It's hardly surprising that he wants to buy a team in the best competition, with the ability to attract the top players from around the world. People with his amount of wealth are never going to be satisfied by a competition handcuffed to mediocrity.

If we persist with the salary cap , we may simply have to accept that people like koukash might not stick around very long

I'm not sure on this one to be honest. Does Walsh's wage all count on the Saints cap if Penrith are paying part of the wage???

If not then it is a good get around on the cap. However, the Knights will not be happy spending money on behalf of Salford. If Knights are going up against other Australian clubs they will want to spend all their cap to win not to help Salford win.

We have lost sight of one of the most important points in all of this:

Marwan Koukash is a very rich man who genuinely likes rugby league.

Interesting point - my best guess is that it depends on how the deals are structured. To my knowledge Penrith still hold Walsh's NRL registration, and I don't know anything about how his deal was structured at Penrith. If, for example, the section of his contract not taken over by Saints is the third party arrangements which are allowed in Aus, then Penrith are still paying part of the contract without him counting within their cap. If Penrith still contribute base salary however, that would count on both Saints and Pentriths cap for the full amount.

It would be possible to replicate this by koukash, however - I doubt many 3rd party deals will be done if he ships x back to Salford and the NRL are a lot more nonchalant about banning specific practices than we are over here, and pattern emerging of him loaning/ dual signing any top 25 player and the NRL would be on him like a sack of bricks imo.

I doubt he could bring FIRST RATE players across from the Knights.
Number one reason.... the players would refuse.
Number two, the NRL would not allow it.
Number three the Knights fans would not stand for it.

Firstly a genuine question, why are Penrith paying part of Walsh's wage?

Secondly, if Eamonn McManus owned or had interest in Penrith then whatever Penrith paid Walsh would count on St Helens cap as well as whatever Saints paid him.

McManus stated at a fans forum that Penrith agreed to cover part of his salary (I assume his total package was more than we could match) - as I say, if it's specifically covered by 3rd party deals it makes no difference to Penrith, at least in terms of cap space...

It's irrelevant who owns the two parties in aus and here, whether or not McManus owned Penrith shouldn't come into Walsh's cap calculation - Penrith will be a 3rd party contributor regardless

Serious questions must be asked. This may come across bias as I am a Salford fan however. Mr Wood meets billionaire, gets invited to Saints game, loves the game and wishes to invest in soonest club that is available. Luckily it maybe not to lucky depends how you see it, he takes control of Salford. Invest heavily immediately, paying players owed money, setting up plans to pay debts, then starts investing heavily in a entire new squad. He made brash statements but put his money where his mouth was putting together a team that competes althought not great as he had hoped. He then invest in training facilities for the team, also has sent scouts out, attracting the most promising U15, U16 to the Salford Red Devils. Please note my last two points go unnoticed by those who chose to dig him out at the 1st opportunity of a mis quote. After he's done this, he then signs the best overseas player since Lyon? Possibly Barrett? Yet he is still critisied. If he was fed up would be blame him? Obviously I love what he has brought to Salford, never in my life time has the club and city had this opportunity to has a world class team.

My point being, a billionaire has taken over a club on deaths door, turned the club inside out, signed world class players, yet he is still mocked? He's stumbling across an old guard who look after themselves in rugby league, who will always want the too couple of teams to be the top couple of teams. Can you blame him if he got bored? I will argue the toss with any fan of any club who wishes Koukash was In charge of them, because i think they would be lying. Look at the euphoria around Bradford when his wife put a bid in. The league will stay the same while the Hetheringtons and McManus are in charge, just protect those at the top. Like I say my opinion is biased, but what if Wood met another billionnaire took him to a game and loved it. Sought advise of Marwan and he replies, it's all lies mate, they want your money and to be involved but the strucher will never change. So to summary who could blame Marwan for being fed up, obviously loves rugby league but being held back, members stook in the dark ages.

Ps. I'm aware there maybe a lot of punctual mistakes in there, I'm on my phone, will correct once on computer.

I thought 3rd party contributors are allowed here as long as they aren't associated with the club.

So for instance at Leeds Sinfield's wage from the club would, obviously be counted on the cap.
If his wife worked in the club shop that would be counted on the cap.
If he was paid by Caddick Construction or Leeds Building Society that would be counted on the cap.
But if a completely unrelated company paid Sinfield then that wouldn't be counted on the cap.

That's how I understood it anyway.

My knowledge on the matter harks back to Saints getting in trouble years ago because we got Sculthorpe a "bigger than reasonable" sponsorship deal with Gillette ...

I've just gone through the operational rules, and in true RFL fashion there's no mention of sponsorship at all! Let alone legacy contracts which I imagine what the Walsh situation would hinge on.

But, if you were in a situation where by a competitor could sponsor a player, but caddick construction couldn't, I'm sure that'd end as a legal battle on the grounds unfair limitations - which would mean the sponsorship would have to be open to anyone, and someone at the rfl would "judge" whether it was a "reasonable" sponsorship or an attempt to circumvent the salary cap... They simply state in the included section:

such other transactions as the RSCM determines should be treated as payments to a Player;

Anything that the rfl wouldn't like would fall in there I suppose ... I'm still no closer to figuring out how the Walsh deal works though!

As an aside, Came across this in the championship salary cap - I assume it's the same as super league rules, yet a heck of a lot clearer!

6.4.1 Loanee club - Cost should include any payments for the use of the player’s services to the loaning club. Any match payments payable to the player should be included within “Player match payments” above;
6.4.2 Loaning club - The club loaning the player should record the player’s usual contract within “Player contract payments” above and record any associated income from the loanee club as a negative cost within “Payments/(receipts) for players on loan”. Not withstanding the above, in the case a club loaning any players who are under 21 (see 7.3 below) it is not permissible to record any associated income as a negative cost as the play’s contract payments do not count towards the club’s Salary Cap costs.

If he thinks the rfl/SL are restrictive he will never cope with the new centralised power of the NRL.

Also he would need to put a shed load more cash into Newcastle than Salford, I hope he has deep pockets!

Maybe he is sick of the RFL, will buy Newcastle and sack Salford off

Doesn't this effectively make Walsh a marquee signing?

The Saints chairman is supposedly against clubs bringing over players they apparently can't afford, yet has done just that.

Koukash has only been in the sport for 16 months. If he expects instant success then he'll be upset in the NRL too. He really needs to learn how the sport works. Then hopefully we'll see more concentration on building Salford as a club instead of pie in the sky/embarrassing predictions/outbursts.
He's also got to realise he's not the only person in rugby league.

The top clubs in NRL, of which Newcastle are not one, are operating on $20-25million budgets. It is a different financial league to SL. The plus of Newcastle is they have a large fanbase, the negative they struggle to get sponsors. Be interesting to see how much money he really has to pump into sport if he takes them over.