Imagine who he could drag to the knights... It's a lot more appealing than Salford. Would SL's best talent abandon our completion given the chance.

That would still count on Salfords salary cap.

Salford could pay Newcastle players as much as they wanted without affecting Salford's SL cap (assuming they aren't registered to Salford in that year).
However, if Newcastle were to pay Salford's players then that would count on Salford's SL cap.
How it would affect Newcastle's NRL cap I'm not sure but I would imagine it has similar clauses to the SL one.

A5 Signing of a New Player on Loan during the Salary Cap Year
Prior RSCM approval pursuant to Clause 6 shall be required where one Club proposes to temporarily transfer the playing registration of a Player to another Club. For purposes of determining whether or not approval should be granted, the temporary transfer will be treated as a permanent transfer, ie as if the Player has departed from the first Club (see Clause A4) and signed permanently for the second Club (see Clause A3).
Comment to Clause A5: Any agreement reached between the Clubs as to who pays the Player’s salary (or any part thereof) has no relevance to the treatment of the Player in accordance with Clause A5, above.

However, I would guess that this would be altered upon termination of any deal, i.e a club can't have say £70k wages added to their cap for a one month loan.

I'd guess it gets revised down back to how many months he was on loan after it was terminated.

Yeah I assume it would probably be based on a monthly rather than an annual figure for loans.

Have we concluded that koukash buying Newcastle wouldn't spell anything good for Salford yet? Can I put my big book of conspiracy's away?

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