Absolutely unbelieveable really. Throws all this 'it's a live salary cap' out of the water again. The RFL/Super League are incompetent and this kind of thing just dilutes the trust people have in the game.

The punishment, if you can call it that, is ridiculously lenient. It's almost encouraging teams to break the cap, if the fine is going to amount to around a fifth of the breach. What is the incentive for teams to actually comply with the cap when breaking it is so leniently dealt with?

If anything, the deception in this is what makes it worse. 'Failure to declare payments to three players' is the bad end of the moral spectrum as well. It's not a Wigan-style breach of the spirit of the cap, it's out and out salary cap fraud.

This is where the sport shows it's unfairness as well. Leeds have received that punishment and I'm entirely confident the likes of Saints, Wigan and Warrington would escape with the same. What would happen if say Hull KR or Wakefield or Salford did that? They'd be looking at a 6-12 point deduction for the following season.

If anyone would like an impartial view from the Leeds fans on what they really think of Salary cap breaches, please feel free to go have a look at some of the comments on a thread I have just dragged up from the Wigan Salary cap breach on there board - I wonder if some of those opinions still stand on this occasion?

The big crime here is how Leeds have managed to breach the cap with such a poor team - I'm honestly stunned.

Same sort of breach so no issue from me on the punishment although a points deduction would have been hilarious

Don't forget this is for 2018 when even Leeds supporters admitted having a poor squad. 2019 & remember the comings & goings of marque players. Surely they wouldn't have broken the salary cap to avoid relegation? Would they.

Is it the same sort of breach? Leeds breached on wages from upgraded contracts (which were finalised, conveniently, until the end of the year) and Wigan breached on agent fees.

No double standards to look after the "big 4".
The biggest shock is that they have even reported it !

People probably should read up on the new rules regarding punishments for Salary Cap breaches which was agreed by....

The Super League clubs.

There is no conspiracy and no favouritism.

However I do think the punishments are too lenient.

Not quite how I read the ‘breach’ but I could be wrong. They did submit the increase in monthly wages to the RFL for the live cap as two of the players went from part time to full time but didn’t submit the contracts till the end if the year.

Pretty stupid for a supposedly well run club

Gary did lead with the two players being included in the live cap, but he then went on to talk about a new contract for Parcell they didn't tell anyone about (in my reading anyway). . . . .

"Matt Parcell also had his contract extended at the start of the season and whilst the increased monthly payments were paid the contract wasn’t signed and lodged with the RFL until the end of the season"

So he said - it's just a minor breach because all we did is improve a player's contract without telling anyone or recording the increased payments.

Also is he seriously trying to tell us that monitoring your own payroll is a complex task? Really?!

Have those rules changed recently? I remember Salford being deducted points and Wigan had points deducted for less of a breach than Leeds, albeit removed on appeal.

If they were over in 2018, surely they are over in 2019?
We know that they signed Merrin and Hurrell as marquee players, so they will have counted as 150k each on the cap. Plus Lolohea who wouldn’t have been cheap.
Did they really lose 300k+ worth of players between 2018 and 2019?

Ah yes reading it again the Parcell one does look very dodgy, Hetherington has had his eye off the ball for a few years I think

The new rules are very lenient surely the fine should equal or exceed the actual breach

Ryan Hall and Joel Moon will have been on a fair chunk and they also released a fair few other players

It'll be very interesting if, in a year's time, Leeds were found to have breached the salary cap in the 2019 season as well.

If this is a 'live' salary cap, why did it take a year for this to emerge?

With the way things are now going in the NRL (and Union), is the salary cap still working anyway or is it restricting the growth of SL?

Similarly, I'm no fan of Toronto, but if they are not receiving central funding, why should they be restricted by the salary cap?