I know what you mean, last week my friend's wife had their 1st child. The tears of joy he shed when he told me must have been similar to the tears Lee (P&BBUH) shed that day.

Struth. No he didn't, it must been some pocket change he is referring too, enough to buy a bag of chips with in the rain, so he could field a wet chip!
People around here also hear voices too.

It's you that's been referring to £400,000, no-one else has mentioned it.

nobody else did until I did on here it seems. I'm not the first around Warrington.
Still there is enough on show, or perhaps I should say not on show, to give it legs.
I don't go making rumours up, although I'm certainly guilty of passing some on.

Somebody in recent circles at Warrington spoke of it too in discussion in all things RL to me when I picked him up one time.

You're the one who wrote it.

Ok, I'll take the bait.

We've lost Morley, Carvell, Briers, Hodgson & Cooper.
We've signed Russell, Asotasi & Penny and extended (and I assume) upgraded other existing players terms.

I draw three possible conclusions from this :

1). We are £400K under the salary cap with cash to spend if required
2). We are not £400K under the cap in which case some of our players have superb agents
3). The club have various targets signed up for next year and are thinking in terms of next years cap

Based on performances this year I'd suggest 2, 1, 3 in that order.

..Tyke and Solamona and Blithe and Williams.

Yeah for forgot about them (for perhaps obvious reasons except Solomana). Solo will have been on a good contract but it probably cost us 10 grand to get the door widened to shove Williams ar*e out of it.

Can you do that?
I know Pies exposed a loophole the other way when cheating relegation. I wasn't aware to could carry over this year's to next too??

Dunno. Was just trying to give the management the benefit of the doubt really in the hope they have a baldrick-esque plan up their sleeve to explain the apparent difference in our salary cap spending to last year. I think I'm sticking with the theory that we are well under the cap and some of the players agents have deep pockets, fat wallets and happy clients.

Nope. A players salary cap value is calculated by the total contract value at the club divided by the time spent at the club. It doesn't matter when the money is paid (before or after) or if the pay is unequal (aka back ending contracts has no effect in the uk) simply the time the player is registered at the club - so any player Warrington were trying this with would have to not be registered with any other club.

I think its great that Warrington are showing that the game isn't all about money and just because there's a salary cap you don't have to spend up to the full limit.

If every other team apart from Bradford are spending up to the cap and we are £400k under it it shows really how good TS is at getting results out of modest resources, and well done to our board, many other clubs would have just panicked and thrown money at new signings but the way forward for rugby league is investment in youth.

It's time other clubs start learning from us.

only club not to have spent to the cap?



you think wakefield have?! huddersfield havent either..sure there will be a few more too, castleford..london..

Leeds haven't done for years, saints have space for a player, Wigan aren't I believe either

This isn't true.

The provisions in the salary cap regulations allow the RFL to apply signing bonuses across the period of the contract if they deem it appropriate or where its obvious that payments are being manipulated to circumnavigate the intent of the regulations by off-setting payments from one year to another (yes that's you we're looking at Mr Lindsay (after being caught cheating in a Melbourne Storm fashion)). There is nothing stopping stepped increases in salary through the period of a contract when it is done in a reasonable fashion eg Ben Currie signing a five year contract would obviously expect to be paid more as a 22 year old established first team player than a 17 year old breaking into the team.

It's amazing how much rubbish around the salary cap you read peddled out as fact.

Read:



Link:www.therfl.co.uk/the-rfl/rules/interactive_operational_rules?section=E1

Edit: so any payments made outside of anyone's contract would count during the time when they were contracted and registered to the club.

As for backending, as you say, the key word is reasonable but for all intents and purposes, the point of backending contracts is outlawed. As I said.
Isn't it just.

Actually you might read the relevant bit:



As I said the RFL will apply across the period of the contract when the contract is obviously structured in an artificial manner eg players defer such an amount as to leave them such that "the Player's welfare would be prejudiced by the arrangements" ie couldn't afford to feed and clothes themselves.

Big signing bonuses are likely to be spread across the contract but as I said there is nothing stopping stepped increases in salary across the length of a contract if they are reasonable. Every club in the league does it.

Lost me but it all sounds intriguing.

I beg to differ, it's as intriguing as a Michael Buble gig.

Thank God for that!

I thought you said a Michael Bolton gig for a minute!

We will never know what the size of the salary gap is, but more concerning is the lack of genuine talent that we could buy ATM. Presumably, that has to be down to the size of the player pool in the UK and hence youth training ?

Perhaps the lower tier of the SL 12 month after the 1st split may prove to become stronger?

Could there be up to 100 ex SL players or more playing in that level?

It may be wise for the lower tier clubs to remain fully professional with parachute payments from the SL pot.
Perhaps they do...I don't know too much about it yet.

Clubs have never really been in the habit of going out making big British signings in pre-season, usually the majority of new signings would be overseas players. Due to the exchange rate and Salary Cap in Oz, it is making it harder to come across available players, meaning that clubs are holding onto more of their British lads as they don't have the quick fix of an NRL player or two to bolster their squad.

Things are tough in the transfer market, I've no issue with Warrington going down the route of continuing to focus on developing our own squad this year in the absence of World Class players - where we have had an issue is that we have been relatively unlucky with some injuries, plus some of the younger lads have failed to step up and kick on - look at Wigan and the opposite is true and their signings policy in recent years has been similar to ours this year - release plenty and fill the squad from below. It has worked for Wigan, and I am still hopeful that it will work for us, I think some of us just need to have a bit of patience.

In the last few years we have seen Wigan and Leeds have really bad spells and come in for a lot of criticism but then turn it round and take home silverware - we need to focus on getting up to speed for the right games.

Despite a below average start, we are still in an ok league standing, still in the cup and hopefully getting a few players back over the next few weeks.

We'll be reet.

Personally i think there is a lot but signing them won't bring instant success, Warrington are in a fortunate position that your club doesn't get raided every season and you can put leeds in that category as well.