It is when plenty of people know there's plenty of Leeds players wives on alot more than minimum wage for a helping hand in the club shop or promotional events.

As announced today, Hetherington has found many ways to get around the salary cap. At least we just straight up payed the player, rather than doing the same thing but avoiding being punished.

That is totally made up bs by fans and is looked upon as a cap breach! It's also an old wives tale. I've heard Leeds fans say it about saints I've heard saints fans say it about Wigan! it doesn't happen. It's pretty pathetic that you convince yourself Leeds must be cheating the cap when we are obviously not! Did you not hear what sini said after the gf?

by sticking to the rules you mean? GH has done nothing wrong, that's not getting around the cap thats managing player payments within the rules.


you know you are beaten when you start trying to claim some kind of moral high ground or honour in just "straight up" cheating? making totally unfounded accusations that come from pub talk and hear say!
Come on pal get a grip! are you really gonna post this kind of crap?

seriously where do you think this stuff up?

It does happen. Don't kid yourself.

who when and where? I'm a skeptic mate. I need a little something called evidence? other wise it's BS, hear say, pub talk. if you have facts I'm all ears

You know, when the history books come to be written, naïve comments like that will probably look rather silly.

Although I've flogged it to death on here, I suppose one more time seems necessary



The Bulls' breach was because (it appears) a sizeable proportion of Iestyn Harris' earnings came from sale of his image rights by his personal service company to pub operator Publico. Provided such outfits are an independent third party (as defined in the RFL Operational Rules) not "connected" with the club, such earnings fall outside the cap. Now for some reason - the tale I heard at the time was because of a small one-off advert in a programme, but I suspect other factors may have been at play - the Salary Cap Auditor ruled that Publico was actually "Connected" with the Bulls and therefore what they were paying his PSC counted as salary cap earnings. My understanding is that the club contested this (I won't go into details on here), but to no avail.

Now this arrangement was, and is, used by other players at other clubs too. Indeed, IIRC the self-same Mr Harris was "sponsored by Tissot" when he played for Leeds. I rather suspect that was a similar image rights deal, and if so presumably Harris' agent set this up with Tissot with the club not being at all involved, since no salary cap issues seem to have arisen. Maybe Harris felt so well off as a result that he decided he could play for Leeds for less than he might otherwise have, thereby allowing Leeds more cpa space...who knows? Maybe none of this happened. It must remain conjecture I guess. But Scully's deal with Gillette certainly was of this nature, as I understand it. And these are just two high-profile examples. What is less clear is why the Harris arrangement when at Bulls seems to have been treated differently by the RFL to everyone else. Presumably the salary cap auditor must have felt there were sufficient distinctions?

It is also clear that a main reason for the RFL bringing in the "real-time" salary cap was because - as the Bulls rightly pointed out - the breach (as they deemed it) for year 1 was not ruled on by the RFL until well over half way through the season of year 2. This meant that not only did the club have no opportunity to fix the issue in year 1, it was also far too late to fix it in year 2.

So, this was the "cheating" that the Bulls were seen as engaging in by the likes of you. Seems to me what they did was no different to others clubs. I also hear various tales, hearsay or whatever, suggesting that various other clubs have engaged in practices contrary to the cap, but which were not picked up on. Some surprising ones too, where (if true) things are less whiter than white than people might have us believe. Folk conjecture on these boards all the time - someone mentioned the ubiquitous brown envelope on a thread on the VT earlier, for example. But again, all this remains hearsay, at least until the autobiographies come out.

And also, the current big issue of club-paid image rights and employee benefit trust payments is in my view a blatant means of acting not in the spirit of the cap. Leeds, for example, are a club who admit to having used both devices, and refer to the tax exposure in their published accounts as a contingent liability. The "grossing-up" that any tax settlement would result in would appear to me be a retrospective breach of the salary cap for any club spending at or near the cap.

You made a statement above which is not that far short of defamation, but at the very least displays breathtaking naïvity and partisanship. As I said, I suspect the history books will make interesting reading - over this, and over the whole Harrisgate debacle generally. The villains are not always entirely where you expect.

Thank you for your time and effort for which is a very informative post. I don't disagree that if clubs can find ways to pay more then they may well work the system. But as seen as I dont have any hard evidence I'm not in a position to start throwing accusations around

Excellent post. Even a div like me understood it!

. . . . that's made it go quiet and hammers the point home, IMHO, of "some people" never letting a few facts get in the way of a good story



Top man Adey

I'm pretty sure that you did just throw an accusation about. Didn't you?

And ? Ablett and Kirke probably play for peanuts to suit there talent! That is the reason they get a nice 3 or 4 year deal.

I also aint no Bradford fan.

Okay then, maybe not moral highground, but either way, there's many other clubs who have cheated the cap.

I did hear what Sinfield said, but alot of that is total "bs". If it weren't for image rights, there'd be plenty more players leaving Leeds. And I can assure you, there are lots of other ways that clubs get around it, and i'd guess one of the biggest is your lot, just ask Mr. Hetherington how he can afford to keep a team of that quality under the cap, becuase I guarantee you it's not solely because they love playing together.

Also, you have to take into account that now there is a live salary cap system, whereas when we "broke" it you didn't find out until the season after.

A legitimate advantage that Leeds I suspect have is that a testimonial year probably brings in more tax free money than any other club for a 10year player.

Why more than any other club?

Testimonial money comes from number of events and attendance at those events. Whilst fans chip in for a reasonable percentage (and Leeds have the biggest average home gates of recent years) - not definitive that more people will go but more likely. The biggest money will come from sponsorship, corporate events, post Friday night matches etc. Leeds have more of that than any other club (prawn sandwich brigade anyone

) - possibly only Wigan could match them on that front.

Oh, I see your point now

Just a little question

Does Langley have the biggest biceps in SL?

Without doubt. I have always been in awe of them. I think they are slightly smaller this season to be honest.

He did bulk up too much a couple of years ago, he looks to be back to his best shape now though.

This is clearly a field in which you have some personal experience then...so could you enlighten as about this "best shape" thing? Is it something where you need to be...intimately acquainted...with the chap to assess?

I think what he means is that Langley lost quite a bit of his upper body mobility because of the size he bulked up to. However, he does seem to have slimmed down this season, which will hopefully help him improve as a player

Langley

Great performance again.

The lad is a legend !

Keep it going Jamie.

Did the full 80 and 100% effort all the way through.