Even if it is found to be true that Puletua had a second contract, I wonder whether Salford would still have actually broken the cap last season. With Locke & Hock leaving mid way through the season I'd imagine that there would have been a fair amount of money free. Would adding the alleged £40k send us over the cap?

That's of course not to say that other players don't / didn't have similiar contracts! I guess the easy out for the RFL is to say the spirit of the cap was broken and fine Salford along with a 2 - 4 point deduction?

It seems the RFL have been investigating for three months already. I wonder whether now that it's in the public domain, the RFL might speed up the process.

The problem for Salford being they, by the sounds of the story, didn't report the 2nd contract to the RFL for salary cap management. If they did then it wouldn't be an issue as they'd have to have been under the cap for the contract and players registration to be lodged.

If they didn't report it, then it doesn't really matter whether they were under the cap or not. They attempted to conceal off-salary cap payments to a player.
Not to mention the only real reason for arranging to have 2 contracts for players is to avoid the salary cap.

According to wiki Puletua wasn't registered to play with Salford in 2015. This could explain why he didn't make a single appearance for Salford last year, especially considering the club went through an injury and suspension crisis and were forced to play a lot of academy kids. Subsequently he went to Hull KR and played 13 games for them.

Are we admitting that the RFL are incapable of policing the salary cap



IF Salford, or ANY other club are abusing the system, they should be dealt with properly by the governing body.
Failure to do so, just encourages future abuse of any rules that are in place.

They should not be frightened of any club or individual and they have to be seen to be strong in these instances.

Are they strong though? Even if the rfl are pretty confident they will win, are they interested in a long expensive legal fight over an issue that doesn't actually affect the RFL?

Do the rfl and the game as a whole have an appetite to get in a complex legal wrangle to enforce it?

It's alright saying they shouldn't be frightened and should be seen to be strong, but Bradford were confident they would win the Harris case and sent out some strong messages. A couple of years and a few million later things weren't so rosy.

Wasn't he deregistered as you had to lose one off your quota to sign someone else and as he was injured, he was the one who made way. Not sure whether this was 2015 or 2014.

Yeah because with a salary cap just how many teams have won SL??

Maybe Salford need advice from Batley as to how to get let off breaching the Operational Rules (in Batley's case, fielding an ineligible player who scored the winning try in a match that led to Keighley and not Batley being relegated by one point in 2014).

Whilst only 4 clubs have won it, the competitiveness of the clubs is the closest it's been IMO.

If Leeds can win a treble in a Salary Cap season, imagine how dominant they'd be with no salary cap. I think a 4 club comp is optimistic, it'd likely just be Wigan & Leeds each year, baring the odd blip or some billionaire waltzing in and buying everything up.

The whole reason we have this Super 8's system is because we didn't have 14 competitive clubs. Imagine the league with no Salary Cap.


What get's me about this situation and some of the posts on here saying "RIP Salary Cap" etc, is that Koukash wanted this all along. He wanted rid of the Salary Cap in a bid to take short cuts and get quick success.

High profile controversy in the SC system which could ultimately bring the salary cap tumbling down after 20 years - who stands to win? Who gets what they wanted all along?

Losing the SC doesn't necessitate a free for all. Perhaps it's time we looked at a better way of achieving what we want to achieve.

The first step is actually deciding what it is that we want to achieve.