www.skysports.com/opinion/story/ ... 73,00.html Right, I know this is "by" Phil Clarke, so can be taken with a pinch of salt, but when you look at the numbers it makes me laugh that the RFL believe that the salary cap is policed well and that all clubs are within the cap. If you listed out (for arguements sake) Warringtons squad and tried to rank the players in order to the values shown in the article (as positionally wise, the payments per player wouldn't tie out), it is pretty clear to see that Wire are no way paying some of their players the figures quoted. There are probably other ways of paying players without items counting against the cap, maybe payments through un-related 3rd parties, who will pay a said player X amount per year directly in exchange for some marketing and PR, while having no official connection to a club. Players family members may be paid X amount per year to work in the back office cleaning the 1956 Challenge Cup replica once a blue moon. The point I am making is that providing you are "rich" and well connected, to say, the record industry and can supply "products ( )" to other parties, you may be able to circumvent the rules easier than a club (like the Bulls) who have no rich owner to pay players more money outside of the regulated cap. I don't think anything there is too outrageous, without giving away too much about certain court cases, and potential HMRC challenges about how payments are made to players.....

www.skysports.com/opinion/story/ ... 73,00.html Right, I know this is "by" Phil Clarke, so can be taken with a pinch of salt, but when you look at the numbers it makes me laugh that the RFL believe that the salary cap is policed well and that all clubs are within the cap. If you listed out (for arguements sake) Warringtons squad and tried to rank the players in order to the values shown in the article (as positionally wise, the payments per player wouldn't tie out), it is pretty clear to see that Wire are no way paying some of their players the figures quoted. There are probably other ways of paying players without items counting against the cap, maybe payments through un-related 3rd parties, who will pay a said player X amount per year directly in exchange for some marketing and PR, while having no official connection to a club. Players family members may be paid X amount per year to work in the back office cleaning the 1956 Challenge Cup replica once a blue moon. The point I am making is that providing you are "rich" and well connected, to say, the record industry and can supply "products ( )" to other parties, you may be able to circumvent the rules easier than a club (like the Bulls) who have no rich owner to pay players more money outside of the regulated cap. I don't think anything there is too outrageous, without giving away too much about certain court cases, and potential HMRC challenges about how payments are made to players.....

It's all about the image rights, apparently.

Clarke's table looks reasonable for "standard" level players for a SL squad - maybe allowing a bit of premium for the halves and FB.

However, I look around the competition and I see teams that have a number of players who are clearly considerably better than "standard" level. I also note that those teams do not seem to have a corresponding number of players at "below standard" level to compensate.

With the Aussie Dollar at 1.50/£ and the Kiwi at just over 2/£, this means we must have quite a few top-class Aussies and Kiwis playing over here for a fair bit less than AUD 200k p.a. - which I find inconceivable when you see the sort of figures they are reported as getting paid over there? And the regular reports of players being lured to SL by "big money" offers from the "monied" SL clubs. Even though our salary cap for 25 players is £1.65m and theirs is £2.87m -nearly one and three quarters times ours. That is an AVERAGE NRL salary cost of £115k. And we have players here who are well beyond average.

I understand about how some clubs have allegedly been making what I consider to be way excessive use of tax avoidance devices like club-paid image rights, which as a result HMRC have contented amounts to tax evasion. This can give you considerably more bang for your bucks, especially with non-dom overseas players. But the HMRC actions and the RFL's responses should be mitigating the effetc of that now.

But I simply cannot make the numbers work for some teams, no matter how I try.

I can only conclude that some of these guys must have some other sources of income that allow them to elect to play for the club of their dreams for considerably less than the market rate? But surely that cannot be likely...can it?

So I profess to being totally mystified.

There seems to be a very very big elephant in the room. And sooner or later it is going to crap all over everyone and everything.

One can only wonder how some clubs are able to afford so much talent. Maybe their players are so desperate to turn out for the shirt they'll play for significantly less than the going rate? #pigsmightfly

You can imagine all sorts of scenarios including stuffing brown envelopes full of sausage and mash.

There's really no way of policing it. If someone's intent on fooling the system they'll find a way. Would love it if a big heap of doings was unleashed on certain clubs though.

if the players were as auditable as the clubs then we could find out how much they're really getting paid. I can't ever see that happening though.

And there you have it.

For me there is not a chance in hell Warri are under the £1.65m with there sqaud unless they are cheating the system...

Surely if we can all see that, wouldn't that be an indication for the RFL to investigate?? are they all ready investigating??

But the RFL can only look at what they have a right to see

You'll never get a player admitting to brown envelopes. Think of the legalities of admitting receiving such payments and the resulting HMRC investigation......

You'd not need brown envelopes though. That would be deliberate breach of the salary cap, and all the club chairmen and owners are too honourable and astute to consider going down that road, are they not?

As I have said at various times, all you need is for some totally "unconnected" third party to decide there is benefit to his business through paying a player a load of money for his image rights, or for other services that that player can provide. The player then finds that he has nearly enough income for his needs, and decides that he would feel more comfortable playing for a club more out of passion than for the maximum money he can extract from the club of his dreams he has signed for. I suppose you can only applaud players who choose to put playing the game ahead of personal gain - how many of us would be prepared to do that?

The trick is to make your club the club of payers' dreams, so they queue up to sign for you at well under market rate having first somehow managed to find some third party to pay them enough to be financially comfortable. All within the salary cap. After all, some UK clubs are near-legendary in the antipodes. Simples.

And when you consider the short career these guys have, it makes complete sense to be paid less and suffer financially later in life.......

I think you posted the wrong smiley by mistake - surely it should have been a or maybe a ??

Makes you wonder if there's a point to having a salary cap at all if there are such holes in it.

I felt sick to my stomach yesterday when i was reading about puletua resigning with saints because within the story lied who had been chasing him and it was wire, how blatant are they getting?
The real problem is the rfl 's determination to find new winners of the comp by extending the rules to them.
I find it astonishing that prior to the live cap we had people going over every year but all of a sudden we enter the "live" (we can turn a blind eye easier to this now) cap and we have not had a single offender? We should be able to audit rich investors accounts (as part of a pre agreement when taking over a club) to see what they are putting in and how! and why they need this extra help.
We always get people arguing against our cap with football doesnt use it but they will soon enough!

You'd neither be able to get permission nor would you be able to conduct such an audit effectively anyway.

And if the player was receiving monies from "independent" third parties, that would not identify it anyway - nor should it need to, since such payments fall outside the cap*. You, being the salary cap auditor, might look at a player's contract and be surprised at how little he seemed to be prepared to play for the club for. But if no rules appeared to have been broken, there is no further action open to you.

* Unless of course someone not friendly to you finds a way to demonstrate the third party is not really "unconnected" or that the substance of the payment is that it is really for playing services. We of all clubs know all about that.