Just signed Luke Burgess on short term deal.

A short term deal at Salford. The epitome of any players career

The sporting equivalent of a Wonga* loan.



* Other shorts term, high interest loans for idiots are available.

I think Salford's reasoning is spot on. Sign two experienced players to bolster their squad for the 8s. With squads the size they are nowadays its the sensible thing to do.

Let's hope that the clubs making all these short term signings are doing it totally within the salary cap.
I trust that the RL Compliance Unit is on top of all this.
Somehow I doubt it.

Well given it's a live cap these days, as long as the value being paid to the player actually matches what's on the contract - and I'm looking at you, Salford - then the registrations won't go through unless they are under the cap.

There's very little the RFL can do if teams go out of their way to deliberately hide or disguise payments to players, unless it comes to light through another route i.e. the Puletua payments.

Am I correct in saying that those payments only became known when Puletua took Salford to an employment tribunal?

Yup. Salford had given him a second contract with one of Koukash's companies that wasn't declared on the cap returns. Had it not been for the employment tribunal, it would probably never have got on the RFL's radar.

Frankly if Puletua knew about it I'd have been in favour of banning him for a year. He's as compliant in the cap breach as Salford are.

Puletua would have never signed up to the salary cap, why should he be punished?

Except Puletua doesn't know what is being declared to the RFL and what isn't and shouldn't be held responsible for the actions of a club.

If it could be proven that he knew those payments weren't being declared then I'd be in favour of punishing him in some fashion. But that would be almost impossible to prove.

Again though, Tony Puletua never agreed to the Salary Cap, even if he knew, they are rules that apparently 'don't apply to him'.

If he knew the club were doing something that was a breach of the cap - and let's face it, when the club put the second contract in front of him to sign he'd either have to be incredibly stupid or incredibly naive to not at least ask why he was being paid in this way - then he's complicit in them breaking it and should face some form of sanction for his part in it.

If you had a supplier who you knew was committing VAT fraud and you helped them do it by agreeing to issue some phoney invoices, should you be able to walk away and leave them to take the punishment for it?