Rugby union?

Welp, they're relegated.

Reigning champions Saracens will be relegated from rugby union's top flight at the end of this season following persistent salary cap breaches, Premiership Rugby have confirmed.

Sarries had already been deducted 35 points for the current Premiership campaign and fined £5.4m for three seasons' spending above the cap.

Proof of immediate cap compliance was required to avoid further sanctions.
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You can guess how sympathetic anyone at Exeter is...

Tony Rowe of Exeter Chiefs said:
"They had two choices: they could either open up their books so that Premiership Rugby could do a forensic audit of exactly what has gone on, or they could take relegation. So it was their choice not to open up their books."
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mid_gen said:
I think Exeter are quite unhappy that they didn't choose to open their books for auditing so we learned the real extent of their cheating.
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exactly - i dont see how they got away with that one because presumably opening their books would lead to their titles being stripped
 
I don't follow rugby, so no idea how the league structure works.

I assume there are no professional leagues below the championship?

Shame Saracens could not be dumped a few leagues down, just as Rangers FC were for their misdoings a few years ago.

Top players would be less inclined to hang around if they had a few promotions to negotiate before getting back to the premiership, as opposed to just the one.
 
mid_gen said:
Total bloody farce the whole situation. Everyone knew they were up to this years ago, and because they were implicitly allowed to, other teams started trying the same in order to compete.

Sarries getting demoted now...so even with losing a significant chunk of players they'll absolutely stomp everyone next year.

I mean kudos for actually dealing with it, but leaving it for so long has made a right mess.
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This is a major issue... it's like dealing with kids... you can't let them do something all week and then tell them off on Friday. Watching someone do something questionable for a long time without doing something is essentially saying that you are OK with it.

Snax said:
exactly - i dont see how they got away with that one because presumably opening their books would lead to their titles being stripped
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I'm not sure about this... they are over the cap, so rules are breached irrelevant of the amount... that alone is enough to drive the decision whether they have titles stripped.

I do wonder how reasonable the £7 mill cap is, and whether many clubs are actually compliant. It's been interesting to see so many top marque players moving club the past 6 months, which makes me wonder if certain clubs are feeling the need to reduce their bill.

A brief online search shows that "a fully-fledged senior squad member the average premiership contract is about £120k a year but they could get substantially more in the right market and with a bit of luck. At the peak of a Premiership career a good club player might get just short of £200k before their earning start to decrease."

Using a figure of 57 players as the average squad size, remove 2 marque players that are excempt from salary cap calculations, that leaves a squad of 55. Paying 55 players an average of £120k totals £6.6 mill. However, the salary cap calculation includes all backroom staff, agent fees, transfer fees, etc. However, there are also dispensations for home grown players and injuires, but I do wonder if there is enough money in the league to cover so much home grown and overseas talent that are in the prem.
 
A good club player may be on 120ish, but I'm pretty sure I remember reading that top international marquee players could command up to 500k in the premiership.
 
mid_gen said:
A good club player may be on 120ish, but I'm pretty sure I remember reading that top international marquee players could command up to 500k in the premiership.
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Which makes it even less likely that the current salary cap limit is sufficient to honestly maintain all the player base.

Having the same opinion as me, Stuart Barnes has written in The Times today that the top players should stay, and that it may not be bad for them having an easier season that still includes 9 international games and a Lions tour at the end of the season; and it is very unlikely that Farrell, Itoje, George, Daly and the Vunipola brothers will get dropped from the England squad.

I do wonder about the fringe England players and upcoming players who want to keep up visibility, like Spencer, Isiekwe, Lewington, Lozowski, Earl, Singleton, Kpoku, Obatoyinbo, Malins, Segun, etc.
 
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If media reporting is to be believed most clubs in the Premiership don’t spend to the cap because they don’t have the money. Historically only the likes of Saracens, Leicester, Exeter and Bath have been considered to be constrained by it. Wasps can’t quite hit the yet. The smaller clubs like Sale, Newcastle, Worcester etc aren’t reaching the cap. The sponsorship and gates in rugby union are just too low for most. They rely on winnings, league money and RFU funding.. The RFU pays a bonus for every England qualified player in the squad which is why young Welsh lads don’t want to play under 18s and be Welsh qualified as it makes harder to get a Premiership contract.
 
Just as an outsider looking in, the salary cap in UK Rugby League is £1.8m. It's monitored really closely. There are dispensations for players that came through the academy etc Wigan ran into some bother about 15 years ago and had points stripped, nothing in the realms of what Saracens did though by the sounds of it.

The salary cap is much bigger in the Australian NRL, around $Aus10m (£5.3m) - probably why the best UK players head over there now. Melbourne Storm were caught systematically cheating their salary cap in 2010 and had Premierships stripped from them, had to play the rest of the season for zero points (no relegation in the NRL) and had to let a number of players go to balance the books. They recovered pretty quickly have been champions again since then and played in last year Grand Final. It has made them as popular with other clubs fans as Wigan are in the UK (ie not popular at all)
 
57 in a squad will include academy, which doesn't count in the cap.

Most squads are 45ish i believe. 2 players will be marquee and therefore excluded. Upto £600k extra for home grown players. Internationals can get extra cap space for international absences, upto £40k each i think. Another £400k is available for long term injury replacement.

However sarries are looking to have been over by £1m+. That's very very deliberate, and not just getting caught out by cap intricacies putt unexpected bills like wasps and quins were.

Wasps were upto the cap in seasons past, but not now. Sale are either there now or very close.
 
The thing that I'm wondering about is also how quick the RFU think it would be to off load players or renegotiate contracts? I also didn't know that the backroom staff etc is counted in the salary cap as well.
 
neviditelny said:
The thing that I'm wondering about is also how quick the RFU think it would be to off load players or renegotiate contracts? I also didn't know that the backroom staff etc is counted in the salary cap as well.
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Actually, I think I got it wrong about back room staff... I thought I read it was all the squad and support staff, but after looking at the cap rules in more detail I don't think I was correct. However, I'm pretty sure I'm correct about fees to agents and transfer fees being included.

Full details here - https://d2cx26qpfwuhvu.cloudfront.n...gulations-2019-20-Board-Approved-Feb-2019.pdf
 
More details on the Saracens breach:

https://news.sky.com/story/revealed-how-saracens-broke-rugbys-salary-cap-rules-11915269

I ready in The Times today that the established England players would stay over the next year. Also an interestingly phrased quote that the salary cap would be brought in line before potentially returning to the Prem... might be my interpretation, but it didn't say that everything would be corrected before next season, which makes me wonder if they are taking advantage of no cap in the Championship?
 
Six Nations starts this weekend. Looking forward to it.

How will the new coach of Ireland get on? Andy Farrell has made some interesting selection choices.
Will England bounce back after their World Cup final defeat? Is a grandslam on the cards?
Just how good are this young French team?

Two must watch games this weekend will be the Ireland/Scotland game and the France/England game.
 
Does it feel like the Six Nations has had less of a build up this year compared with previous years? Maybe it's because we've just had the RWC but it definitely feels a little less anticipated.

Nonetheless I always look forward to it.
 
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