The panel said the club's claimed actions as their defence was against the spirit of the salary cap - however you were found guilty of a breach of the salary cap. As you were the year before incidentally. And incidentally argued for a deferrment of the salary cap due to the contracts you had tied a number of players into (in the knowledge of the arrival of the salary cap system).

So in effect you had been cheating for a number of years hadn't you?

yet...

What if at the time Fielden was signed Wigan didn't have to defer payments on other contracts as the figures shown to the RFL indicated cap space was available. I seem to re-call there was discussions about this at the time. Only for subsequent "investigations/mis-haps" to reveal to the RFL that Wigan had been using similar procedures to Melbourne.

Would that change people's views on Wigan and their cheating. A intersteing discussion given how peeple are separating Wigan's and Melbourne's offences.

Can you apply rules retrospectively ?

A