[urlhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/35723674[/url

Strap yourselves in, gentlemen.

What about Leigh?

Leigh next year, this year salford

Wow... Kick in the teeth for Watson and co after a promising start! I wonder if this is one if the reason a deal for Luke Burgess fell through?

is this surprising with the circus that has been going on in the last couple of years.

it's another kick in the teeth for the long time, upstanding supporters of Salford RLFC

Cant wait for @DrMarWANK to comment

Inevitable after it emerged some players were given contracts by Koukash-owned companies on top of their contracts at Salford.

Given the new live cap, the only way you can breach it is by making a deliberate attempt to circumvent the cap either by false accounting or under the counter payments.

The problem with the new league structure however, is that a 20 point deduction next week would be meaningless. Even if Salford finish in the bottom four, they'll still start the Qualifiers on a level footing with the rest of the teams around them, which is no different to the position they were in last year. So in effect, given they realistically probably weren't going to make the top four anyway, they haven't lost anything by allegedly trying to cheat the system.

pmsl, a promising start and now doomed to the bottom 4 already after 4 rounds.

My understanding is that this is exactly the accusation.
It became known in Puletua's tribunal that he had one contract with Salford and one with another company owned by Marwan Koukash. This isn't necessarily a breach of the cap, but it would be if the second contract was not disclosed to the RFL and therefore the payments not accounted for on the live cap. Ultimately, the accusation is that the club were deceitful and we're paying players through third party companies but not disclosing these.
I imagine that since this became known in the Puletua tribunal, the RFL have been looking into how many players had similar arrangements and therefore how far over the salary cap Salford were in those two years.
Koukash always said he would break the salary cap deliberately, but it seems he has been caught. To me, the most ridiculous thing is that he wanted players to keep quiet about the additional contracts but then seemed to go out of his was to annoy them as much as possible!

Marc Green = Grass

This one will be interesting.
The RFL have not been too successful in dealing with these things over the years.
The legal team at Wigan ran rings round the governing body in the season that they signed Fielden and Radlinski played for free.

Koucash is likely to test their resolve and if there was a legal challenge to the validity of the cap, things could get really messy.

As someone else has posted, Leigh looked to have spent very heavily last season and it wouldn't be a surprise to see them in the dock when this one has been cleared up.

The trouble has always been that no player has to disclose their earnings to the RFL. They rely wholly on auditing clubs and not players. As long as the club can, in some way, bury the payment then the RFL will find it impossible to discover.
What makes this case different is that the player initially involved did disclose his earnings to a tribunal, highlighting the fact he had a contract with another company owned by MK. I imagine the other players who might have had these contracts (Chase, Locke, Hock. Smith) have been quite happy to cooperate with the RFL given the way they were treated by Koukash

The trouble has always been that no player has to disclose their earnings to the RFL. They rely wholly on auditing clubs and not players. As long as the club can, in some way, bury the payment then the RFL will find it impossible to discover.
What makes this case different is that the player initially involved did disclose his earnings to a tribunal, highlighting the fact he had a contract with another company owned by MK. I imagine the other players who might have had these contracts (Chase, Locke, Hock. Smith) have been quite happy to cooperate with the RFL given the way they were treated by Koukash

The thing with Wigan is that 'we' didnt actually break the salary cap i.e. we didnt spend more in that year on wages than we where allowed to. The payments where simply back-loaded into into the contracts which is common practice in plenty of sports (the NFL being a prime example)

The RFL had to be seen to be doing something about it so Wigan got charged with breaking the 'spirit of the cap'

Will be very interesting to see the reaction to Salford's alleged breach

Agree with this. However it's all of Koukash's doing.
This kind of thing does also highlight the bizarre paranoia of some RL fans. On Twitter I've already seen Salford fans believing the RFL "want to kill the club" or that companies associated with Salford could sue the RFL for loss of earnings. I simply don't understand these people. If I were a Salford fan my anger would be 100% directed at the clown running my club who has put my club into this position.

Agree with this. Which is why I think larger punishments need to be handed out with bans for club officials involved.

As for the points deduction as you say with the split into the 8's there has to be a different way of administering the points deduction. So going on a 20 point deduction, I reckon Salford should get a 15 point deduction for the regular season (ie the 23 rounds up until the 8's start) and then a 5 point deduction as soon as the 8's start. As the 8's roughly make up a quarter of the season.

It would also depend on when the punishment was laid down too. As you say a 20 point deduction now is fairly meaningless....if the investigation takes 5 months, and into August, a 20 point deduction at that point of the season could be fairly disastrous for them if they are in the middle 8 at that point. The RFL can choose the punishment, and when to apply it, without any sort of transparency or accountability into their decision making process.

As usual with the RFL there will inevitably be more questions than answers once this situation is "resolved".

The reason such arrangements are likely to end in tears is because without knowing anything about the wages, once a club signs a whole raft of plainly very expensive players, one after another after another, everybody knows they aren't coming for half-pay or out of love and admiration of the chairman. So what's left?

or make it like Melbourne, where they don't earn any points an start the 8's on -10 or something.

you still cheated in the loose sense of the term.

This was inevitable - what's not clear is how the RFL will handle a situation that could, if seen through to its logical conclusion, kill off Salford's season and drive one of the wealthiest owners in the sport out of the game altogether - which they won't want to do. MarwanK's constant baiting of the RFL on social media suggests that he is aware of that fact, and uses it to his advantage.

Interesting times...

The way they were treated? I think you'll find that all 4 shat all over Salford and our fans so please don't try and make them out to be the victims in all this.
Hock - let the team and club down with his continual brain farts. Backed publicly by Koukash through all his misdemeanors.
Rangi - Chose when he wanted to play pretty much and ban last season cost us top 8 place.
Smith & Locke - Well subsequent events pretty much prove what went on with them so talking out of your backside.

Now don't get me wrong, if proven guilty we deserve a FAIR punsihment. We all know that teams have been "manipulating" the cap for years and only Wigan have been done for it so a 20 point penalty would.be unfair and everyone knows it. People on here need to put aside their dislike of Koukash and base their judgments on the facts but they won't.

Okay, maybe I should have written 'the way they thought they were treated...". The point is still valid though, if Koukash had made hidden payments to these players they are hardly going to defend him after the manner in which they left the club (regardless of whose fault the issues were).
I'm not sure how you know teams have been manipulating the cap, unless of course the clubs furnish you with more information about their finances that the RFL obtain? If the allegation is proven and it shows Salford to have deliberately broken the cap through deception (ie not declaring payments made to players through MK's other company) this would be very different to those clubs who have broken the cap in the past, and worthy of a heavier penalty.

Is paying a player two salaries by two different companies owned by the same guy classed as a fact? To me that is deliberately breaching the salary cap and therefore a hefty punishment should be dealt, both as a punishment, but also a deterrent to put other clubs off.

If the RFL bottle it and give out a fine and a couple of points deducted, everyone may as well do it, knowing that if the players they spend the extra cash on gain them two wins that they wouldn't have previously won, then its worth doing.