Re: Leeds Salary Cap Breach : Tue Oct 22, 2019 3:55 pm  

Him wrote:

Yep the biggest clubs in our game have both claimed admin errors. Either the method in which the clubs report the cap is fiendishly complicated or the clubs simply aren’t giving it enough attention. Either way it’s up to the clubs to sort out.

Or of course they’re lying and it’s deliberate. Either way a points deduction would incentivise compliance/improving the cap reporting much more than a fine.

It would, except the transgressor would lodge an appeal that would then be upheld as it'd be well nigh impossible to prove that the "negligence" was deliberate. Which is one of only two criteria needed to trigger a points deduction under current rules.

Re: Leeds Salary Cap Breach : Tue Oct 22, 2019 4:09 pm  

Him wrote:

Yep the biggest clubs in our game have both claimed admin errors. Either the method in which the clubs report the cap is fiendishly complicated or the clubs simply aren’t giving it enough attention. Either way it’s up to the clubs to sort out.

Or of course they’re lying and it’s deliberate. Either way a points deduction would incentivise compliance/improving the cap reporting much more than a fine.

If those clubs are clever enough to do all of the other things right (apart from the current Leeds squad ), they are clever enough to be able to manage their cap spend.
It is just possible that the recent breech by Wigan was a genuine error, as we were told that this was in relation to agents fees ?

However, if I have understood the Leeds case, they went over the cap on 4 occasions ?

Every club knows that there is a supposed live cap and IF there was a points deduction that was imposed for breeching the cap, they would make absolutely certain that they didn't go over.

As things stand, EVERY club will be happy to cry "administrative error" whilst overspending, especially if their spend allowed them to either survive in SL or make the play offs.

Juat as other posters have suggested, a precedent has now been set and it will be interesting to see what happens to the next offender.

Re: Leeds Salary Cap Breach : Tue Oct 22, 2019 4:17 pm  

secondstanza wrote:

Is it the same sort of breach? Leeds breached on wages from upgraded contracts (which were finalised, conveniently, until the end of the year) and Wigan breached on agent fees.

Which Wigan salary cap breach are you referring to, the 1st, 2nd or 3rd ?

Re: Leeds Salary Cap Breach : Tue Oct 22, 2019 4:33 pm  

wrencat1873 wrote:

Never mind sneaking into the 8's or play offs.
Just like Wigan during the Fielden / Radlinski era, the overspend possibly saved them from relegation and if the punishment is a £10k fine, EVERY club that is in a position to cheat will do so without a second thought.
I dont accept the "administrative error" excuse either, their error was getting caught, not that a £10k fine is any deterrent.

Elstone's public sympathy for Wigan last season tells you everything you need to know. He had all but reversed the points deduction before their appeal was heard.

This is bang on !

Factor a £10K, £20K or even £50K fine against loss of revenue if relegated. Maybe a Wigan/Saints/Leeds/Wire would lose 3K of their average attendance at circa £25 P/P × number of home games = well, quite a lot !

Re: Leeds Salary Cap Breach : Tue Oct 22, 2019 4:34 pm  

Saddened! wrote:

Absolutely unbelieveable really. Throws all this 'it's a live salary cap' out of the water again. The RFL/Super League are incompetent and this kind of thing just dilutes the trust people have in the game.

The punishment, if you can call it that, is ridiculously lenient. It's almost encouraging teams to break the cap, if the fine is going to amount to around a fifth of the breach. What is the incentive for teams to actually comply with the cap when breaking it is so leniently dealt with?

If anything, the deception in this is what makes it worse. 'Failure to declare payments to three players' is the bad end of the moral spectrum as well. It's not a Wigan-style breach of the spirit of the cap, it's out and out salary cap fraud.

This is where the sport shows it's unfairness as well. Leeds have received that punishment and I'm entirely confident the likes of Saints, Wigan and Warrington would escape with the same. What would happen if say Hull KR or Wakefield or Salford did that? They'd be looking at a 6-12 point deduction for the following season.

Don't bring Wire into this....stick to all the cheats.

Re: Leeds Salary Cap Breach : Tue Oct 22, 2019 4:49 pm  

Cheating is a choice not an accident !

Re: Leeds Salary Cap Breach : Tue Oct 22, 2019 5:27 pm  

homme vaste wrote:

https://www.rugby-league.com/article/55901/statement--leeds-rhinos

Fined £20,000, with £10,000 of that suspended.

£10k
What is the point? Leeds will turn over between £6 and £7 million a year......1 Play-off game will net then £300k on the gate.
The only way to stop the breaches of the Salary cap is for SL to set up their own payroll system, where the clubs declare all wages and bonus schemes at the start of the season and then lodge the correct amounts with the SL Payroll department monthly......any brown envelope payments thereafter are an instant 20 point deduction. 360-500 employees can be handled by 2 full time staff costing each of the 12 clubs 10k a year.
If not. Scrap the cap and revert to Wigan and other rich mans toys winning everything (except the WCC that is)

Re: Leeds Salary Cap Breach : Tue Oct 22, 2019 6:25 pm  

So what have we learnt from this?

The live salary cap does not work.

Yet another club without any fear of real reprimanded is willing to cheat the system.

The Super League has built a rod for its own back and now its impotent when dealing with such breaches of the rules.

You can argue that in the recent past titles have been won and super league survival as been attained simply by cheating in full view of the Rugby League loving public. Can you ever get a more serious breach than that?

I really don't like the smell of it and you have to question how Leeds managed to skirt round this until the end of the 2019 season which only saw them safe in round 27.

What my chances of let's say a smaller club.. KR, Trinity, Giants, Salford (still a small club done well) being the first to be hit with a 4/6 point deduction?

We will have to wait n see.

Re: Leeds Salary Cap Breach : Tue Oct 22, 2019 8:14 pm  

Said it before, there should be a tiered system for dealing with SC breaches whereby the offending club are punished based on two factors - the extent of the breach and previous offences within he last 10 years.
Breach under 25k - 2 point deduction
Breach between 25k and 50k - 4 point deduction.
Breach between 50k and 75k - 6 point deduction.
And so in in bands of 25k - each 25k costing the club 2 more competition points.

For the second offence within a ten-year period, the penalty should be x2.
For the third offence within a ten-year period, the penalty should be x3, etc etc.

Admin error or deliberate, over the cap is over the cap. It’s given the offending club an advantage over the other clubs and should inevitably come with a penalty that goes towards rectifying this - a points deduction.

Re: Leeds Salary Cap Breach : Tue Oct 22, 2019 11:08 pm  

AXE2GRIND wrote:

£10k
What is the point? Leeds will turn over between £6 and £7 million a year......1 Play-off game will net then £300k on the gate.
The only way to stop the breaches of the Salary cap is for SL to set up their own payroll system, where the clubs declare all wages and bonus schemes at the start of the season and then lodge the correct amounts with the SL Payroll department monthly......any brown envelope payments thereafter are an instant 20 point deduction. 360-500 employees can be handled by 2 full time staff costing each of the 12 clubs 10k a year.
If not. Scrap the cap and revert to Wigan and other rich mans toys winning everything (except the WCC that is)

Leeds usually turnover £10m-£12m a year. But the turnover is kind of irrelevant. A 10k or small fine in the scope of £1.8m+ player wages is nowhere close to a disincentive. A points deduction does. Even just 1 point for small breaches of the cap is a bigger punishment.
If it was to be a fine then it needs to be a much much larger one. But then that could put some of our less wealthy clubs at risk.