According to Phil Wilkinson in tonight's Wigan Observer :-


"One of the lesser-known clauses of the salary cap rules is that for every player who has been in the first team for more than 10 years, only half their salary counts on the £1.65 million wage bill.
That rewards the likes of Kieron Cunningham, Paul Wellens (St. Helens), Paul Deacon (Bradford) and Lee Briers (Warrington) for their service, while also giving their clubs a greater incentive to keep them."

Absolute rubbish.

The rule is that the clubs get a £50K dispensation against the cap for a player who has completed 10 years at the club, but it is limited to one player per club.

So for Saints they can have in effect £50K extra to spend in lieu of either part of Wellens or Longs salaries.
They cannot claim £50K for each.

Lazy journalism.

Course they research. Message boards and Wikipedia mainly!

To be fair to Wilkinson he's normally pretty good and miles ahead of Aspinall in terms of breaking stories.

Do they do their research?

Yes...As long as it involves Micky Higham.

Everything else comes off this messageboard.



Wigan media is starved of a top, in depth, opinionated, solely Rugby League journalist.

:qavd3fer

only if you exclude this site as wigan media





Wigan media is starved of a top, in depth, opinionated, solely Rugby League journalist.'"

I have.

I mean Wigan Evening Post/Observer/WiganToday.net

This the same WEP that apparently had Wigan "throwing away a 12-10 lead" against Hull

The glory days of the WEP and the WO being powerhouses of Wigan RL knowledge and fanaticism seems to be well behind us. I'd imagine that many of their desks are now peopled by callow, pimply faced youths who think exclusively in terms of blue and white.

Cracking job for Conroy then.

Today its the internet that is king of the media papers have had their day but i still buy the WEP mon - sat.

Thats not quite right Rogue, but you are on the right lines, far more than the newspaper. This is the formal wording:-

"Any player who has played for the same club for at least 10 consecutive seasons will have half his salary excluded from the salary cap for his eleventh and subsequent seasons, subject to a maximum of £50,000 for any one club"

Hence If two players earned £50k a year and had been at a club 11 years then each would only have £25k counted towards the cap.
However if a club had two players who earned £100k a year with 11 years service. Then the RL would only ignore £50k of the two players combined salary of £200k.

Cheers,
I couldn't find the exact wording.

So Sean O'Loughlin is only 3 years off this when he'll still be a modest 29. Same with Gareth Hock in 4 years he'll be 29. Sounds like more reason to get Sam Tomkins in now to me!

Journalists and the paparazzi are the scum of the earth !

At one time the Wigan press were major promoters of Wigan RL. Both the WEP and WO were full of informative Wigan stuff, not just news, but gossip, rumours, interviews, etc.

The arrival of the internet has undermined that to a huge extent, but you still get the feeling from reading those papers today that the majority of their writers have completely bought into the 'Wigan is now a football town' myth.

LAZY POSTING, do your research before posting tripe in future!