I’d be tempted to go with the sloppy bookkeeping argument if, when the payments were discovered, Wigan hadn’t tried to say they weren’t relevant to the salary cap.

To be honest, if this had happened to our club, I think a lot of us would be expressing similar views to those over on the Wigan board. For mine the fine would have been sufficient. As has been said it looks like either an oversight or a piece of sloppy administration not a deliberate attempt to gain a competative advantage.

Wigan clearly run right up to the very limit of the cap. People keep claiming Lenagan is this great businessman but little evidence of it has been seen in an RL context. Given how close they run it if it were me I'd be sure I was fully conversant with every nuance of the cap and be absolutely sure my financial controller and head of payroll were all over it. Denying it and then appealing it for months so that it comes out on the cusp of the new season is entirely their fault. But it's no surprise they try to shift blame to people other than them.

So much for the 'live' cap. It's taken over 12 months for this to come out

Because these were non-payroll payments and not declared by Wigan it was only identified after the event during one of the RFL's post-season audits. A live cap is to a large degree dependent on the clubs telling the RFL salary cap administrator what they are paying and liaising with them to confirm whether a particular transaction will cause a breach. With the best will in the world the RFL has neither the staff nor the inclination to review every cashbook entry at clubs in real time. Although at Wigan perhaps they should do.

The further delay is because Wigan have already appealed this as far as the independent tribunal.

You think a £2500 fine is sufficient?

Fines should be 10 times the amount of the offence. Points deductions should then come in as well for 2nd offence onwards. 2 Pts deduction for second offence, 4 pts for third etc.

All fines should go The the RFL benevolent fund or suchlike

The two-point deduction is fair just for the sheer stupidity of it.

The salary cap regulations are very clear. They're right rlhererl in black and white, page 280 and 282 of the RFL operational rules. Section 5.2 clearly states that agent fees have to be declared, and section 5.6.2 clearly states that personal travel that is included in a players contract have to be declared. They are, after all, a taxable benefit.

Now if a fan on the internet can find this information within 20 seconds on Google, what did the Wigan Warriors financial team find so difficult and why?

From what it seems, Wigan have tried to mislead the RFL in failing to declare payments that the regulations unabiguously state should be declared, and they have since fought back against their own stupidity, citing weak mitigation such as "it's only £15k", "we lost the games anyway", "we had an injury crisis" and "it was the finance team's first day".

The scale of the breach isn't the issue - it's the way that Wigan accounted for costs that they clearly knew were relevant to the salary cap, and failed to disclose them.

Try using those excuses with HMRC and see what happens. You can bet it will cost you more than 2pts

And there are a lot of complicated rules for your tax. There isn’t for the salary cap. It’s on the bleedin website.

Well, what a surprise... rugbyam.co.uk/elstone-says-wigan ... erplexing/

Well, what a surprise... rugbyam.co.uk/elstone-says-wigan ... erplexing/

So it should really have been around £550k fine for Leeds then, Or does it not matter now

Are you talking about Leneghan here or Heathrington lol