Pretty sure MK won't have any actual evidence on other clubs. As no-one else has been stupid enough to announce they were going to break the rules, broken the rules, spent two years antagonising the authority who create and enforce the rules, got caught breaking the rules (through antagonising the people required to keep schtum about the breaking of the rules) then decided to further antagonise the authority who are going to punish the rule breaking, I think it's safe to assume that everyone else will have made sure their tracks were covered.

You could probably be quite confident that Koukash has paid other players via EuroMachTech, but proving it would be impossible. You'd need a player like Tony Puletua, to be willing to present the evidence and go to tribunal over it and assuming the other players who had these agreements have been paid that is never going to happen, because if they did fancy dropping Koukash in the sh*t, the tax man would be on them like a tonne of bricks.

I still don't fully understand this. So if a player signs a contract with a club for X amount of pounds per year. Then in his spare time decides to do a bit of extra work.(promotional work, school visits, night club bouncer etc)As long as he declares it to HMRC , what is wrong with that. If TP was paid 80000 from Salford ,and 40000 from elsewhere , as long as he had to do some work for the extra , and not just given it.Or are the RFL saying your SL contract must be your only income?If so , isn't that restriction of trade. I'm no expert.

The issue isn't the other £40'000, but where it comes from. Allegedly in this case it's from another company owned by MK, which isn't allowed as it would render the salary cap meaningless.

Very well put!

The issue isn't the other £40'000, but where it comes from. Allegedly in this case it's from another company owned by MK, which isn't allowed as it would render the salary cap meaningless.
That's the point.. Is the player not allowed to earn any extra money from any company owned or partly owned by the Chairman of the club or any of his family or relatives, or any director or any relative of a board etc .

Just googled the Wigan salary cap breach from 2007, they exceeded the then £1.65m cap by £220k and received a 4 point deduction. Surely a precedent has been set with regards to punishment? If we receive anything over and above that, you would have to fancy any subsequent Koukash's legal appeal.

Part of the agreement to bringing in the marquee allowance was the introduction of much stricter punishments for cap breaches. There is no precedent set under the current rules.

Further to this, Wigans breaches were "against the spirit of the cap" rather than direct, wilful breaches as is apparently the case here.

Fair enough, but the marquee allowance was only brought in during 2015 this breach stems back to 2014 so these "much stricter punishments" shouldn't apply.

A much more interesting argument, and depends entirely how the breach is treated. There's probably a couple of things in play, about whether the RFL believe that TP was the only breach, and whether they subsequently decide to account that second contract on this years cap. I know time of payment isn't relevant, was TP contracted originally to be at Salford this year?

I *think* the maximum, for a wilful breach, was 12 points before the introduction of the marquee allowance.

TP only signed two-year contract (2014 and 2015) as I understand it, the additional £40k side payment was made by EuroMachTech to TP in 2014 and this whole fiasco only surfaced when the 2015 payment wasn't made. It will be interesting how it's viewed, as the RFL statement indicates breaches in both 2014 and 2015 but as well know no payment was made in 2015.

Haha....so Wigan being found guilty for breach of the cap was "against the spirit of the cap", after asking 9 players to defer wages on the promise of better contracts the following year so they could bring in more players, if that wasn't blatent and deceitful I'm at a loss.

So the only reason we've been caught breaching the salary cap is because we stopped breaching the salary cap? This sport, this club...

This whole saga could end up with the scrapping of the salary cap as being unenforceable if Salford get away with it, which is what MK wanted in the first place. Could this be his way of forcing the issue.?

Correct! Had we paid TP his £40k side-payment in 2015, we would not be having this discussion and nobody (except MK and TP) would be any wiser.