Quote: sally cinnamon "How many people making these accusations have actually got evidence that some teams are actively cheating and gaining an advantage, or is it just inference based on the fact Warrington are so far ahead of the rest of the league that they must be doing something that the other clubs aren't.
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Warrington have done something that other clubs aren't - paying transfer fees and thus avoiding getting into bidding wars with other clubs.
If a player is out of contract and able to talk to a number of clubs you can guarantee he will be playing one off against another. Whilst if say Richard Myler has a year left of a £10k a year contract at Salford is he going to accept a four year deal contract with Warrington at a few grand less per year than what he could negotiate if he saw out the additional year at Salford? I would suggest yes - so the value a rich benefactor provides to Warrington is that he is willing to bank-roll the transfer fee to provide exclusivity. Look at Carvell when he left Hull - no other club would pay the fee Hull wanted - if five clubs were willing I'll guarantee that his salary now would be a few grand more.
The only player I think we have picked-up at the end of his contract was Ratchford. Even for Chris Hill we paid a transfer fee that suited all parties before he went on the opern market.
The other thing Warrington have done is to award long term contracts to ageing players that has on occasion swung things in our favour in securing players - Hodgson and Morley spring to mind.
Thanks to Adeybull for the link to the new salary cap regulations. Lots of concessions that Warrington will qualify for to up our salary cap, I'd even imagine we'd persaude the RFL that either Evans or Williams qualify for the Player Talent Pool one that will remove their salary completely from the calculation. Interesting that there is no "marquee player" exclusion that Leneghan from Wigan was going on about - looks like he spoke to soon in that instance.