There's a strong rumour that Pritchard will be on his way to the NRL in 2017. I posted on the Hull board earlier the possibility that the exchange rate is playing a factor in him wanting to return. When the Pritchard signing was announced in June 2015, the £ to Aus$ exchange rate was £1:$2.04.

It's now around £1:$1.60, so a 20% relative drop.

This is creating an even greater gulf between the two leagues, and [iif[/i the current value of the £ relative to the Aus$ stays at similar levels for a long period of time, SL will struggle to keep it's talent and attract decent players from Aus/NZ (more so than it does already).

What's the solution, if there is one? Or do we ride it out and hope in time the value of the £ will improve?

It's not just the exchange rate, there is more money in the game over there, a higher salary cap and a higher profile for personal sponsorships. For the several years we've only been able to attract players who were considered fringe or past their prime by NRL clubs, and we've had to pay over the odds too. Benji Marshall has signed for Brisbane on a 1 year $100k deal, he could probably have got two or three times that as a marquee player for a SL club, but would lose his personal sponsorships. I'd actually like to see more UK players head to the NRL to gain experience, even if they cannot cut it they should benefit from the higher standards they'll be exposed to. At the same time it will make more space for young UK players, as the economics will make the UK increasingly unattractive to the Kolpak stiffs that many clubs have previously chased over youth development. The positive from this can be more homegrown players getting through to SL and more of the better SL players stepping up to the NRL which will strengthen the England team and import better standards.

The NRL salary cap is also increasing every year while the super league cap stays at the same level for an infinite amount of time.

No doubt more England players will be heading over to the NRL in the next few years.

Think Benji not wanting to be away from his family for a year was the more important factor in why he never came over.

Also the change to offshore taxes made a massive impact (IIRC the likes of Buderus were able to be paid at very low rates of tax until this was clamped down on).

The exchange rate and the NRL salary Cap have been having an impact more and more for years now, the Aussie dollar has been doing well for 10 years now against the pound and it shows in the amount of Aussie players over here going right down.

it's a good thing, the less reliant on imports the better.

Well that is not always good, great imports bring great quality and ideas and tactics and techniques.

There is definately a good mix to be had but sadly we cannot control exchange rates so sometimes we will have too many imports sometimes not enough.

If only we had enough quality home grown players to fill the gap.

If we want the salary cap to rise clubs need to increase their revenue. Otherwise we're just sacrificing other areas of clubs such as marketing and youth production.

Just being devil's advocate here but, is there anything within the cap rules about which currency a player should be paid in.
For example if the agreed to come over for x number of $Aus and that was based on the exchange rate of the day, it would be crazt to suddenly lose (or gain) cap space due to a sudden shift in the exchange rate.
Also, how does this affect Catalan Dragons.
The Euro is very strong against the pound at the moment and if they are permitted to spend a certain amount of Euros on s/c that amount has, in relative terms, increased recently.
However, over the past 4/5 years, pre the referendum the value of the Euro had been on the slide.

You would expect that there is something in the S/C detail about this but, there probably isn't, which potentially leaves things open to abuse.

It won't matter what exchange rate they are paid in as long as the out is in £s on the salary cap audit trail, rememeber it is live and set against what the RFL think a player is worth, so getting around it is unlikely on a large scale these days.