Letters to players promising a second set of salary payments kept in a secret file at a club officials house - not good

There is breaking the salary cap due to incompetent accounting, you can even accept clubs breaking the salary cap through incompetent management forecasting, keeping two sets of books is just deliberate flouting of the rules.

The club owners should lose the franchise and not be employed in the game again - the players who accepted those terms are just as culpable and should also be unregistered from the game of rugby league, its one thing to accept a large salary and not give a damn about where the money comes from because thats the accountants problem, but quite another thing to accept a second string of payments and to have two contracts on the go.

Now what was the phrase again ?

Big daft lads, thats the one.

The live salary cap wouldn't have caught this. This was effectively financial fraud, not just salary cap avoidance. They used 3rd parties to make extra payments and then kept two sets of records, one for the cap auditors and one for their accountants presumably.

The fact that they got away with it for 6 years shows how staggeringly easy it is. If you think Super League's rules would prevent this in any way you are being very naive. A lot of Super League chairmen have business enterprises they could easily use to make extra payments to players.

The old chestnut of a player's nominated relative or friend being paid a ridiculous salary is one way. Say for example a player called Brent Tarrett came over from the NRL. He gets paid £250,000 himself by the club plus the usual offshore payment and image rights manipulation. His friend in Australia is then paid £200,000 per season by the Sports Manufacturing company owned by the Super League club chairman for 'Sports Manufacturing Consultancy work'. How does the Super League salary cap auditor pick this up? It's not possible to do and as the Storm proved it's incredibly easy to get away with it.

was it having silverwood in WCC that made them go over the cap

Then of course you have the old trick where the actual player earns very little money, whilst his missus is earning £200,000 a year working in the club shop!

Cheating bar-stewards. www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/ ... 5856965748

Cheating bar-stewards. www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/ ... 5856965748

Would indeed be picked up and has been picked up and indeed is covered in the rules.

Saddened is correct in his statements about salary cap avoidance and also mentions a currently legal practise of manipulation of image rights to lower a clubs/players tax liability... but you are in fact once again wrong!

From The Australian...

"MELBOURNE Storm has been stripped of two NRL titles and three minor premierships for rorting the salary cap system in an unprecedented day for rugby league in Australia. "

To rort.......to cheat or abuse the system, what a great verb


It has also come out to day that London Wasps and Newcastle Falcons owe HMRC large sums of money following investogations by HMRC into the tax treatment of image rights. London Wasps have been threatened with a winding up order.

I think she's bang on McF,who else would they of played for and won international honours?

Just to add.
Note to the RFL-this what an organisation with a set of nadgers looks like!

you're dead right mate! name and shame plus bans should be the order of the day! as you said this should be the way forward for those who took the bungs! as harsh as it seems I think the powers that be have taken the soft option. the nrl, origin and the international setup needs it's marque players. to be honest you don't need to be a rocket scientist to work out who would have got the money! 1,4,7,9,10 and a few more I would think.

Yes true, but they did caught in the end!!!!

This brings us back to the discussion me, you, Adey Bull and G1 had last month on the VT.

We can take the image rights tax manipulation trick out of this discussion though, because we all agree it is currently legal or maybe not currently illegal is a better way to put it, so until the HMRC resolve this in court then we have to assume that this does not break any cap rules and the RFL can not stop this happening. We all know HMRC are going to have a long fight on their hands and we also assume it will not be retrospectively applied, although it is possible! Even then it would be the issue of tax payments and not breaking the cap that would be the issue.

We did all agree that there are ways around the cap and third party payments was the most likely way and hardest trick for the RFL and auditors to trace, even with a rule in the cap regulations asking for full disclosure of directors financial information if requested, but of course legally we knew that could be a challenge.

It brought it to the ultimate conclusion that I think we all agreed on (sort of), that it was possible but the chances are you would get caught at some point and that the risks for doing so would and should be very high. They were also breaking the law of the land (one assumes) as well, so I expect the club to facing an investigation by the Aussie Inland Revenue (or similar) and directors, player and officials to be facing big fines and possible time inside.

I think they should just lose the franchise at the end of the season and put it up for sale, ban the current directors from ever having involvement with a NRL club again and therefore effectively bankrupt the club and take the owners with it.

So we know it's possible to do something similar with the live cap he in SL but the questions is, is anyone actually taking the risk... this is the bit I doubt to be honest!

I would not be so hard on the RFL mate, I suspect they would have done similar if not more TBH in similar circumstances. The breaches by clubs over here were very, very minor in comparison and to be fair the the RFL again they did strengthen the rules to make sure that they had much more power in future and all the clubs agreed!

Truly unbelievable. 5 years in the making.