He won’t be. Not with Widdop here as we being another marquee.

Ok, I think Clark was our Marquee before Austin and Widdop arrived. Ok, that lastyear before Austin arrives as a marquee say Clark was on 250K. Whilst he was marquee we upfront pay him the next two years marquee money and take his salary to 500k. Meaning when he is not an official marquee he has had his marquee money for the rest of his contract. Now he is on 125k with Austin and Wippop on 250k.

Ive made the figures up but its a way of getting more "Marquees" by paying a lot more marquee money for 1 year to cover the remainder of the contract. Basically front loading the contract.

It's what Price called him in a recent interview;

"It's more about Austo," Price said. "He is an important part of our team, but I thought the best way of going forwards was with Stef and Gareth and it worked out okay"

[urlhttps://www.skysports.com/rugby-league/news/12196/12286237/super-league-warrington-wolves-head-coach-steve-price-relishes-tough-selection-decisions[/url

On contribution alone, Clark should be our highest-paid player.

If a wage rise keeps him here the club should do everything they can to make that happen.

If that means getting rid of Austin, I don't think anyone will be shedding a tear.

I touched on alternate marquee loophole before but FMC assured me that you cannot ‘top load’.
Going back to Clark, it seems some posters haven’t got the point about Clark. The clubs don’t have to reveal their marquee, however it’s disrespectful to our intelligence for the club not to be casually open about who has those spots. My point was that although Clark is not a marquee player by salary position, his quantity of salary could allow him to use up an available spot if it was vacant and save some cap in doing so.

Perhaps marquee status taints any squad whether applied to an imported or a domestic player. We have quite a few other players in the squad who run their blood to water when the chips are down & put a good slog in week in week out while getting less money.

That's been happening since the dawn of man, pre marquee status being brought in.

People would have said that about briers, king, monaghan gleeson bridge over the years.

The criticism is the same, even if the pay goes up.

I know you can't defer salary in terms of salary cap, so if the contract stated we will pay £250k per year for 4 years, we couldn't pay that £1m up front in season 1 then zero in season 4.

However I'm not sure how the RFL would view it if that was actually stated in the contract. So £850k in year 1 then £50k per year for years 2 - 4. I think as each contract is lodged with the RFL they would feel that is 'against the spirit' of the cap and would refuse to register the contract. I'm sure there are contracts that reduce over time (some possibly that increase also) and they are probably quite common. But I'm not sure the RFL would allow you to so blatantly get round the cap and marquee rule in that way..... although maybe i'm giving them too much credit!

The RFL would simply sum the total agreed pay by the the number of years to give an average salary per year ( similar to depreciation of a capital item in accounting). There is no way this idea would get through.

250k a year, its his 'notional contract value' for the life of his contract.

Again "Marquee" doesn't necessarily mean you are the highest paid. Lets say you have a squad at £200,000 shy of full cap including a (non marquee) player on £300,000. You have a player from Aus who wants £300,000. The only way you can fit him in is to designate him marquee.
I'm not saying that is what happened here, this is for illustration purposes only.

Too late, Warrington Guardian is running this story tomorrow morning and the Mole on Twitter is going to state Austin is £300,000 and we're only offering him £200,000 to stay.