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.
