DIR Return Create A Forum - Home
---------------------------------------------------------
ComeAllWithin (Harlequins Rugby)
HTML https://comeallwithin.createaforum.com
---------------------------------------------------------
*****************************************************
DIR Return to: ComeAllWithin Board
*****************************************************
#Post#: 150167--------------------------------------------------
Saracens salary cap punishment under scrutiny over new evidence
DIR By: PostVideo
Date: February 26, 2026, 2:08 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[html] <a href="
HTML http://archive.today/yPtGx"<br
/>target="_blank">  <img
style="width:300px;height:200px;background-color:white"
     
src="
HTML https://d1caaw4q7w5p9d.archive.ph/yPtGx/52a2147ca7a02a659968b9441a3fa15ed18eae07.webp"><br> <br
/> Saracens salary cap punishment under scrutiny over new
evidence<br>  archived 25 Feb 2026 16:07:26
UTC </a> [/html]
#Post#: 150219--------------------------------------------------
Re: Saracens salary cap punishment under scrutiny over new
evidence
DIR By: deadlyfrom5yardsout
Date: February 27, 2026, 3:35 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Leading ex-Saracens player hits out at ‘flawed’ salary-cap
verdict
Long-time team-mate of Maro Itoje accuses Premiership Rugby of
conducting a ‘ludicrous’ persecution of his old club
Daniel Schofield
Deputy Rugby Union Correspondent
Daniel Schofield
Daniel joined The Telegraph in 2014 after working as a sports
reporter at The Times. See more
Published 26 February 2026 8:35pm GMT
Related Topics
Saracens Rugby, Gallagher Premiership, Maro Itoje
40
Gift this article free
Add us as preferred source
Saracens
Saracens won four Premiership titles between 2014 and 2019
Credit: Henry Browne/Getty Images
Premiership Rugby has been accused of conducting a “ludicrous”
persecution of Saracens by a leading former player, following
allegations of a salary cap conflict of interest.
An investigation by Telegraph Sport showed that Saffery
Champness, the accountancy firm hired by Premiership Rugby (PRL)
to advise on Saracens’ case, were also concurrently the auditor
for Sale Sharks. In 2020, Saracens were relegated from the
Premiership following an investigation into their management of
the salary cap. It was Saffery’s advice that three Saracens
directors had overpaid for their investment in Itoje’s image
rights that resulted in the vast majority of Saracens’ breach of
the salary cap for the 2018-19 season.
Advertisement
However, it later emerged that the original investment of £1.6m
for a 30 per cent stake in Itoje’s image rights was based on a
valuation by PwC, who were also then auditors of Premiership
Rugby’s salary cap. Saffery told Andrew Rogers, the PRL salary
cap manager, that PwC’s valuation was double what it should have
been; in fact PwC’s estimate proved to be a huge undervaluation
as Itoje went on to captain England and the Lions.
“That is bonkers because [the original valuation] was determined
by PwC and they found someone else to disagree it,” a leading
star told Telegraph Sport on condition of anonymity. “It wasn’t
done by Nigel Wray [former Saracens chairman]. It wasn’t done by
Maro. It was done by PwC, who were the Premiership salary cap
auditors at that point.
“They had a legitimate accountancy firm who gave an estimate
which in the fullness of time proved to be undervalued. That
might be a red herring because you didn’t know 10 years later
that Maro was going to be England and Lions captain but he was a
big enough star that the image rights warranted that amount [set
by PwC]. I always thought it was incredibly flawed to go against
the firm you are using to audit the salary cap. It is like they
thought we will find someone who tells me that is an inflated
image rights.”
Maro Itoje
Maro Itoje was integral to a trophy-laden era at Saracens in the
late 2010s Credit: Jason Cairnduff/Reuters
There is no suggestion of any deliberate wrongdoing by Saffery
in their evidence against Saracens during the salary cap
investigation, which lasted nine months. Saracens were charged
with breaching the salary cap for three seasons from 2016 to
2019 and were originally hit with a 35 point deduction and
£5.36m fine in November 2019. Two months later, they were handed
another 70-point deduction which effectively equated to
automatic relegation from the Premiership.
“The biggest thing which has blown my mind for years is in what
other world, sport or business do your direct competitors decide
the outcome of what happens to you?” the player continued. “In
our case, the other 11 clubs decided the outcome for Saracens.
That is ludicrous. Did we do wrong? Well, the facts are there so
yes. So we get a 35-point deduction and a huge fine. We
understand that.
Advertisement
“But then the clubs came together when they realised we were not
going to get relegated and said you know what we will give you
another 35 points with no new information. That was purely the
other clubs – our direct competitors – deciding they wanted to
punish us.”
