Life bans proposed for salary breaches
“We have to ensure the rules have real teeth”
ENGLISH Premiership clubs face being stripped of titles and suspended from the league for any future salary cap breaches, while individual life bans have also been proposed in a damning new report.
Saracens will be relegated at the end of this season after being docked a total of 105 points for past cap breaches, which were exposed last year by Sportsmail. The controversy prompted Premiership Rugby chief executive Darren Childs to order an independent review of the system, by former UK government minister Paul Myners — and his findings sent shockwaves around the game when they were published yesterday.
The review makes a series of recommendations designed to tighten the regulations and increase scrutiny, accountability and transparency, as well as enhance the range of available punishments, in order that everyone involved ‘fears the outcome of failure to comply’. The clubs, along with the English RFU, the RPA — the players’ union — and other stakeholders will now consider the proposals and decide whether they should be implemented.
Myners has recommended that, for the first time, players and directors of rugby should be deemed accountable within the salary cap framework.
Players could be suspended for a year for failure to comply, while directors of rugby would be banned from the league for life for multiple offences, if the measures are adopted.
The report begins with a quote from a supporter who took part in the extensive consultation process, which states that ‘this whole affair has dragged the sport and its reputation into the gutter’. Myners delivers a scathing assessment of most areas of the existing regulations and among his recommendations are that clubs who breach the spending limit should face being stripped of titles and trophies, relegated, suspension from the league and the return of any prize money accrued.
Saracens were punished for breaches which primarily related to co-investments between thethen chairman, Nigel Wray, and leading players such as England captain Owen Farrell, the Vunipola brothers and Maro Itoje. As exposed by Sportsmail, Wray invested in companies and properties, and despite insisting that this activity was not contrary to the regulations, the club were found guilty.
In the report published yesterday, Myners states: ‘Advocates of allowing arrangements such as the property arrangements in the Saracens case have pointed out that this is important for player welfare and protecting a player’s future after rugby. I am not convinced that any such scheme would be used to protect the welfare of all players equally.
‘I consider it likely that the more extravagant schemes with a significant administrative burden, such as the property co-ownership arrangements, would be reserved for those who need it the least; namely the best and highest-paid players. For these reasons, my view is that these types of arrangements should not be allowed to continue.’
The proposal for players to be held to account, for the legitimacy of their own earnings, is explained as a means of ensuring that ‘the regulations have real teeth’.
Similarly, the men in charge of rugby operations at each Premiership club would share responsibility for ensuring compliance with the cap, if the proposals are approved by 10 or more of the 13 share-holding clubs. Myners states: ‘Any club official who knew, or should have known, about the breach of the salary cap and who has signed a false declaration or certification or has unreasonably failed to co-operate with salary cap regulations should be subject to sanctions including a ban from PRL for up to two years (first offence) or up to lifetime (any subsequent offence).’
The review was broad in its scope and damning in highlighting many shortcoming with the existing arrangements for the running of the league.
Myners recommends a ‘fit and proper test for owners’ and suggests that those guilty of ‘seriously and systematically’ breaching the cap should be deemed unfit and compelled to sell their controlling stake in the club.
There is grave concern expressed about the self-governance model — with PRL representing its member clubs, rather than providing independent oversight.
There are also calls for a tightening of the loan system, which has been manipulated to avoid salary cap breaches, a review of the marquee player scheme and a requirement that audits must be compulsory when there are suspicions about club spending.
Among his conclusions, Myners states that ‘the reputation of the PRL brand is at stake’, adding: ‘It is important that my recommendations should be viewed as a package of measures which will go a long way to restoring the integrity of the regulations.’