Quote nottinghamtiger="nottinghamtiger"My understanding of the situation at Salford (which you may choose to believe or not, but is the information I have been given and makes sense) is:
The contracts given to some players included very high bonuses for appearances and particularly large bonuses for being named "man if the match". At the time of signing the contracts, the MOM bonus was not counted on the Salary cap. So, when a player won a MOM award (chosen by the club themselves) the player received a large payment not counted on the salary cap.
As more signings have been made, it has become impossible for the club to stay within the cap if paying the appearance bonuses of all the high earning players in the squad (which do count on the cap). Therefore, to remain within the 'live' cap some players had to not be selected. The first of these was Puletua, followed by Locke. Both are now taking legal action as they claim that they were unfairly prevented from earning their appearance bonus through unfair exclusion from the team. It seems that Harris is willing to back this up and state that he was instructed not to select certain players. He is on sick leave as the club don't want to sack him as they might then face a case of unfair dismissal, as he could claim he has been dismissed for being a "witness" in the proceedings that Puletua and Locke are bringing.
Following the non-selection of Puletua and Locke to avoid paying appearance bonuses, Rangi Chase is now not selected for the same reason - his massive appearance bonus will take the club over the salary cap. There is also the risk of him being named as MoM and receiving even more money (although this wouldn't be counted on the cap).'"
I think this sounds plausible. I just couldn't understand why Tony Puletua never figured when we were so desperate for back rowers and had to take young Greenwood on loan from Wigan. Perhaps these appearance bonuses are tiered like 10 games, 20, 30 etc and with Chase missing 7 games through suspension, he would have potentially hit the next level bonus if he had played in the previous few games plus the remaining games. I personally was bemused why Chase wasn't in the seventeen for Leeds whilst Theo Fages got the nod despite making it abundantly clear he's leaving the club.
This could also explain why we released Hock and were also eager to offload Locke to Scotland earlier in the season. Have the salary cap inspectors unearthed a serious potential problem earlier this year and its forced the club to act? This to me is probably the most believable I've heard of the many rumours because why would the club bring in two new players only a few weeks ago and fly Tim Sheen's over if we we are totally skint?