The salary cap auditor has discretion to include anything else that looks like part of a player's package (can't quote the exact Rule this minute but will if required later). If it looks like a payment to a player, and it walks like a payment to a player, and it quacks like a payment to a player, then it probably IS a payment to a player - sort of idea. In the case of Harris, for example, it seems the SC auditor DID determine there was a connection to the club from image rights paid by an unconnected third party.

The hard part is identifying the payment in the first place (although a club should have no reason not to disclose a genuine third-party image rights deal for a Tomkins-type player), and then establishing a connection to the club.

Genuine third party deals are fine under the cap rules.

Where the deal is arranged by the club for the player, especially where the third party might otherwise have become a club sponsor or similar anyway, then it starts to get very grey, I suggest?

And if - heaven forbid - a wealthy club owner should get his mate to set the player's missus up in a lucrative job, or pay the player's personal services company a shedload for his image rights or whatever, and then said club owner sees his mate right in some other deal...well what do you think?

And as for a wealthy club owner paying monies to players or otherwise remunerating them out of one of his other business interests, and not disclosing that to the SC auditor, well that would be just beyond the Pale, would it not.

Thankfully, we can rest assured that all club owners and investors are honourable people, who would never wish to be considerd unsporting or cheats, and so would never stoop to such tactics. Otherwise we'd see a very unlevel playing field in the game.

Incidentally Sam, scrub that silly idea of it being taxable. If its for an overseas player, said player will invariably be a non-dom unless he puts dowm pretty permanent roots here. That means that a club - or a third party - can pay the player's offshore personal services company (resident in Bermuda or Guernsey or Grand Cayman or wherever) for the player's services (of any nature, but usually its things like image rights), and as long as the player does not draw income from the company AND remit it to the UK, he escapes UK tax and NIC. Because whilst he is resident for UK tax purposes he is a non-domiciled and therefore only taxable on income earned in the UK or remitted to the UK.

And then, just as he has permanently left the UK on his way back home, but BEFORE he lands back home, get the old Singapore Sling out and wang the money back home ahead of him. So it lands back home before the player becomes resident for tax purposes again back home, and so he escapes tax there too. (they may have stopped the simplistic devices now, but there will be others).

sorry Adey! knew i might be sailing close to the wind on that one, but I am fuming about it! I might get a warning. Hopefully, like CHris Bridge, my past positive conduct might go in my favour

makes me wonder if the cap is worth having at all! same as the forward pass rule, and benefit of the doubt, its only as strong as the people adjudicating it are!

This is a massive elephant in the room. Watching the recent channel four expose about Tickets and promoters I found that there was a difference between what most people would regard as morally wrong, and what the law says is illegal! as a gig going punter, and a BUlls fan, I feel that MOran and his like are shafting me twice over, and it doesnt feel right!

yes weve actually broken the cap twice, but breaking it inadvertantly is very different from actively cheating it by paying players by other means, and deliberately avoiding it.

If a few thickie Bradfordians can work their ways around it I am sure the RFL & successful business people running clubs can do also

Whether it exists or not I don't really care as long as the options are avaialble to all. It's the fact you don't have a sugar daddy that is the issue here Dude, not the bending of the rules.

I suggest the issue is more one of trying to explain to those (IMO) naïve folk who slag the club off -for "spending the full cap" on the squad we have, which is clearly weaker than that of some other teams also "spending the full cap" - that things are not necessarily as they seem?

Everything is equal though, isn't it Adey? If not, there would be great and obvious discrepancy in the strengths of the various squads under regimes with 'extra' financial input and those without, would there not?

Indeed it is, my friend. Everything is very definitely equal.

And four legs are good, two legs are better too...

Are there any professional team sports in this country where parity exists?

Is there any difference to how the cap is policed in Australia to the UK? It seems that in the NRL cap payments are subject to greater scrutiny, with breaches being dealt with with greater severity. Could we ever see under the present live-cap system, for example, a team being retrospectively being stripped of title(s) a la Melbourne?

Is it just the case of the RFL not having enough money to effectively investigate clubs possibly making some of the more iffy third-party payments?

I seem to recall there is a limit in the NRL on how much a player can receive from third parties?

Not that Storm seemed to pay much attention to it...?

No.

But there is only one sport, as far as I can see, where some people THINK parity exists.

I don't think anybody thinks parity exists in rugby league, salary cap or not, but there's more cyclical movement in rugby league than in other sports.

