Indeed.

One wonders if he wrote (sorry, had ghost-written?) that part of the book after his move to Wrecks'em fell through and he assumed he would not have a club for next season?

What a joke.

Look on any financial recruitment website and you will see exactly what auditors working for the large audit firms receive. This shold be a high profile role where by the minimium criteria should be to be a qualified auditor/accountant and as a desirable have some form of legal understanding of contracts.

I would have thought circa £40k.

It shows that the RFL care little about the salary cap and investigaing it and all reality care very little if a club actually breaches it. So long as the game is seen publically to be clean then why not turn a blind eye.

More like £50k? And someone who has been out in the real world at at least controller level for a while, after probably training with a decent-sized accounting firm (and not Big-4 unless had a lot of experience well away from the mega-audits) with the legal remit as well. Otherwise what you may end up with is just another statutory audit-orientated financial reporting accountant who (based on so many I have seen) lacks commercial understanding. And may well have rings run round him or her by the elasticated-cap bandits.

That said, if even former police officers (as I was told they have on the Salary Cap team) cannot get to the bottom of what is going on - they lack the powers that (say) HMRC have - then it probably matters jack shìt WHO holds the post.

Don't forget the Rfl needs to look after it's cash to make that fat lazy incopetent moron at the top gets his six figure salary. They cant afford to go around splashing the cash on useful people. Maybe they should pay him in KFC buckets. Mind you, come to think of it, that might cost even more.

Aye, other Sl clubs are screaming out for the likes of Riley, Williams, Evans, Cooper, Higham, Bridge, Clarke, Grix, Mitchell, Blythe, McCarthy, Evans and O'Brien.

The way people go on you'd think we had 30 internationals in the squad.

If I asked you to name a combined Wire and Saints team, or a Wigan fan to name a combined Wire and wigan team, these people would name more of their own players, yet then claim we are breaking the cap. People need to make their mind up.

The salary is shockingly, jaw droppingly low - to the degree where it's almost as if they don't want anything more than a nodding dog to do the job. At that level it's pot luck if you get a total numpty or, if you're lucky, someone who is smart but most likely young. But you'll never get anyone with the right combination of experience and ability.

Senior has plenty of history - medals on ebay, using a GB tour to two-time his Mrs, now these accusations. Still, Sam Tomkins has done worse, hasn't he?

MjM - Absolutely totally spot on.

Medals just for taking part arent really of interest to a proven winner like Senior. A man who has won every competition in this country. And Im not sure what he has done wrong by making these accusations. If he knows this to be true why cant he say it aloud? What moral obligation does he have to make sure he and his fellow professionals are paid less? It seems the very antithesis of why this wonderful game was formed.

What this has to do with why people dislike Sam Tomkins I dont know. Unless it is an example disproving the 'jealousy' theory espoused by some deluded Wigan fans?

Not sure why you've just listed all the lesser players at the club. It's having Hodgson (World class and in demand), Atkins (Expensive SL purchase), Monaghan, King (World class when in NRL and boasted about his 'ridiculous' deal), Myler (Expensive SL purchase), Briers, Morley (Arguably best prop in the world when signed), Monaghan (World class), Carvell (Expensive SL purchase) and Westwood (Much in demand) in the same side as well as the depth you mention that raises eyebrows. Then your coach comes out and states he's looking to increase the squad numbers and sign a few more when you've already signed two or three more cracking players for next year.

I'm not suggesting Warrington are over the cap, the top side will always have the accusations thrown at them. But I'd be absolutely amazed if Warrington weren't back loading contracts to do it.

For a supporter of a team who has had it loaded with the likes of Newlove, Sulthorper, Long, Cunningham, Joynt, etc. and so on, it is strange that you feel so confident that we are being dodgy.

I named the lesser players to show that we have plenty of players in our first team squad who will be on low wages. You'd think we had it rammed with internationals the way you bang on.

