Anybody expecting marquee signings like Greg Inglis, Johnathan Thurston or Benji Marshall to be heading to Super League or to see Darren Lockyer coming for a swansong should acquaint themselves with the currency board outside the post office in Bridge Street.

The way sterling has weakened against the Australian dollar this past decade makes it tougher, although not impossible, to attract top quality NRL stars.

To spell it out, in July 2004, around the time that Saints brought Jamie Lyon in from the wilderness of Wee Waa Tigers, £1 was worth $2.5564 Aus.

Today that same British pound is only worth $1.513Aus. On a rough calculation a top Aussie player earning £100,000 and banking it back home in 2005 would see a drop from $255, 640 to $151,300.

Now I am not party to the salaries of any Super League players but I would imagine British clubs are now having to pay more for the imports and I would guess, this, combined with the quota rules, may also drive up the salaries of top available British talent too.

But to get them all under the salary cap means that players at the bottom half of the squad will see their salaries squeezed.

It is a tough one and you can understand why some clubs want to salary cap increased.

Salary cap was brought in to create a more even competition, stop it being dominated by the richest clubs and to save some from having ambition beyond their means.

I am sure there will be further discussions about raising the cap to combat the threat posed by the trickle of players to union, the potential for more to follow in the footsteps of James Graham and he reality of costlier or less high profile imports.

But clubs have to spell out where the increase would be spent? Perhaps it could be done in way that does not unconditionally increase the cap.

Maybe the first dispensation should be discounting half the salaries of club trained players – so at Saints half of those earned from Wellens, Roby and Lomax.

This would reward clubs for growing their own and stop the bigger clubs simply lashing out transfer fees to poach players nurtured elsewhere or splurging it on imports, who won’t necessarily be worth the money.

Also we also have to look at the impact on the whole league of raising the cap – particularly when some clubs already find it difficult to spend up to the current limit. There are already too many lop-sided scorelines and uninspiring games.

The danger of emphasising equality in sport is we can end up running the game at the pace of the slowest plodder rather than being led by those who want to push the game forward, invest in developing players and filling their grounds.

So how do we up keep the competition vibrant, but relatively balanced, while ensuring there is enough quality in each team?

If the cap is increased then a chasm will open up between haves and have nots.

Maybe – and it is not without pitfalls – we have to contemplate two full time divisions of 10, just like county cricket, with the money distributed accordingly.