In the aftermath of Saracens’ punishment, the club spent a year
in the Championship, which then England head coach Eddie Jones
believed would have a profound effect on the form of their
international players. The club would also lose lucrative
commercial contracts. However, former second row Jim Hamilton
believes that the biggest victim in the scandal was then owner
Nigel Wray, who was forced to sell a majority stake in the club.
“He suffered the most,” Hamilton said. “Nigel Wray to his core
is a good man and one of the best rugby men you could ever meet.
There really are not many like him in the way he goes out of his
way to support players. When the punishment came through we were
gutted for Nigel Wray.
“I don’t think the players really knew the ins and outs of it or
even understood it properly. We were athletes first and
foremost. We then started to learn what went down with Maro’s
image rights and how they were valued, and actually when people
say we broke the salary cap, everyone will presume it was that
they were overpaying players. Actually when it came out that it
was the overvaluation, which was seen as illegal, our noses were
put out of joint a bit.”
#Post#: 150220--------------------------------------------------
Re: Saracens salary cap punishment under scrutiny over new
evidence
DIR By: deadlyfrom5yardsout
Date: February 27, 2026, 3:36 am
---------------------------------------------------------
So, there is an "unnamed player" and Hamilton speaking?....
#Post#: 150222--------------------------------------------------
Re: Saracens salary cap punishment under scrutiny over new
evidence
DIR By: DOK
Date: February 27, 2026, 3:39 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Hmmm...if you see a fire, probably not a great idea to pour
petrol on it.
If Saracens were that innocent, you'd have thought they'd have
happily opened their books for inspection.
Positively insisted on it, in fact, to save a huge fine and
demotion.
#Post#: 150223--------------------------------------------------
Re: Saracens salary cap punishment under scrutiny over new
evidence
DIR By: deadlyfrom5yardsout
Date: February 27, 2026, 3:43 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Oliver Brown
Alarming Saracens revelation raises the question: is the salary
cap fit for purpose?
Faith in the system that underpins the Prem’s supposed
competitiveness and level financial playing field has been
undermined
Oliver Brown
Chief Sports Writer
Oliver Brown
Oliver Brown is the Chief Sports Writer for The Daily Telegraph.
See more
Published 26 February 2026 6:30pm GMT
Related Topics
Gallagher Premiership, Saracens Rugby, RFU
49
Gift this article free
Add us as preferred source
Chris Ashton splashes down to score
The valuation of Chris Ashton’s co-investment deal with Saracens
chairman that contributed to their fine and points deduction has
now been questioned because of an alleged conflict of interest
Credit: David Rogers/Getty Images
The salary cap is the foundation on which Premiership Rugby’s
entire architecture rests, creating at least a semblance of a
level playing field. Memory of the turmoil that engulfed
Saracens in 2019, when a series of historic cap breaches
incurred an unprecedented £5.36m fine and overall 105-point
deduction to take the club to the ragged edge of ruin, is meant
to serve as the ultimate deterrent. As Andrew Rogers, PRL’s cap
manager, put it last year: “There is a saying, ‘Never waste a
crisis’ – and that judgment against Saracens was a big
springboard to enhance the whole system.”
Advertisement
Faith in the system collapses, though, if the original judgment
is exposed as potentially flawed. That is the sobering reality
confronting English rugby after Telegraph Sport’s revelation of
an alleged undeclared conflict of interest at the centre of the
Saracens case, with auditor Saffery Champness having provided
“impartial expert advice” about the club at the same time as
working for rivals Sale Sharks. Nowhere was the problem of this
arrangement highlighted more vividly than in the case of Maro
Itoje, with Rogers using Saffery’s estimate of the “true market
value” of the future British and Irish Lions captain’s image
rights.
That decision would prove fateful: Saffery assessed the
valuation of these rights by PwC to be double what it should
have been, leading a disciplinary panel to conclude that
Saracens had exceeded the salary cap by £800,000, which
accounted for 88 per cent of their 2018-19 season overspend. Cue
a £2.4m fine. And yet if PRL had not depended on Saffery’s
interpretation, instead accepting PwC’s verdict on the shares’
value, Saracens’ breach of the regulations would, in the words
of their then solicitor Stevie Loughrey, have been “negligible”.
If an alleged conflict of interest had been fully disclosed at
the time, Saracens would have had a basis for contesting
Saffery’s assessment of both the Itoje rights and of Chris
Ashton’s co-investment deal with former chairman Nigel Wray.
After all, Ashton had moved from Saracens to join Sale,
Saffery’s clients, by the time of the investigation. A
successful appeal could have meant a drastic reduction in the
fine – a fine which, we can hardly forget, with the 12 remaining
Premiership stakeholding clubs each receiving £350,000 after
Saracens’ relegation.
