I often wonder whether the salary cap would stand up to legal challenge. As others have said, anything of this nature will always have loopholes, it is like the tax avoidance v evasion debate. Koukash is doing nothing wrong by being honest about it.

An interesting research paper on the topic, restraint of trade tends to be the topic of legal arguments against the cap.
rlhttps://eprints.jcu.edu.au/4659/1/4659_Davies_2006.pdfrl

Thanks, have saved that on my laptop for a rainy day. Just finishing a 5,000 word essay on European Business Law, head is in too much of a pickle to read it tonight!

Perhaps our fielding of 14 players (for all of 35 seconds) is a pointer to the way in which the cap could be improved?

I propose for next season that the number of players on the park be governed by the total salary paid to those players. So you can field 13 stars or 25 under 21s or any mixture in between - its every bit as sensible as the RFL's current restructuring proposal.

Brilliant! And if a player isn't performing on the pitch, the CEO could publicly give him a pay cut on the sideline during the game and put an extra player on the pitch. We could rename it Moneyball.

The Dr has a point about the cap being too low but he won't get anywhere when dealing with the likes of Hetherington etc.
If he really want to open up the game then to do anything about the cap he may well have no choice but to contest it in court.
In conversation with various people over the years it could well be that if the SC was contested the RFL/SL would not even defend it.
To lose would cost them £ms, money they haven't got and couldn't afford to borrow. If he did I for one would wish him success.

BTW Wigan weren't the only full time club those years ago, Leeds were also full time and before Wigan. They had a larger wage bill than Wigan's and a bigger payroll.

IMO the game would be far better off if there was no such thing as a salary cap.

Correct. The only thing that we need is protection against one or more rich clubs stuffing their reserves with top class players, keeping them away from other teams and the viewing public. *That* was the 'Wigan problem', far more than the relative strength of the first choice 13. Insist on very tight squad limits for high paid players ( which has the added benefit of forcing you to develop excellent reserves) and you don't need a cap.

Yep with 90% of clubs losing money and half of them long term unsustainable financially, the removal of the salary cap is just what the game needs! Lol.

When Moran started flexing Wires financial strength Salford fans were the ones whinging. Funny how it's all ok now your man has some cash.

At the clubs with wealthier owners, I suspect that Company A pays company B significantly over the odds for goods and services received, then company B sponsors said 'star player' a significant amount of money, which is outside of the salary cap.

This is a very simple and common process that is legal and easily placed elsewhere in an accounting process to avoid it showing up in any audit that the RFL does on a club.

After all, if a club owner has several other trading organisations, what business is it of the RFL as to who they do business with and how, if the club isn't directly linked in any financial transaction?

There's all sorts of loopholes available and Dr Money bags is only saying what a lot of others are doing.

It won't do him much good to be able to spend what he likes on a team that is ejected from the competition.

Salford have no legal right to be in SL or even in any other RFL sanctioned league. You reckon the other SL clubs would stand by while he drove a coach and horses through the cap system? The other owners all know they don't have the money to compete with him and would vote Salford out.

He wouldnt need to do anything other than offer a player a contract at X amount, then withdraw that offer and explain to said player that even though they could afford to, and even though they felt said player was worth X amount, they were unable to offer it because of the Salary Cap.

The player would then bring the case and likely win.

He most likely would. But the player has no legal right to play in any given competition and neither do Salford. They would win the case and find themselves with no competition to play in.

The player does have a right not to be discriminated against because they took legal recourse.

The RFL would also need to legally justify the revocation of Salford's RFL membership which entitles them to play in RFL's competition under the rules as set down in the RFL's operational rules.

SL (europe) Ltd would also need to justify the revocation of Salfords share regardless of any vote, even if there was provision within the rules, it would be negated.

You cant realistically have an agreement between the clubs to exclude a club or player because a player exercised their legal rights.

Good on Koukash, if he wants to plough desperately needed money into RL then let him. The salary cap is a joke in its present format and is holding the game back. It serves no purpose and is only holding back the bigger clubs and the game as a whole.