I'm still a little confused.
Are Saracens over the cap because of actual genuine salaries to players, or because of co-investments and other hidden goodies?
We know that they have been found guilty of being more than £650k over the cap for the last 2 years, and that the previous season they were over the cap, but by less than £650k.
But is that for salaries alone, or with the additional naughty bonuses?
There's some stuff on social media suggesting that it's just the base salaries.
so that either means that for the last 3 years the salary cap manager has had a piece of paper from Saracens saying that they're way over the cap and they've done with that information.... or that Saracens have been sending the salary cap manager a blatant forgery.
JB on Eggchasers suggesting that it’s not base salaries at all and is roughly in line with Stephen Jones’ thoughts which are:
- That the co-investments were legitimate commercial co-investments and not ‘gifting’ of monies and therefore that applying them to the salary cap is harsh - What happens is that it gets aggregated across contact length - i.e. Farrell signs a new contract in 2017 for 3 years and in 2017 goes 50/50 with Wray on a £600k house. The £300k that Wray puts in has, or was in theory then calculated as an additional £100k onto the salary cap for each of the 3 years of that contractual period
I’d agree with this if there was a mechanism to ensure that the non-player part of the co-investment doesn’t get handed over, or gifted at a later date. If it’s an entirely legitimate commercial agreement, then I personally don’t have an issue with it - The player only benefits proportionately to the investment they personally make.
- That one particular player sold 100% of their image rights to Wray. Wray then re-sold the image rights to third parties, keeping any profit from the value paid to the player and the amount charged to people looking to use that players image. Apparently (according to JB) Wray had the value independently verified by a third party, but PRL disagrees with that independent valuation by around £800k (which PRL subsequently deemed as being part of the Salary costs)
I do have an issue with this, as the player wouldn’t have had a lump sum otherwise. Equally, what’s to stop Wray selling the rights back to that player at below a market rate.
The reality is, none of us really know as nothing has been published. If these were the two issues causing a significant cap breach then in theory, it seems likes PRL may well have been a bit over-zealous (in my opinion at least).
That Sarries are refusing to open their books suggests there is more to hide. You’d think that if they didn’t have much to hide that they would try and salvage part of their reputation by being open/transparent,
Always a Wasp