Fans of teams at the bottom of the league always want parity with those at the top. Did you think it was fair on us when you were signing guys like Henry Paul and Vainikolo and putting the awesome foursome on the park? I was always having a whinge about the salary cap on the old Bulls messageboard back then ( Jiffys Wires

)

Since then I've ditched my Che Guevara t shirt and taken the attitude the working class can kiss my ass, the plebs need to 'aspire to get richer'. It's always fun telling the Wigan fans that one when they complain about Warrington signing someone

Those at the top will always look to exercise lobbying power to keep things that way, if anybody ever suggests changing the cap or toughening it up the line comes out about how rugby league faces extinction because of union signing all our players, its for the good of protecting the game that we have rich teams using their financial advantage...

It's no different from the bankers lobbying to prevent tighter regulation or higher tax by saying if we go to Switzerland the UK economy will be in ruins.

But there are plenty of naïve souls who insist that the players of each club spending the salary cap must be earning the same amount of money in aggregate as all the other cap-spending clubs. And therefore those clubs with patently weaker squads but still spending the cap must be run by muppets or are liars - so they would have you believe. Some of them probably believe everything politicians tell them too. Oh joy.

We see it on this forum. People slagging the club off for "paying the same money as Club X yet look at the players we signed compared to them".

Maybe people all thought Melbourne was spending the same as everyone else too?

It depends if it was Wigan or Leeds....It would have been interesting down under if it had been, say, Manly.

AFAIAA RL is one of the few sports with an active salary cap so in theory it should. It only seems to be teams who are struggling who believe it is being grossly flouted.

Naturally. And those that are struggling tend to be the ones without a wealthy owner. Yet if a club lacks a wealthy owner but is still able to spend the salary cap, then the squads should be reasonably similar, yes? Even allowing for the vicious circle of the more "successful" clubs being able to attract the cream of the crop therefore they remain the more successful" clubs...

Do you attribute all the perceived yawning gulf in quality of squads to this "cream of the crop" argument?

If not, then to what do you attribute it?

I put success down to the best coaches, there are 5 or 6 teams could win SL ATM, & the best players. I don't worry myself about how the clubs fund themselves. When I have destroyed capatilism, rugby union, Jeremy Clarkson, weak lager & gingerness I will turn my attentions to the celery cap.

I'll man the barricades with you on most of those. And I'd join you on capitalism if I could guarantee I'd end up as Naopleon not Snowball...

I see you as more of a Boxer.

I agree with this.

Warrington were spending at or near the full salary cap during the later years of Paul Cullen's reign, the 2008 squad that got Cullen sacked and was bottom of the league early next year under Lowes, was the same core of players that won two Challenge Cups. The big difference was Tony Smith coming in.

But also, when a previously struggling club comes into money, it takes a while to be able to get to the top because for the first few years they have to pay over the odds for players. Warrington were signing players from Bradford, Saints etc that had won trophies in the past but were now moved on by those teams, and we were gobbling them up on good salaries, because that was as good as we could get in the market at that time.

If say Widnes were a full salary cap spending team for next season I doubt they would be signing Sam Tomkins or Jonathan Thurston. They would be having to spend big on going for guys like Hock or Ellis.

Surely most Bradford fans would be the donkey Benjamin, seen it all, cynical about everything, not fooled by any propaganda

100% spot on with that part.

To be truthful, there are few leagues where any kind of 'parity' is [iintended[/i to exist between the competing teams. However, in the case of RL, it [iwas[/i decided by a vote of the clubs that some sort of égalité should exist between the competing teams, so as to create, as near as possible, a 'level playing field' and a more even competition. On that basis I feel that your question, whilst valid on a more general level, is redundant in this specific case

I think the whole thread (and my clumsy point) is well worthy of debate, particularly when looking at a Super League where there are the same distinctions in place as in Premier division soccer which has no such levelling mechanism; a well funded elite of four of five at the top who are clearly in a league of their own, and from whom the champions are pre-ordained to come, then a block of mid table teams who will neither win anything nor be danger of relegation/wooden spoon and finally two or three at the bottom who will no doubt be the relegation fodder of the Prem div or wooden spoonists in SL.

How can two leagues with such a differing ethos end up so alike? It may be that you can never stop those who wish to circumnavigate the regulations from doing so, and if that's true maybe we should stop pretending and go back to the free for all?

That would make Hood Napoleon then...?





I don't think so. And if you want to go tell the Duffster he's Squealer, that's your own affair...



I'd start off like Snowball, but sadly end up like Benjamin if I could avoid an accident with an ice axe...

Tut, tut comrade. We will staff the barricades.