They have 8 Australians, (Nash, Russo, Kahler, Branighan, Youngquest, Franze, Aitken, & McBride) although Russo has now gone out on loan. They have one Fijian I think - Cakacaka.

Very interesting point about their visas, because I believe Gateshead were alerting other clubs about being able to employ these guys on student/working holiday visas, pre-season.

Branigan is here I believe on a Maltese passport

Are you talking about their back line

Speaking with SM the other week he said that they only had TWO Aussies, the rest were on European passports!

Sorry for picking this out, but for sake of consistency does this mean you think we are wrong to ask for "special dispensation" on the salary cap should we be relegated ? If we are to join C1 (praying to Alah we don't) then we should abide by the rules in that league if we want to be pure as white snow and doing it the "right way" etc

Also hope Mr Coffey sees sense and not allow our club to be in the media as the bitter ones again.....

OK - still 8 though, as I forgot Henderson, who was born in Torquay but, for some bizarre reason best known to the RFL, is a 'quota' player. That's why he had to leave Cas'.

Agree, we work with RFL to sort this out.....As long as we don't do a Widnes I don't care if we have advantage over the other clubs in our league. It happens in other sports too. In modern day professional sport there is no such thing as doing it "the right way".
Maybe RFL should get shut of salary cap for our competition, and just run it on a club being able to afford their squad type of system. I always thought salary cap was to help even out the comp, but it can make mockery if clubs that get relegated can spend more than rest. Also loosen up on the quota players too. So we don't have anymore whinging about it aimed at other clubs.
Developing area clubs need extra quota, in our area we shouldn't. So get rid of quota rule in our comp. No excuses and malice aimed at developing clubs etc then, and we can just get on with worrying about ourselves.
Championship Winners 2010!!! I refuse to believe we are going down.

Despite searching the RFL Operational Rules, (nothing to do, now the 'Haven programme is finished) I can't find anything about how many overseas' players Gateshead are allowed. I am certain though, that Toulouse were only allowed one, but that was later increased to five, when they said they already had that number signed up! They were told,however, that they were only allowed one, from 2010 onwards. Not that it's likely to affect us, (!) but I wonder how many they end up with, in 2010? Because, without their Aussies, they will struggle - although that doesn't matter, eh?

Curiously, whilst trawling the RFL Operational Rules, I came up with the following gem on overseas' player allowances 2 = 2.

Given that the RFL had earlier defined tthe leagues as Championship, and Championship 1, I would have thought any 'Mr. Loophole' lawyer would have a field day, explaining that it was fine, for Leigh to have had any number of overseas' players this season! Visas permitting, of course!

We dont ask for a single thing from the RFL. We should just knuckle down and get back up there without any help from those s. I dont want other clubs coming on here quoting that we had any special treatment from that lot. Smile and be nice to them.

We did that last season and we got fined 5 grand and made to look amatuerish.
If we don't work with RFL for the just in case situation we get fined again, and another black mark against us.

We have no choice as we have ' aledgedley ' already spent the Championship 1 salary cap on half a squad

Therefore if we did get relegated we would not have enough players to make up a team

Just get a load of 'amateurs' to play for nothing. It's all the rage, at 'some' clubs, apparently!