Rugby

My understanding:

• Yes
  
• Yes (as in, they will be the only team relegated)
  
• I read that they can be promoted, but a condition of this relegation is that any attempt to come up would be subject to a full open-books financial review indicating cap compliance.
  
• As it stands, yes, but there's the not-yet-used 'exceptional circumstances' lacuna in that law around foreign-based player selection and if this isn't exceptional circs I don't really know what is. My guess is a surprising number of the biggest players will take a pay cut and stay for a year (unless there is a restriction upon immediate promotion), a number more will take loan moves (both within the prem and abroad if they get the nod that exceptional circumstances can be invoked) and a small number of players will actually be sold - looks like Kruis is going, imagine some of the old guard (Wigglesworth, Goode, Bosch etc) go to France/Japan for final paycheck...
  
  

What is interesting, and I haven't read much more about this, is the Exeter owner continuing to be very forthright that no-one should feel any sympathy for them - apparently they've accepted this relegation rather than allow a full forensic accounting of their books and Wray's finances. I'm not entirely sure what his insinuation is, as they've copped for salary cap breaches and 'creative accounting' but I guess this may have been even more egregious than currently portrayed. Or maybe they just didn't want to drag it out any more...