The exchange rate used to be more favourable. Remember a few years ago you could get about 3 dollars to 1 pound so that 1.6m was much closer to the NRL cap in reality. Plus there were dodgy tax arrangements that allowed players to pay little or no tx. So instead of being paid $300,000 in Australia and paying 48% tax or whatever the top tax rate is (I'll never need to worry about it), they were being paid 100,000 sterling and paying bugger all tax. So the reality was, a player could take an after tax salary of about $160,000 in the NRL or (when the variable exchange rate was factored in) a wage of about $200-300,000 in the SL.
Fortunately the dodgy loop hole has been closed up, although who knows if there's still a few tricks going on, and the exchange rate has dramatically changed since the British economy went to sh*t. Plus the RFL is tightening import quotas, slowly. So we'll see less players going over.
Having said that if a club in Australia is willing to cheat the cap here despite a fairly rigorous enforcement regime and fairly well established and very serious punishments if caught, I reckon the even more dodgy English club accountants would ensure a few clubs over there would be up to some kind of scam. Wigan was flagrantly cheating the system a few years back to avoid relegation by re-negotiating player contracts mid-season so that they could pay them less that year and give them the rest a year or two later so that the club could buy in more players, like Stuart Fielden. The RFL busted them but realised that there was no rule saying they couldn't do this so they couldn't really punish them. Wigan were also involved in some dodgy dealings a few years earlier when it was found they were hiring players' WAGS to work for the club, though how much work was being done was a little unclear. You can bet that the bigger clubs over there, and maybe even some smaller ones, will be at least attempting to get around the cap there too.