When you look at each of the signings indiviidually there are things that go with it. Hudds only offered Hodgson a 1 year deal, and there were/are question marks about his fitness, maybe the fact that we were prepared to gamble on 2 years was a factor rather than a huge salary.
The likes of Atkins and Myler were still young lads, and whilst their clubs demanded large fees, that doesn't mean the players automaticlaly get big wages. In reality, a club like Wire, or Saints, Wigan etc. could offer them less than Wakey or Salford and still be attractive to them. No disrespect to those clubs.
When we signed Morley, he was replacing the likes of Danny Lima etc. We had space on the cap no doubt!
When we signed King and Monaghan, the exchange rate was outstanding for these players. It is no massive surprise that King is now leaving.

It seems that Saints, Wigan, Leeds and Bradford are allowed to pack their team's with international players, but as soon as we dare to do that to be competitive, we must be cheats.

Eventually, someone somewhere is going to blab, or get found out.

Eventually, the can of worms will open, maybe just a bit.

Eventually, we'll have our own Storm.

Eventually.

So Ratchford - Wigan born - had a lifelong desire to play for Wire?

erm, no. I would suspect only 3 or 4 Wire players have that desire at the moment.

What's the point?

Under a salary cap, you are still allowed to outbid other teams, or make yourself more attractive than them.

But Wire outbid everyone for everyone - Carvell, Myler, Atkins, Ratchford all had rival bids from top teams.

The salary cap when Saints were loaded with talent was the same as it is now. In other words, the salary cap has reduced by 30% or so against inflation. What was possible then is not possible now, unless something "creative" is happening.

The truth is out there somewhere.

Eventually, the truth will come out.

If you have details of these rival bids, I'm sure we'd all be interested.

Who else was prepared to pay the transfer fees that we were?

It has been all over the place that Wire or Wigan were signing Rangi Chase. We didn't.

The problem with this being allowed to hapen is that it discredits the game as a whole.

It allows the situation with Wigan in the 80s to continue but unofficially and behind closed doors.

Whilst ultimately it is difficult to police there is a solution , this is the players having to take responsibility for not fiddling the situation.

Although there are sanctions for teams that fiddle the cap there shoiuld be sanctions for players who fiddle the cap.

IMHO any team who has been found to have fiddled the cap AT ANY TIME IN THE FUTURE should have all the records both team and indavidually scrapped from the record books.

EG if in 2020 it turns out Wire fiddled the books between 2008 and 2011 there 2 CC and minor premiership and grand final win of 2011 should BE REMOVED from the official record books, all MOS trophies and lance Todds etc should also be removed ( even if cannot be proved those players were involved).

This will mean peer pressure will have an efect, fans will not turn a blind eye to what is going on and the game can properly grow as it should.

At the same time there should be some allowances made for "special" players and academy produced players with consequent changes in salary cap but all this should be above board.

A guy on another forum made what I think is the best (if maybe politically unacceptable) suggestion: all clubs to publish the salary cap values of their 25 Tier 1 players.

Then let the fans compare, and assess, and judge.

Won't stop the cheating, or using the device of third party image rights, but if a club has (say) a marquee player on what seems to be a disproportionately low salary cap value, then the fact that the world and his dog will assume that the club is cheating the cap somehow might be a strong deterrent. As well as inviting HMRC to look closely at that player's affairs...

Its an idea that where the devil would be in the detail, but I have not seen any better suggestion to resolve the problem in real time, as opposed to down the track as in DG's interesting idea above.

And it would be interesting to hear a club explain how Bruce Ocker was understood to be on half a million Aussie and some back in Oz, as well as third party image rights, yet over here he is one of Phil Clarke's mythical £100k players...

Agreed. The brown paper bag method opens up all sorts of issues if they get caught. No doubt HMRC will want a word with Mr Ebay to see who has been evading tax. Increasing the cap though won't necesserily solve the problem. If it is known clubs have more money to spend, then it could well we consumed by greedy agents playing clubs off against each other. In an ideal world, the cap should be a good tool for clubs to get players within budget. All clubs should be in the same boat, it just seems some clubs have added another deck to their bit.

An ideal world though, would mean that rugby union didn't exist.

When did I said that? I said you were doing it using staged contracts, which are legal and above board. I have not suggested Warrington are doing anything remotely dodgy.

Sorry, must have misunderstood this post:

I know Wigan were after Ratchford, Carvell and Paul Wood from Warrington.

'It does look', which means that people will perceive Warrington as breaching the cap because of the disparity between teams that exists now. Not that they are cheating.