From the closed thread;
In no way trying to defend the club from this tripe, but I think there are a few factors (some out of our control) that we are awaiting for guidance from the NRL on:
- We dropped our 30 man squad to 28 in the sacking of CHN and Oks
- We then fast tracked Thompsons addition to our squad, taking our squad to 29. We may of also promoted a player (correct me if I am wrong) - so we currently either have 29 or 30 players under our cap - and now we have to re-register CHN and Oks (unless we choose to sack them, and risk further issues with that).
- The above means we need to discuss with the NRL what the best course of action is - if we are indeed at 31 players, what does that mean for us? I don't think this threatens the cap, given that Thompson, CHN and Okunbor will have their salaries at a pro-rata rate
Some corrections;
We only had 29 players registered with the NRL, same as last year, and the year before, we kept one spot open to take advantage of any "available" players before June 30 (August 3 this year).
To facilitate this we also retained around 5% of this year's Salary Cap as we are allowed to do under the NRL rules.
We were informed by the NRL that as soon as CHN and JO lodged their notices to appeal were were not allowed to replace them (in the 29).
Adding Thompson made the 30 and consumed some of the 5% Cap space, there was also some juggling of his contract for next year.
All official originals of NRL player contracts are held by the NRL, so we couldn't have "ripped them up" even if we wanted to. I suppose we could rip up a copy but it would achieve nothing, it's the original that matters. CHN and JO were "deregistered" as players by the NRL, all that means is we could not play them in NRL games. It does not mean that they were "sacked", we could still pay them and strangely enough it would not be included in our Cap because they weren't contracted players. The notice to appeal was lodged very soon after the punishment was announced, meaning that were handicapped by not having 2 NRL level players for the season to date. Also keep in mind, who paid the substantial legal cost for the appeals? Plus who is going to pay their fines?
The undeniable fact is the NRL farked up big time by deregistering players with a "clean record". Which was reason #1 why they lost the appeal, no precedent for first offence. Reason #2, as I posted (as did many others) many times the punishment did not fit the contract breach, it was totally out of proportion. Even worse, the NRL failed completely to understand what "deregistration" actually meant to the players and to their club, especially just as the season was about to start. Then they did not understand what the appeal actually meant to that deregistration. It was ill considered and totally ignored natural justice for the players and the club and that has been going on for 5 farking months.
I have no doubt that CHN and JO and entitled to their contracted salaries, but as usual that is not the important question, what is important is what does it do to our Cap now that they have suspensions (10 games and 14 games) and fines to pay. Clubs don't get Cap relief when players are suspended due to on field indiscretions. But what the fark happens in this case, when the NRL plainly farked us over.
Go Dogs