ratchford left the club when his contract ran out.... so warrington signed a free agent... just like salford did with Vinnie Anderson a year previous.

This ruling wont help a club like salford keep players like myler and ratchford.

Maybe they would of been able to offere them more who knows.

He would surely qualify for the club trained allowance. There's £50k of his salary exempt already.

If there is a new category of Marquee player then presumably Leeds could apply all 3 to Sinfield as a long serving, club trained, marquee player and get £150k exempt off his wages

I think it will. If Ratchford was Salford's marquee player they could give him more money. Ratchford won't be Warrington's marquee player so they'll pay him within the regular cap (And brown envelopes, obviously ).

Only if Salford were already spending the full cap. If they weren't then it wouldn't make any difference.

Tomkins can play s-o or Ashton could play Wing. The point you seem to be missing is that it isn’t an either or situation. Wigan shouldn’t be limited to Ashton or Tomkins, they should be able to have Ashton AND Tomkins. They went out, scouted, developed and brought them through, they deserve the rewards of that.


There is no reason that Ashton’s development would have hindered Tomkins. It wouldn’t be Tomkins looking for a contract right now it would be Richards, Finch, or Roberts. and we would have one less overseas player and one more quality british youngster.

Maybe to actually come across as having a ' levelish ' playing field ? , so that you don't actually p155 off fans of your member clubs ?

How hard would it be to publish the OR before clubs are allowed to use them ? , and to highlight important and potential controversial changes ?

Doesn't bother me as it doesn't affect my club or competition , but it seems to have upset a few SDL fans , you almost have to ask , Who is actually running the Sport ? The RFL , or W1g4n ?

No more questions, your honour

Lets not get too concerned about this until we have seen the details.

I am fully in favour of the cap remaining at the current level. However I would also like to see an allowance for only the first £175000 of a players wage to count against the cap.

That way clubs could keep high profile players and even pay for the best NRL players to play which would increase standards in SL. At the same time it would still prevent richer clubs buying up all the best available talent and making the league uncompetitive and keep the need for player development.

If I've read the cap regulations correctly, transfer fees are exempt - so as well as Joel's wages he could have picked up the 250k transfer fee paid by Saracens.

If you mean Wigan could have given the £250k from Joel's transfer to Sam, no, that would not be legal. He would need to pay tax on it and it would count on the cap as it would just be Wigan paying him an extra £250k. Unless Sam owned Joel personally.

It's possible I'm misinterpreting the 2009 cap regulations but pages 30/31 state:

5.0 NON-SALARY CAP RELEVANT INCOME
5.1 Sale Proceeds from the sale of assets.
5.2 Transfer Fee Income received.
5.3 Any Challenge Cup Prize Money as per the schedule issued from time to time should be excluded from income providing the following is observed.
5.3.1 The prize money is paid to the players within 60 days of receipt by the club.
5.3.2 Any excess of bonus over prize money received and paid out by the club is
classed as Salary Cap relevant cost.
5.3.3 Any excess of prize money over bonus paid out may be included as Salary Cap relevant income.
For the avoidance of doubt, any payments paid out by clubs prior to receipt of prize money, cannot be retrospectively or notionally set off against prize money.