THE fanfare around Toronto’s signing of Sonny Bill Williams has just about died down, but what a good few weeks of profile and publicity it has produced for Super League.

There can be no doubt that this is good for the game - Toronto's presence in the top flight should stir plenty of interest and that is what the competition needs.

However, all that glistens is not gold; sometimes it is just a crumpled up Caramac wrapper and we have to be careful not to draw wrong conclusions from the Sonny Bill effect.

Specifically, the idea propagated that if only the salary cap was lifted then Super League would be awash with the cream of both codes and we would have a dynamic comp not dominated by the same old faces.

Now clubs already have certain dispensations to bring in two marquee players - and have a further option to entice players from rugby union so we should look at how well the 12 top-flight clubs use that before freeing up any further spending capacity.

We should want all of the Super League clubs to be ambitious and competitive, and those that want to push forward should not be forced to walk at the pace of the slowest plodder.

Maybe more should be done to cut club-trained players' salaries off the cap altogether - and that would reward the clubs that think about watering the game's roots roots rather than simply picking the flowers.

But arbitrarily raising the cap would cut a number of teams adrift and lead to a series of one-sided fixtures.

Good, some would say, that is sport. But we would certainly end up with a load of mismatches and some clubs spending way beyond their means to try and keep up.

The argument that the scrapping of the cap would break the stranglehold of the game’s top clubs, with only Saints, Wigan, Leeds and one-time giants Bradford having won the title, has major flaws.

Does anybody remember the eight years before Super League when the main comp - the Challenge Cup - was won eight times in a row by Wigan who could outspend all-comers? That strategy eventually ended badly for them, but not before Widnes, who had joined them in the arms race, had come a cropper too.

Get rid of the cap and you hand to game to the club with the deepest pockets, the one who won’t necessarily do what Saints and Wigan do in growing players, but who has the wealthiest sugar daddies prepared to write the most zeroes on cheques.

That’s not rugby league; but if that is how you like your sport then get Santa to bring you a Monopoly board this Christmas.