Mid 2010 - Dragons leading the comp with full roster close to cap.
Gasnier wants back in, you sign him for peanuts for the rest of that season cos a proper contract would put you over the cap, and you backend the contract knowing you can offload a few players and pay him his correct worth the following year.
So technically you were over the cap for however many games you played while u had The Toey Human on the books.
And you're right, every club would do it if they had the chance, I just think it's BS.
I and many others with me were dumbfounded when it was approved by Schubert.
So, you are suggesting his worth in the games he played for Saints in 2010 should be judged on his contract in the years that are to follow.
Fair enough, then lets apply that to an everyday situation.
How would you feel if the tax office decided that you will be locked in at a dollar figure tax rate on your current wage?
It would be f**king tops if you got a better job and started to make a sh*tload more money, but it would be a real bitch if you lost that job and had to take one for far less money and still be held at the same tax rate as your previous job.
You see where I am going with this?
Hence, the salary cap is a year by year proposition.
Gasnier played the games in 2010 for nix essentially, and he timed his games in a manner that would not put the club massively over the cap for the year 2010.
This is business, it was allowed under the rules and the fact Saints were leading the comp at the time was irrelevant, perhaps you'd like to take aim at the dogs for signing Tandy (errr, ahhhhhh, hmmmmmmmmmm) or any other number of mid to late season transfers that have occured over the last couple of years? (Newton to the $torm should be worthy of your criticism, as should be Finch to the $torm, McKinnon to Wests? etc etc etc), Saints weren't the only ones doing it, and looking at the storm analogy, they weren't the only ones to do it whilst leading the comp, they just didn't do it in a manner that could be described as cheating like the storm, which was adding when you had no room to move and adding when there was no cap space free the following year.
In fact it will be interesting to see how Saints go at audit time given they didn't really need to utilise a sh*tload of players throughout the year, barring a few games at Origin time.
It would be funny if they were actually under the cap.