Advertisement
Given that the Ashton matter added up to an alleged overspend in
2017-18 of more than £319,000, triggering an £800,000 fine,
there are sufficient grounds here to ask whether the club were
only in breach for one campaign, rather than three. That would
have led, in theory, to a much-diminished fine, while calming
the intense desire by other clubs to make an example out of
Saracens, whose 70-point docking in 2020 – on top of an original
35 – consigned them to the Championship.
The Saracens scandal is by far the most consequential salary cap
issue with which PRL has ever had to grapple. But today there
are troubling questions that go to the heart of how it was
handled. Saracens are not the only club to have breached the
cap: Harlequins also did so in 2019, by a relatively meagre
£12,479, which they claimed was the result of a systems error.
Leicester Tigers have been found guilty of three separate
historic breaches, albeit by lesser margins than Saracens,
drawing a cumulative fine of almost £347,000. Almost exactly the
same total, you will notice, as Leicester collected by virtue of
Saracens’ demotion. You could be forgiven for feeling that the
punishments are inconsistently applied.
Trust: that is the most precious commodity of all if the salary
cap is to work. Instead, the cap has bred suspicion, ever since
Saracens’ fate, that there is one rule for them and another rule
for everybody else. Bath, for instance, have long invited
scrutiny. “Anyone checking the Bath salary cap?” asked former
England fly-half Andy Goode, after the West Country side
contrived to add Henry Arundell and Santiago Carreras to their
behemoth of a squad last year, all while staying under a nominal
cap limit of £6.4m. There is no suggestion that Bath have been
anything other than shrewd in their business, with international
player credits and Finn Russell’s status as a “marquee” signing
stretching the limit to £8.5m. Still, the relative frugality of
other clubs suggests that a level playing field may merely be a
mirage. And this makes you wonder, ultimately, if the cap itself
is fit for purpose.
#Post#: 150256--------------------------------------------------
Re: Saracens salary cap punishment under scrutiny over new
evidence
DIR By: Scooter
Date: February 28, 2026, 12:57 am
---------------------------------------------------------
--- Quote from: DOK link ---
>
> Hmmm...if you see a fire, probably not a great idea to pour
petrol on it.
> If Saracens were that innocent, you'd have thought they'd have
happily opened their books for inspection.
> Positively insisted on it, in fact, to save a huge fine and
demotion.
>
--- End Quote ---
Saracens were willing to open their books as long as the other
clubs were willing to open theirs.
Given what you now know about the competency of the accountant
the other 11 clubs selected to massively undervalue Itoje's
image rights payment (originally valued by PwC) then it's quite
understandable they wanted other clubs to be measured by the
same standard.
#Post#: 150257--------------------------------------------------
Re: Saracens salary cap punishment under scrutiny over new
evidence
DIR By: deadlyfrom5yardsout
Date: February 28, 2026, 12:59 am
---------------------------------------------------------
If it walks like a duck, looks like a duck and quacks......
#Post#: 150260--------------------------------------------------
Re: Saracens salary cap punishment under scrutiny over new
evidence
DIR By: Scooter
Date: February 28, 2026, 1:34 am
---------------------------------------------------------
--- Quote from: deadlyfrom5yardsout link ---
>
> If it walks like a duck, looks like a duck and quacks......
>
--- End Quote ---
Good descriptor for the level of forensic work Saffery Champness
put into their work.
#Post#: 150261--------------------------------------------------
Re: Saracens salary cap punishment under scrutiny over new
evidence
DIR By: KiltedQuin
Date: February 28, 2026, 2:09 am
---------------------------------------------------------
--- Quote from: Scooter link ---
>
>
> Good descriptor for the level of forensic work Saffery
Champness put into their work.
>
--- End Quote ---
Saracens cheated by breaking the salary cap for several seasons.
Get over it and stop trying to justify it.
#Post#: 150262--------------------------------------------------
Re: Saracens salary cap punishment under scrutiny over new
evidence
DIR By: Scooter
Date: February 28, 2026, 2:50 am
---------------------------------------------------------
--- Quote from: KiltedQuin link ---
>
> Saracens cheated by breaking the salary cap for several
seasons. Get over it and stop trying to justify it.
>
--- End Quote ---
--- Quote ---
> Three Saracens directors, including Nigel Wray, had paid £1.6m
for a 30 per cent share in Itoje’s image rights, based on a
valuation given to them by PwC. However, Saffery told Andrew
Rogers, the PRL salary cap manager, that PwC’s valuation was
double what it should have been.
>
> Rogers’ use of Saffery’s “true market value” meant that
Saracens were deemed to have exceeded the salary cap by
£800,000, which represented the vast majority (88 per cent) of
the overspend for the 2018-19 season.
>
> However, that based on a conservative projected value using
current figures at Companies House, the 30 per cent share of
Itoje’s image rights company, Oghene Limited, is now worth
approximately £4.86m – six times the Saffery valuation.
--- End Quote ---
You've been lied to.
*****************************************************
Page 1 of 3
DIR Next Page