Salary Cap Hearing

[butt monkey]

jolleymax posted:
further more i would hope that we will hear some comment from Dave Whealan afterall he is the one who over the past few months has been banging on about the WESTHAM fiasco regarding players and monies payed.

He will be shown as a hippercritt coz he cant on one hand stand against the FA with regards westham and then stand by his charman for doing nearly the same as what WESTHAM have done.

I understand your frustrations, but, the West Ham situation was different.

Firstly, there is (never has been) any sort of Salary Cap in Top Flight Premiership Football.

Second, The crux of the argument which is still ongoing with the attempted Manchester United signing of Carlos Tevez, is actually over WHO owned him and who actually was he registered to play for, not withstanding who profited from transfer payments for the actual movements themselves.

Thirdly, you must be joking if you think clubs will be charged with "not being in the spirit of the game", in football. Since when has anything in football (at least in the last 20 years or so), been in the "spirit of the game"?

[Poster]

butt monkey posted:

Bear posted:
I think thats a disgrace

What is bear?


No one has answered yet, will we be penalised twice for these deferred payments or even can we be?. What actual season will they be referred to now, seeing as the RFL have refused to acknowledged them, yet will be included in this year's accounts.

When I was working we worked on two financial rules

1. Cash Flow which meant the actually money paid and
2. Committed expenditure which was usually money you had agreed to pay in forward years.
I worked both with private companies and government organisations who without exception all worked on cash flow because that was how much they had to fund or pay that year. The RFL seem to work on committed expenditure for their measurement of spend. Sorry to be so techno but the accountants out there will understand and correct me. I was always good at digging holes.

[robjoenz]

Fraggle posted:
From what has been said, it seems that the RFL didn't actually explain their full case last night. Makes one wonder how they managed to actually make a decision if some of the evidence were not presented, but I definitely think we fans have a right to see the RFL ruling in full when it is published.

It sounds more like the hearing has taken place, the decision given and Lindsey is now waiting for the official document to arrive. Haev you ever been to a meeting and received minutes as you walked out?
It's not until he has read the official document that he can decide whether he can build a case for appeal.

[Fraggle]

robjoenz posted:

Fraggle posted:
From what has been said, it seems that the RFL didn't actually explain their full case last night. Makes one wonder how they managed to actually make a decision if some of the evidence were not presented, but I definitely think we fans have a right to see the RFL ruling in full when it is published.

It sounds more like the hearing has taken place, the decision given and Lindsey is now waiting for the official document to arrive. Haev you ever been to a meeting and received minutes as you walked out?
It's not until he has read the official document that he can decide whether he can build a case for appeal.

Not necessarily on the way out, but I would expect (for a meeting of such significance) to have the minutes within 24 hours of the meeting. My life revolves around endless meetings, and the important ones always have minutes by the end of the next working day. There is no excuse for having to wait 15 days.

[robjoenz]

Fraggle posted:
Not necessarily on the way out, but I would expect (for a meeting of such significance) to have the minutes within 24 hours of the meeting. My life revolves around endless meetings, and the important ones always have minutes by the end of the next working day. There is no excuse for having to wait 15 days.

It's a different type of important though isn't it, with all due respect. I suppose you could compare it to buying a house, the documentation doesn't go through in 24 hours, it needs to be checked by solicitors first to ensure the correct wording is used such that it can't be misinterpreted. 15 days is probably about right.

[robjoenz]

One aspect I find interesting is that people were raging when Saint Helens breached the cap on a minor scale. The majority seemed to think that they should have been dealt with more severely than they were. Their reasoning was that they went over the cap because of bonuses paid to Roby and Graham for playing for GB.

It does seem quite a bit hypocritical that it's probably the same people who are now trying to justify why Wigan went way more over the cap than Saints did.

[standishwarrior]

Mike posted:
I think we've been cheating and the RFL is probably correct to dock us points. The relevant section of the rules is quoted below.

