Cameron Smith, for a reported $1.5 million a year.

He deserves every cent.

Problem is, that will account for almost a quarter of the Broncos' salary cap and therefore force them to cull many of their good youngsters, who only need a player like Smith to go to the next level.

The league needs to change the way it thinks. It should be encouraging teams like the Broncos, the Bulldogs and so on to spend money. Not only to keeps stars in the game, but also draw stars in.

Rugby's Quade Cooper is basically sitting out there with his hand in the air saying: "Come and get me someone." Yet no club is being encouraged to do so.

GET Israel back, KEEP Sonny Bill. GRAB Quade Cooper and SNARE Kurtley Beale while we're at it.

The salary cap was introduced to stop rugby league destroying itself, but if we're not careful it could be doing exactly that.

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