MK - "If they start deducting points from us, I'll press the red button and go for all-out war."

Sounding more like Dr Evil every day.

think he was sat down in a chair with a large white cat on his knee

obviously fearing he is gonna be upstaged by his mate at Leigh, Dr nob.ed is back!

poor things are just getting picked on by jealous people!

If a club does not agree to abide by the regulations all other clubs agree to abide by then no court on the planet can force a governing body to accept a club/body for membership. Just like a night club owner reserving the right to refuse admission if you wear a red tie, its not unlawful just a condition of membership.

It a condition of membership is unlawful it is unenforceable. Whether agreed to or not. If the Salary Cap is judged an unreasonable restraint of trade it would be unlawful for the clubs to abide by that condition and as such it would be unenforceable whether agreed to or not.

If a club refused to accept any penalty for breach of the rules that were set out (ie salary cap / additional payments by a third party)
could they be excluded from the competition ??

Surely by joining the competition, they are agreeing to work within certain parameters ?

Everyone should have the right to appeal but, in this case, the alleged additional payments to payments are clearly against the agreed rules and it appears the Dr K has decided to have a measuring contest with Red Hall.

There is no doubt that anyone with such wealth usually does well in court but, would any victory for deliberately flouting the rules be good for the game.

I'm not sure what form a club refusing to accept punishment would take?

That the rules were agreed to and that they form part of the conditions of membership aren't really in dispute. The dispute would be over the legality of the rules themselves. If they were judged and unreasonable restraint of trade then they would be unenforceable.

It does seem as I'd the Dr has broken these conditions, but if said conditions are unlawful, then you can't really punish someone for actively not breaking the law in the way you wanted them to

But, surely by taking part in the competition they agree to abide by the rules ?

Smokey you are wasting your time trying to explain to closed minds.

Think all football clubs accepted their governing bodies terms for retaining players at the end of their contracts then along came Mr Bosman.
The male members of a cricket club voted for decades to exclude females as full members it was then a condition that you accepted the conditions to become a member it was challenged in the courts and while the judge accepted it was a PRIVATE CLUB he allowed those opposed to challenge it.
It never got to a fullt legal challenge because the club realised it could loose so backed down.

I guess the moral is every rule is subject to challenge and if they are it's down to who has the most to loose if a challenge is made.

Indeed but if a rule is unlawful how can it be enforced? The law supersedes any RFL rules.

If you can't legally abide by a condition it can't be enforced. If the SC is judged and unreasonable restraint of trade then to enforce it would be unlawful.

how can it be a restraint of trade I think if it was that easy then the nrl clubs would have done it salford broke the rules of the comp and not just by giving someone a car they deliberated payed tp from another company and didnt declair it

Would it be unlawful to exclude a club from a competition ?

Each member club of the RFL is a signatory that they agree to abide by the Operational Rules, including this one :-

[iA1:3 Each Person Subject to the Operational Rules agrees that they waive irrevocably their right to any form of challenge, claim, complaint, appeal, review or recourse (including in relation to any dispute arising out of or in connection with the validity of any Operational Rule(s) or RFL Policies) to any state court or other judicial authority[/i

The laws of a sport have no bearing on the law of the land. Therefore the only way it could be challenged would be if it infringed on a persons right to earn. The Bosman ruling worked purely because it actually kept a player tied to a club even though he wasn't earning or under contract.
The salary cap doesn't stop a player earning as big a wage as he can get, it just restricts what a club can offer. The player can then either accept or reject that offer. No restrictions at all on the person.

1. The salary cap isn't unlawful. Anyone that thinks that is frankly a moron.

2. Let the idiot try take it to court, the RFL would then be allowed to straight up ban him and/or Salford from any RFL sanctioned competition.

The RFL should also strongly consider banning Koukash for continually bringing the game into disrepute, his numerous fines show he doesn't care about them.

NRL is Australia they have different laws.

depends on an awful lot. But to exclude Salford for not abiding by a condition that was judged to be unlawful wouldn't be a strong position to be in.

You cannot sign away your right to legal recourse if the RFL are breaking the law. The courts decision supersedes any and all conditions of RFL membership.

That same clause applies to SC as it would to things like racial and sexual discrimination. By signing that you do not absolve the RFL or the operational rules from adhering to the law.

There is a restraint on the person in both principle and practice. It does stop a player earning his market worth. If it didn't it would exist and certainly wouldn't be called a salary cap. You can't argue that it doesn't stop a player earning x amount just a club offering x amount because they amount to the same thing. If a club cannot offer x amount a player cannot earn it.

The defence of it wouldn't be that it wasn't a restraint of trade but that it was a reasonable one based on its effect on the market, players and fans, that it was procompetititve. A strong argument in theory can be made in favour of the SC on those basis. In practice, in RL, with our recent history, I think it would be a difficult one to make.

That's not true. You can sign away rights to legal recourse, an obvious example being COT3 settlement agreements between employers and employees. After an employee signs a COT3 they waive all rights to any further legal claims.

Similarly, the RFL is not compelled to accept Salford as a member. They have no legal right to membership of the RFL and can be expelled. People forget that the RFL isn't just the people at Red Hall, it is actually a collective of member clubs and by suing Salford would essentially be suing their fellow member clubs.

said employer is still bound by the law at all stages. If part of the process of the COT3 is unlawful it can be challenged.

Salford are a member. They have a contract with the RFL that forms the basis of their membership. They cannot have that membership withdrawn without good reason. Not breaking the law like the RFL wanted them to is not good reason

The salary cap in my view indisputably restricts both competition, and free movement of workers. So, would be held unlawful under EU law unless it can be justified. That in turn would depend on whether the salary cap rules are necessary to achieve a legitimate aim under EU law.

Therein would lie the argument.

If the aim of the SC was to improve competitive balance, then I think there would be some prospect of it being upheld. But the actual aim of the SC is, in a nutshell, mainly to stop clubs overspending and going bust (because it is directly linked to income) . Would that pass muster? .


It is arguable that it could, but ultimately IMHO the argument would be lost, as there are just too many obstacles to jump before the ECJ would make such a finding.

If you can get hold of it, do read a very good article titled "[iThe Problem With Salary Caps Under European Union Law: The Case Against Financial Fair Play[/i" by Johan Lindholm, which puts lots of flesh on these and other relevant arguments, and contains hundreds of references and authorities.

I agree pretty much entirely. It's not that a Salary Cap per se cannot be justified. I just don't think ours would be.

I'll keep a look out for it

LOL @ thinking the cap is a restraint of trade. There's a reason sports AROUND THE WORLD use them, if they weren't legal they'd have been picked apart decades ago.

Unless you can provide examples of when a player has literally been unable to play RL in this country due to no teams having the available salary cap space made available to teams by the RFL? If you can't then there's your answer to restraint of trade being a thing.

Lol indeed.