From: http://www.therfl.co.uk/clientdocs/Oper ... les_07.pdf

1.0 PURPOSE OF THE SALARY CAP
1.1 There are 2 principal purposes of The Super League Salary Cap. The first is to restrict
clubs’ main item of expenditure, players’ costs, to try and ensure, as far as possible, the
long-term financial survival of rugby league clubs.
1.2 The second purpose is to improve the competitiveness of the League by restricting to a
finite level of how much one club can spend on its playing staff
1.3 As financial reporting evolves over the years and different circumstances or transactions
occur, it is clearly impossible to legislate for every possible eventuality, and consequently
the spirit of the rules and their objectives should take precedence over any technical
interpretations.

The reason why I think we did cheat is the rule 1.3. If we knowingly tried to exploit a loophole (the deferment of salaries) then that goes against the spirit of the rules. Given in August 2006 we knew we would be breaching the cap by 200,000 pounds and that equates to stopping paying 9 players some or all of their salaries for 3 months, we must have known that we couldn't possibly sign Fielden and stay under the cap. We would have had to release 9 players (in addition to those we did manage to offload) for the majority of the second half of the season - how could be possibly have acheived that?

The most amusing thing is that Fielden himself had his (larger than Bradford contract) payments defered, so persumably ended up worse off than when he was at Bradford. He came for the money - which put the club over the cap - so he had to defer the money! Mind you, Bradford would have been in serious trouble had they not let him go.

PS the st helens "tax" situation seems to be covered by the following rule:

2.3 In matters of contention, the RFL will be guided by the treatment accepted by the Inland
Revenue as to items that may be capital or revenue in nature. However, while this may
assist the RFL in determining an issue, it would not bind the RFL, particularly where such
a treatment may in fact be tax effective but, nevertheless, is in conflict with the primary
purpose of the Salary Cap rules.

Although here, the RFL seem to say that even though they don't have to interpret the situation in the clubs favour (i.e. the inland revenue say its OK for now) they choose to.

In our case they chose not to see it our way - oh well.

your spot on mike!its there in black and white point 1.3! wigan signed fielding knowing that would take us over the cap and its cheating!the caps there for a reason and wigan broke it!imo wigan new they were going to get punished thats why they pushed so much to get the punishment from the 2006 season!!

[ste lord]

Totaly agree aswell the chairman and his associates knew exactly what they were doing.

ONE SIMPLE CONCLUSION GET LYNDSEY OUT!!!!!!!!

[Fraggle]

standishwarrior posted:

Mike posted:
1.3 As financial reporting evolves over the years and different circumstances or transactions
occur, it is clearly impossible to legislate for every possible eventuality, and consequently
the spirit of the rules and their objectives should take precedence over any technical
interpretations.

your spot on mike!its there in black and white point 1.3! wigan signed fielding knowing that would take us over the cap and its cheating!the caps there for a reason and wigan broke it!imo wigan new they were going to get punished thats why they pushed so much to get the punishment from the 2006 season!!

It's there in black and white that they reserve the right to make up rulings based on anything they don't agree with, which seems a funny way to run a sport. It's a bit like being arrested for shoplifting, but then being told that they think you're a bad person so they are also going to charge you with some other things they haven't yet thought of but which would be appropriate for a bad person.

In terms of changing the punishment, 8 points instead of 4 drops us just one place and still leaves us 3 points clear of Salford, although they have a game in hand. Tight, but not quite as bad as you might think. We've not really gained a huge amount by getting just 4 points except to cast doubt on the whole salary cap issue and the ability of the RFL to implement such rules.

[robjoenz]

Fraggle posted:
It's there in black and white that they reserve the right to make up rulings based on anything they don't agree with, which seems a funny way to run a sport. It's a bit like being arrested for shoplifting, but then being told that they think you're a bad person so they are also going to charge you with some other things they haven't yet thought of but which would be appropriate for a bad person.

I don't understand your analogy Fraggle; Wigan have spent more than the quota for the 2006 season. They granted themselves the right to spend more than the other side around them thus unleveling the playing field (isn't that section 1.2 of the cap?).

They aren't being punished for something they haven't done as far as I can see.