The salary cap

[Vespula Vulgaris]

Maybe the new challenge Daly spoke of is living off £50k a year like the rest of the Sarries squad clearly do?

[mike909]

I would expect most players in main senior squads would have their own personal Ltd company which payments are paid into so it would be up to the player and their acountant to sort the tex out.

I doubt PRL have any right to view players bank accountants, they presumably can only inspect the clubs finances.

Players will receive money from a number or sources so it would be very easy for a player to receive additional salary from someone else other than the club (directly from sponsors or even from a company owned by a rich owner).

HMRC wouldn't care where the money came from as long as tax was paid on the income and PRL would be none the wiser.

All fair

My comment was rather tongue in cheek...re the tax authorities

[wasps]

So we're saying that Saracens have found a way to pay a large number of their players more than they should, and hide it from the rugby authorities.

As has been said, providing the player pays the correct tax, the proper authorities won't care, and the rugby authorities likely won't know.

However, with this level of blatant disregard for the rules, the club will be held to ransom by their players.


If they are paying Jamie George an additional £100k per year through some hidden process, then the club essentially have to offer him everything he wants for fear of him blowing the whistle on them.

Maybe that can be controlled if it's one or 2 players, but I don't believe it is for a whole squad.

[Raggs]

So we're saying that Saracens have found a way to pay a large number of their players more than they should, and hide it from the rugby authorities.

As has been said, providing the player pays the correct tax, the proper authorities won't care, and the rugby authorities likely won't know.

However, with this level of blatant disregard for the rules, the club will be held to ransom by their players.


If they are paying Jamie George an additional £100k per year through some hidden process, then the club essentially have to offer him everything he wants for fear of him blowing the whistle on them.

Maybe that can be controlled if it's one or 2 players, but I don't believe it is for a whole squad.

Would the 40+ players in the squad all tell each other what their wages are? Why would any of them want to ruin a good thing, even after they leave, they probably don't want to drop their mates in it.  And once you've done it for a few key players, the rest wouldn't need to have any off the books activities anyway.  Could you imagine Brad Barritt dropping them in it? Wigglesworth?

Sarries hid it for quite a while before, then threatened legal action to avoid any punishment, I can't see why they'd not be willing to do it again.

[wasps]

I know most of us are bored talking about Saracens and the salary cap, but I really want to believe that there's nothing really terrible going on here.
I can accept the odd accounting mishap that might see a club go £100k over the cap - even if it wasn't really a mishap.
But, if a club is spending a million or more over the cap, that would hurt.

So, with that in mind, I wanted to try to see what kind of salaries the Saracens players would be on to fit in the cap, and for the purposes of this, I'm assuming they receive full home grown credits of £600k per year, and also receive an additional £600k for international players
It's now a game of fantasy rugby, with £7.6m to spend.

From what I've read, academy players (essentially those earning under £30k per year) are excluded from the cap, so this is for the senior squad only

Mako Vunipola	£450k
Richard Barrington	£150k
Hayden Thompson-Stringer	£50k
Billy Walker	£50k
Jamie George	£300k
Christopher Tolofua	£150k
Tom Woolstencroft	£150k
Scott Spurling	£50k
Vincent Koch	£450k
Juan Figallo	£300k
Titi Lamositele	£100k
Maro Itoje	£500k
George Kruis	£300k
Will Skelton	£250k
Nick Isiekwe	£100k
Dominic Day	£75k
Billy Vunipola	£500k
Schalk Burger (Marquee)	£600k
Jackson Wray	£250k
Ben Earl	£100k
Calum Clark	£100k
Sione Vailanu	£50k
Michael Rhodes	£150k
Joel Conlon	£50k
Richard Wigglesworth	£250k
Ben Spencer	£125k
Henry Taylor	£50k
Tom Whiteley	£50k
Owen Farrell (Marquee)	£750k
Max Malins	£100k
Alex Lozowski	£250k
Brad Barritt	£300k
Marcelo Bosch	£250k
Nick Tompkins	£150k
Viliami Hakalo	£100k
Tom Griffiths	£50k
David Strettle	£200k
Alex Goode	£250k
Liam Williams	£300k
Sean Maitland	£200k
Alex Lewington	£125k
Rotimi Segun	£50k
Duncan Taylor	£125k
Matt Gallagher	£50k

This totals up to exactly £7.6m
I'm sure everyone will disagree with most or all of the figures, and that's fair enough because I've just made them up on the spot.
I have no idea if the wider squad players really earn £50k per year, or if it's more than that.

but it suggests that it is possible to fit their current squad into the cap and still pay their top players pretty significant sums.

[Neils]

Itoge was rumoured to have re-signed for £750-1000k. Would suggest Farrell in the same bracket.
If you think how many contracts some have been through I would suggest many longer term players have had a number of increases so you figured are on the low side. Good effort within the parameters you set though.

[wasps]

Itoge was rumoured to have re-signed for £750-1000k. Would suggest Farrell in the same bracket.
If you think how many contracts some have been through I would suggest many longer term players have had a number of increases so you figured are on the low side. Good effort within the parameters you set though.

I definitely agree it's possible.
I was doing figures for this season - itoje's new contract won't start until next season, and Farrell's salary for this season is irrelevant if he's marquee.


I agree that all the players that have been there a long time will have had new contracts and probably raises, but given that the cap has been raised by about £2m over the last 4 years or so, I suspect this increases were very modest £10-25k here or there.

It's only when there's big jumps in the cap that I think some players get big raises.


The challenge will be to use the figures I've posted and work out how to give Itoje his new contract, re-sign a load of other players and bring Daly in

[RBB]

Agree that it’s possible but instinct tells me it is improbable, though there a few departures as offsets for next season. I think they will have to release further players to ensure compliance, it will be interesting to see who?

[wasps]

The interesting bit is that I expect they'll make another high profile overseas signing and it'll all kick off again.


If we make the assumption that burger is their overseas marquee player at the moment and he is leaving this season, then I think they need to sign another overseas player to be able to use that marquee slot.
I don't think they'll be able to make Koch the marquee if it has been burger.
Given that Saracens have money, and if my understanding of the overseas marquee is correct, keep your eyes open for some other super mega star