Ahh, I think the penny has just dropped for me.

I would think it's fairly safe to assume these days that the top 25 earners within most SL clubs playing rosters are paid on a monthly basis.
If we assume the annual cap is 1.8million (for the sake of simplicity), then that equates to a monthly cap of £150k. At no point in the year must the combined monthly salaries of those 25 players top that figure of £150k (pre-tax).
That monthly figure is basically a "use it or lose it" scenario. As you point out, shortfalls cannot be accumulated and then be used at a stragitic point at the back end of the year.
In the case of someone like Liam Watts, then it is the onus of the club to word his contract to reflect the actual outlay each month (as others have already pointed out).

Clear as day now

That's because you're looking at it as a rule covering a single transaction type. It isn't. It's several rules designed to cover several different eventualities all rolled into one. It's all about trying to ensure that a club can't get an advantage out of manipulating signings/wages.

If a player's full wage didn't count for the full season you could sign a megastar on a huge wage for a short period - like a cup final or the playoffs - with minimum impact on your cap spend. It's been done before.

Another thing to consider is what the RFL do if Bradford do go out of business this season. If they take the same attitude they did with Crusaders they will have to relax salary cap rules so the now out of work players can get jobs. Cue certain teams using it as an opportunity to avoid the cap even more, like Wigans deal with Tompkins.

Anyone remember Darren Rogers?

His autobiography says that one morning he woke up next to a couple of hairs on his pillow. That same afternoon he was sacked by Cas for breach of contract by going bald.

It was a similar story with James Evans so I'm told.

This is the definitive ! I have a source too close to reveal - Lovegrove was keen as Rovers offering peanuts to most of their squad BUT now a no go ! Howes (agent) has seemingly not covered himself in glory but anyway Lovegrove now a NO GO

They closed that loophole by not allowing registrations after a certain date IIRC. So are we now saying the salary cap is actually 133k a month rather than 1.6m a year?

Edit: what exactly is the point of the salary cap? Surely as long as a club doesn't spend more than 1.6M on wages over the course of a season that's all that matters?

care to add any actual substance to that post?

as in why it's a no go?

Lovegrove has been found to be going bald.

Would paying for hair implants count on the salary cap?

I think in essence, that's it, yes.

I don't think it should, but the baldist RFL class it as an employee benefit and therefore it counts on the cap.

Maybe Lovegrove should just buy a cap and hide his so called problem.

But why? How is that helping to either A) stop clubs spending above their means or B) encouraging a more level competition?

It baffled me as Rovers must have upped the offer....mind you,the fact that rovers are offering crap deals is something....waste of time building that new stand isnt it.

I think it basically comes back to the Wigan relegation fiasco. Considering the year as a whole you can only ever address breaches in retrospect, after Wigan's efforts it became apparent that clubs may consider the gains to be worth the penalties and wilfully break the rules in some cases, so the focus was shifted to prevention rather than punishment. You can only do that with a live cap, which needs to be monitered monthly to work.

As Kosh said earlier, it boils down to the fact that the clubs cannot be trusted.

These aren't rumours.. these are salary cap discussions!

A friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend said he saw Benji Marshall at Humberside airport phoning for a taxi to the KC!

For why, see my other post. For A), it doesn't, but the scrappage of the 50% rule killed that anyway. For B), in theory, it means that every clubs' squad is of the same value throughout the course of the season, rather than being able to save a bit of money for 7 months, scrape into 7/8th, then spend a shedload on a handful of quality players for the playoffs and win the title.

I get all of that but what is the reasoning for a gradually reducing salary cap as the year goes on? A club that holds back say 60k cap space is actually only holding back 5k a month. What if they have a bad spell of injuries and need to bring in 2 or 3 loan signings for a couple of months and the total spend it 20k but 10k each month? They have broken the monthly cap but not the total cap for the year. What exactly is this rule achieving?

The deadline for signing players has stopped that anyway. Even if you do sign top quality players in the latter stages of the season you still have to pay them a substantial wage in the following seasons so it would only work once.

I suppose hopefully it means promoting more youngsters, as any with few appearances in previous seasons are cap exempt aren't they? Makes clubs have to be more responsible for producing young players who are near to stepping up rather than being able to fall back on other clubs who do do things the right way doing it for them. In all honesty we've become one of the most guilty of this, so I kind of welcome that by-product of the method.

I'm not saying it's an ideal system, I can just understand why it's in place and can't personally think of a better alternative.

And it's not a gradually reducing cap, it's simply choosing not to spend all of it.

I had heard we've also pulled out the McDonnell deal, hope so not keen on him

OK - That's enough about the ins and outs of the SC. It started out as relevant to our rumoured signing targets but has gone way past that now.

Cheers.

You could have let me keep my wonderful thread

It would be good if someone who has a good understanding of the salary cap could write up a FAQ style post about it and stick it at the top of the board. That'd save these discussions happening every couple of weeks.

One rumours thread at a time is more than enough.



Plus we were recently told that the old 1000 post limit doesn't matter any more, so as the title suggests this one could quite literally go on forever...