Was part of the RFL bye-laws, not sure if it still is. Salford would lose their RFL membership and therefore the ability to play in any RFL run competitions or receive any central funding IIRC if they sued the RFL.

Koukash is coming out of this looking like a spoiled child. You get the impression he's not used - in his business life at least - to hearing people tell him what he can and cannot do.

Absolutely. It was terrible. 2 people who are paid to understand the issues in our game don't even know the absolute basics of a big news story that had broken days beforehand and was reported by the organisation they work for.

Sadly it's not an isolated incident and exemplifies the shoddy and unprofessional nature of the Sky RL team at the moment.

There was a rule that you can't sue the RFL, Cas straight up told fans that at a meeting during the franchise era. I assume that rule is still in place, most leagues around the world have similar clauses.

No complaints from me, if Koukash was stupid enough to sanction paying Tony Puletua £120k for two-years with only £80k going on the cap and another £40k being paid via his other company (EuroMachTech and then refuse to pay the second years £40k meaning all this became public knowledge via a tribunal) then we deserve to be punished accordingly.

My only issue is the "punished accordingly" as when we accidentally fielded 14 players in 2013 we were given a £10k fine whereas previously St Helens had done the same and were only given £100 fine. Therefore, despite a precedent of previous point deductions against clubs who have been found guilty I am a little worried Salford's punishment will be far greater, for what reason I don't know.

It's hardly a precedent - the previous breaches were nothing like as egregious as this one is alleged to be; if indeed there is only one, which seems unlikely.

I don't understand. Wigan breached the cap by £222,000 in 2007, it was the biggest breach in Super League history. They were given a 4 points deduction, surely a precedent has been set. Salford are being charged with an alleged breach (or breaches) totalling (best case) £40k and (worst case) £80k. When I say best and worst case, I am unsure whether they can use 2015 against us as the whole reason behind Tony Puletua's very public fued and subsequent tribunal was due to non-payment.

Whether or not one seems unlikely or not, there is only evidence to suggest at this moment in time there is. Unless other players come forward with appropriate evidence, which I doubt as HMRC would jump straight on them, then we'll never know.

Wigan breached the cap with what they thought was a clever way around it, forestalling payments within a contract. They were also perfectly up front about what they had done. Also, none of the Wigan directors had stood up a couple of years earlier and boasted that they would break the salary cap.

What Salford have done is equivalent to Melbourne's cheating in the NRL. Had Puletua not taken the club to an employment tribunal, the payments from the third party would not have become a matter of public record. Given Koukash's previous statements on the matter, it's hard to argue that this wasn't a deliberate and calculated attempt to defraud the live cap by hiding third payments from a related company.

Comparing Wigan and Salford's (alleged) breaches of the cap is like comparing Greg Eden to Billy Slater. They're the same in some ways, but in other important ones they are massively different.

I didn't see the item so I can't comment on what was said but how much of the Salford story is publicly out there as stated fact?
i.e. there is a lot of talk about the contract situation, plenty of details about who these contracts were with, who was employed under them and the sort of money being paid but how much of this is in the public domain officially and how much is known 'through the grapevine'?
Broadcasters obviously have to be careful what they mention on air. I notice that that RFL statement itself doesn't provide much detail.

The part which irked me was Hemmings questioning why the RFL hadn't picked these breaches up in the seasons concerned, now they have a "live" salary cap. It's a major news story within the game and most fans have at least a basic grasp of what the allegations are, but neither he nor Clarke seemed to have bothered to do even the slightest bit of research. They didn't need to run a major forensic investigation on it, but it's pretty clear why they didn't come to light in the seasons concerned which made it a dumb question to ask.

No fair enough buddy, did the answer come out or was speculated about when the question was asked out of interest?

Just wondering whether they might have decided that a 'mock ignorance' question and answer session might have been a format to provide the info. Makes it a bit more interesting than just spouting info.
Like you said... one of the biggest stories in British RL for a long time so surprising that they wouldn't at least know the basics.

It's not really 80k as a "worst case" if it was, say, every player in the squad for 2 years...

As I've written elsewhere, Wigan got away with this because their lawyers successfully argued that because the offence had taken place at a time before the more severe penalties had been ratified, then they could only be penalised within the previous guidelines, where the points deductions were more modest. This is how they kept their points deduction down to four. Sadly for Salford, their offence, if proven, took place under the current rules ( 20 point maximum ) so the timing element does not apply in their case. Personally I think Wigan should have had a bigger penalty, but, rules is rules.

Strange the number of people quoting Koukash saying he would break the cap choose not to include the rest of the quote that went on to say "like others have done"
For clarity the full quote was "if it means breaking the salary cap to challenge the legality ofit I will do it LIKE OTHERS HAVE DONE"

If others jumped off a cliff, would Marwan do that too.

Not quite sure what adding the second half of the quote does to mitigate the offence. We're well aware others have broken the cap. Reference has been made to it earlier in the thread.

Salford are still the only ones to have deliberately concealed payments to players in an attempt to get around the cap though, however you dress it up. If Marwan has evidence that other clubs have done the same, then he needs to present it to the appropriate authorities. Put up, or shut up.

I'm not interested in whether Salford have breached the salary cap by a few bob. Let Koukash spend as much money as he likes on players at Salford. Get some proper world class star players into the SL competition and market the crap out of them FFS. The game is crying out for publicity and attention which it's not going to get with the current crop of plodders and Neville Nobodies populating every team in SL.