nottinghamtiger wrote: ↑12 Nov 2019, 16:06This is the part I just don’t buy. This line of “we’re investing in the playing squad” rather than facilities just doesn’t add up for one reason - the salary cap.HuddsTigers wrote: ↑12 Nov 2019, 14:06 Or they have just been managing their resources into putting out a decent first team for people to watch. Can have the best facilities in the world but if the product is rubbish, no one will want to come watch it then.
By its very nature, we can’t “invest” in the playing squad more than we have done. We were paying up the cap in 2015 and continue to do so. That’s not investment, that’s maintaining the same expenditure.
It could be argued that we have invested in the squad in terms of transfer fees. But the fees we have received (Solomona, Gale, Chase, Carney, McLelland, Johnson) I suspect far outweigh the fees we have paid out (Watts, Hardaker, Mata’utia, Richardson), so again it’s not really investment.
And the thing is, you can usually watch the product on TV without going to WR. How many home games did we have last year that weren’t televised? You can have the best product in the world, but if people can watch it in their own home then you need to give them a reason to go to the expense and effort of coming to watch it live - and at the moment, the game-day experience simply isn’t worth the expense. I guess whether it’s worth the effort depends on how easy it is for individuals to actually get to WR.
Depends on your definition of investing in the playing squad. Mine is being able to keep funding the salary cap, which we haven't been able to do until recent years. There is a limit in rugby league. The club will not (coaching decision) go towards a marquee player and has said they'd need more fans to be able to sustainably do it anyway. Therefore, our expectation should be for the club to keep to maintain their level spending.
We could pull the plug on the playing squad, save £300k-£400k a year, build a pretty toilet block but there's more chance of us getting relegated doing that and people will complain about the quality of the playing squad then. The money has to come from somewhere and no matter what the club does, fans will moan and they cannot win.
It's swings and roundabouts. And there's more to product than nice toilets too. The atmosphere last season was atrocious for most of it, the game is becoming dull as dishwater (not necessarily just Cas). The whole entity of rugby league isn't good enough. The reality is that the sport should sustainably be able to run itself on TV money alone (it doesn't), with the club being able to invest corporate/merchandise/fans income into areas they want to improve and grow.