Rugby

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owl

I think a big question I haven't really heard addressed yet is what happens to the playing squad for this season? Headlines being that they've added Daly and Singleton and lost Bosch and Burger. Can't see that resulting in a dramatically reduced salary bill - and I heard that the conclusion to draw from the level of their fine is that they have been found to have breached the cap by at least £600k for each of the past three seasons (the fine is based on 3x the breach of each relevant year). How can other teams feel it is fair to continue with this squad now the findings are public? I appreciate that this was an open secret and opposition players have felt strongly about this for years now (Danny Care spoke really well on this on the BBC rugby podcast) but now the report has been published it must be that much harder to accept - apparently some club owners debating whether they will refuse to play them. This season could get a lot weirder before the end...

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Sam_w in reply to @owl

Yes, this is the interesting one for me, they can't just release players can they? surely they are under contract? I can't see that any of the other "big" teams could afford to add any of them to their squads even if they were released, I know Chiefs had to let Cordero and Lawday go this season to stay under the cap.
I can't see any English players wanting to go to France and lose the national team, so they have to stay?
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Pasty_Spumante in reply to @owl

Agreed - keep hearing elements of "poor Saracens" "They're punished for developing great talent" "They've made the England team what it is" etc etc. What utter bollocks to somehow try and justify that you're cheating for the greater good. Completely unrelated, I do think that perhaps there should be some form of salary cap relief for academy players as if, like Sarries, you develop half a dozen into top quality international players should you then not be able to afford to keep them, but this issue is separate and completely unrelated in this case.