salford1970 wrote:
"broke the spirit of the cap"
Does that mean, broke the cap?
Nice way of phrasing it mind, iirc they spent big to get themselves out of trouble.
10 points would be quite a big kick in the nuts. Might as well lose the other games, keep the team fresh and earn the place back in SL from the middle eight. Well that's next year sorted out then.
"Broke the spirit of the cap" translated to "wigan were smarter than the people making the rules at the time, but we weren't great fans of what they did" - they didn't
technically break the cap, but they diliberately circumvented it.
similarly, promising players big bonuses for winning mom and individual awards from the club followed by a wink wink nod nod doesn't
technically break the cap, but certainly circumvents it.
Side payments in the other hand is simply breaking the cap that would see big numbers punished - as the above post says, it can be up to 20 points - starting 10 games behind is a lot!