I see that Chris Sandow has asked Parramatta to release him from his contract so he can join Warrington this season. Parra refuse, but my first thought was "how can Wire fit him under cap this year, with no marquee player allowance?" But it struck me they could pay him peanuts this year and load his salary onto the other years of his contract, where he was a marquee player, and be within the rules.

So, extending that, wouldn't it be possible for a club to pay marquee player wages to three players without breaking the letter of the RFL's law?

Say Wire (or anyone else) sign three players on 3 year contracts at £250k/year. That would likely take them a long way over the cap, BUT...

Player 1 - 2016 £50k, 2017 £50k, 2018 £650k

Player 2 - 2016 £50k, 2017 £650k, 2018 £50k

Player 3 - 2016 £650k, 2017 £50k, 2018 £50k

This all seems ok as far as cap laws go, given everything over £175k is counted as zero. Just change the marquee player designation every year. Maybe Leeds could pay Watkins/Hardaker/Hall this way. So a club with deep pockets could use this loophole to walk all over the spirit of the law. As an additional benefit you'll have a load of spare cap for the rest of the squad because your three most expensive players will be taking up £275k of space between them. Will it happen? Is there anything from the RFL to stop it?

I would have thought (and it is just a thought) that you would have to name the player and provide contract details. In your example the club would have to name the marquee player up front and the length of contract which would stop them naming one of the other two the following year.

Not sure if same in SL but in NRL they can refuse to register a players contract if they feel the club are paying him way under to stack the cap. Parramatta tried it with Folau last year and got knocked back.

Didn't Wigan get busted for going 'against the spirit of the cap' by doing this with Fielden a few years back? I thought the average salary over the length of the deal was now the salary cap value?

So in the situation you describe, each player would have a salary cap value of £250k, with one having a marquee allowance. Total cap value for the 3 players being £675k - which is obviously a fair chunk of your cap for three players.

Would Sandow's full salary value be on the cap? Or as he is just joining us for the super 8's would just a proportion of his salary count? Laithwaite could be deregistered I suppose as he is now out for the year, plus we lost Higham mid season. There is also some talk of Wheeler's salary being made up of some quite heavy appearance bonuses - as he hasn't played we have cap spare...? Maybe we plan to offload a couple of players on loan deals to clubs in the middle 8 also.

I think Wigan paid Fielden buttons for the remainder of the season that they signed him (when they were in trouble) as they had no space, but made up for it with an increased 2nd year?

Wigan didn't break the cap for fielden but when they signed him some other players agreed to new backloaded contracts, which was legal at the time however what the RFL decided was that the resigning of these players simply amounted to deferring their payment which doesn't really count.

Are contracts smoothed out now for cap purposes anyway? I'm also pretty sure there are rules governing 'post contract promises' I.e things like this or offering a player a mediocre contract with the promise a 300k a year coaching contract after retirement.

You could possibly do it the other way around and offer a player like Sandown a a 450k 6 month contract. The when he signs offer him a 50k a year 3 year extension and keep switching your marquee player but you would need a lot of trust in the player not to renege on that deal.

I would have thought the RFL will take the average yearly earnings over the term of the contract.

Therefore from your example:
PLAYER 1 is earning £750k over 3 years meaning his average is £250k a year of which £150k per year is not counted on the annual cap

Clubs can do whatever they like even without the loophole. The RFL aren't capable enough to properly check players and clubs and they won't have any legal juristiction to investigate third party deals either. So you could sign a player now on £100k, have a third party company owned by the club owner invest £350k into property, then sell that property for much less than value to the player's Uncle. Extreme example, but who is going to find that? Risky obviously as the player could rat you out at any point if they fall out with the club, but definitely possible.

I think the autobiographies for players in the early SL days will be very interesting, both domestic players and those in the NRL, who will no doubt reveal the offers they received from SL.

Well they employed someone specifically to do just that not so long ago, I'm assuming he's earning his salary somehow.

If clubs wanted to hide things from the RFL I'm sure they could. However it's a huge risk for the club, the player and the CEO of the club because if it's discovered then they're committing fraud. Not only could the RFL harshly punish the club and individuals, they could potentially be charged and other clubs could sue them for damages.

I doubt many if any club would be willing to take that risk, especially as most clubs can't really afford the wages they pay anyway.

Clubs have been known to do things in the quest for glory. Look at Melbourne, running two different sets of books in the clubs name in the hope no one checked. I'm pretty sure clubs will be looking for every possible opportunity to gain an advantage, players and their agents too.

The RFL employing 1 person has been mentioned. 1! That isn't enough resource to properly audit the clubs and players.

A company can't dispose of an asset in the way you describe, the tax man would have a field day!

The Wigan situation related to existing contracts, not new ones. It wasn't so much that contracts were backloaded but instead, that payments were deferred so that monies due to be paid in one salary cap year were pushed back to a subsiquent year, with Wigan using the deferred amount to pay Fielden when they were up the creek. The wording used at the time, IIRC, was that this was against "the spirit of" the salary cap - Wigan weren't technically in breach of paying too much to players that year, but that was because they deferred some of their contracted liabilities that year.

The Wigan situation probably isn't comparable to what may happen with Sandow. A better comparison is perhaps Leeds' re-signing of Lee Smith a few years back where Smith (reportedly) was paid very little for his first season back. Following Smith signing, Leeds lost Scott Donald, Matt Diskin and Greg Eastwood (all big earners) and I dare say some of that cash was worked into Smith's second year contract.

I'm not aware of any rule change that prevents a club doing this with any player, as long as the club meets all relevant regulations on NMW and (in the case of overseas players requiring visas) minimum salary requirements.

As others have mentioned Wigan got done for changing existing contracts so they payed several players less for that year and then could accommodate Fielden and stay under the cap. At the time it wasn't against the rules which is why they were charged with breaching the spirit of the cap. The rules were then changed to stop it happening again. Technically it was probably a bit unfair and if they had challenged it in court I expect they'd have won. S*** happens.

Front or back loading contracts is common and permissible and fairly common practice in the NRL (or at least it used to be, it's been a while since I read it) as long as it was the original agreed contract, I'm not sure about here though.

I think it would be against the spirit of the cap,

however the club takes 2 huge risks. First is the fraud as has been mentioned above, but the second is the Marquee player who gets the big money in year one deciding not to both for years 2 and 3. Buying out their own contract and then moving someone else for another pay day.