: Fri Apr 10, 2009 9:51 am
Bulliac wrote:
I`d guess the cash we have is current account rather than the capital needed to buy out a contract. Given the attempt for Bird and losing Tupou there is clearly some leeway for strengthening the squad but who`s out of contract at this time of the season?
probably more a case of players who are released for disciplinary reasons or as a result of a new coach coming in and wanting a clear out ala warrington.
what could be interesting this year is the inland revenue clampdown. As adeybull has pointed out on numerous threads any back tax that the revenue deems is owed would count on the salary cap. This means that rich backers wont be able to bail out their clubs by flashing their chequebooks and will have to release players to stay under the cap. This looks like what wire have done with the release of gleason and reardon, with only mathers coming in, freeing up about 100-150k of their cap to pay the taxman. Given that theirs several over clubs also facing a similar situation their could be quite a few players becoming available in next few weeks as clubs affected attempt to balance the books.
An interesting scenario from our point of view would be the following situation. St helens use leons off field problems as a reason to terminate his contract. He gets community service and we re-sign him without having to pay a transfer fee. We get the halve we desperately need. St helens free up the cap space they need to pay the taxman and they already have either wilkin or eastmond who could step into the stand-off role so they wouldnt be significantly weaker on field.