You can't tell players to sign with certain clubs. It's a restraint of trade and it's been tried and tested.
Even having dispensations for juniors would mean Penrith could have kept their side together for more years. Turuva, for example, probably wouldn't have had to leave and it just means we would have had to pay more money than we did, further disadvantaging a struggling club.
I don't think the system is perfect, but it's easy to pick apart where some of these salary cap adjustments would just exacerbate the problem or create too much subjectivity.
If we were going to tinker with the cap, the only thing I would even consider is giving the team that comes last an extra, say 2 million in the cap for 2 or 3 years to help them lure players. Even that has whiskers, for example tanking allegations and then having a massive cap issue at the end of those 2 or 3 years, but it's simple enough for people to wrap their head around without being subjective. 2 mill can buy 2 to 3 marquee players and it theoretically should move the dial for a struggling club.
For a team like ours, we could have used that to fill gaps in the team with decent players until our juniors were first grade ready and replace the high value contracts with normalised contracts for the juniors.
All sounds good in theory, but it's probably got a million holes people can poke in that system too.
To me, having a team running around with big cap dispensations or higher cap limits doesn't sit right and a win would always be judged based on having a higher cap. It would feel hollow and imo doesn't incentivise getting better in all aspects of club management.
