The signing of Andy Powell could be a shrewd move for our salary cap spending.
Apparently his first seasons salary does not count towards the cap and in his second season only half his wages will be included in the spend.
Not many fans will be aware of this clause in the rules, it applies to any cross code signings fro RU. The rule also applies to the young centre that Salford signed from Sale.
This clause in the Salary Cap rule seems to encourage players from outside RL rather that our "home grown player" is this situation right for our game.

This is something that Brian Noble was championing whilst he was at Crusaders. Can only be good for the game really and it shows that there is more to the salary cap than a strict £1.6 million. Someone on here posted the other facets to the cap which allow extra spending. Some teams will be spending over £2 million due to long service players, RU players and the odd exception (Sam's wages).

No wonder the club said they were looking at Union options.

I think Andy Powell has a fair chance of being a good RL player. He is a big unit who is only going to get stronger and fitter under "Bitcoin".

I understand the question marks over him, but I think he will make a better RL player than he was an RU player.

to me he looks fitter, stronger and faster than Scott Quinnell was when we signed him and he didn't turn out too bad did he.....

Not knocking your signing of Powell one bit but the fitness of union players in general is much greater than in the Quinnell era so your point could equally apply to any number of other players.

Are you sure? As I understand that rule, it only applies for young (under 23) players...

So does than mean thornley's wages didn't count.
And this season only half of his wages count?

No, it has to be someone who's never played League before.

I'm much happier about us signing him knowing that! For me the jury's out because he's 31 which doesn't leave much time at all to learn a new game, plus he's had lots of discipline issues, but with this convert rule in place, it makes him well worth the risk.

It does at the moment (and has done already for a couple of seasons now). I guess it is being revised next year although that can't be true as the salary cap experts have assured us the cap isn't changing and hasn't done so for a number of years

Yes it is being revised along with a couple of other points in the salary cap rules. The second tier player allowance is being rolled into the main cap. No more money available but the cap becomes £1.725m instead of £1.65 + £0.075m.

I am not certain but I also think the allowance of (up to) £50K for a long serving player and the allowance of (up to) £50K for one home grown player is also being rolled into the figure meaning the cap will be £1.825m spent as the club sees fit across all its players not with these qualifications built in.

For Wigan it probably makes no difference as with Lockers and the likes of hansen here we already qualified for these allowances.

The only allowance that now has a qualification attached is the allowance where a club gets £10K per player who are in the England Elite Training Squad and £5K per player they have in the Knights. I doubt any club has enough rep players to claim anywhere close to £100K limit there is on this allowance.

As to the New Talent rule being bent to allow it to apply to players older than 23 I think it is a bad move.

When we didn't have the home grown and club trained player rules clubs were forever signing 30 odd year old Aussies as it was a cheap ready made solution rather than growing their own. I don't see the difference in doing that and signing 31 year old RU players and as we can see with the signing of Powell that is exactly what it encourages clubs to do.