You cannot sign away your right to legal recourse if the RFL are breaking the law. The courts decision supersedes any and all conditions of RFL membership.

That same clause applies to SC as it would to things like racial and sexual discrimination. By signing that you do not absolve the RFL or the operational rules from adhering to the law.

There is a restraint on the person in both principle and practice. It does stop a player earning his market worth. If it didn't it would exist and certainly wouldn't be called a salary cap. You can't argue that it doesn't stop a player earning x amount just a club offering x amount because they amount to the same thing. If a club cannot offer x amount a player cannot earn it.

The defence of it wouldn't be that it wasn't a restraint of trade but that it was a reasonable one based on its effect on the market, players and fans, that it was procompetititve. A strong argument in theory can be made in favour of the SC on those basis. In practice, in RL, with our recent history, I think it would be a difficult one to make.

That's not true. You can sign away rights to legal recourse, an obvious example being COT3 settlement agreements between employers and employees. After an employee signs a COT3 they waive all rights to any further legal claims.

Similarly, the RFL is not compelled to accept Salford as a member. They have no legal right to membership of the RFL and can be expelled. People forget that the RFL isn't just the people at Red Hall, it is actually a collective of member clubs and by suing Salford would essentially be suing their fellow member clubs.

said employer is still bound by the law at all stages. If part of the process of the COT3 is unlawful it can be challenged.

Salford are a member. They have a contract with the RFL that forms the basis of their membership. They cannot have that membership withdrawn without good reason. Not breaking the law like the RFL wanted them to is not good reason

The salary cap in my view indisputably restricts both competition, and free movement of workers. So, would be held unlawful under EU law unless it can be justified. That in turn would depend on whether the salary cap rules are necessary to achieve a legitimate aim under EU law.

Therein would lie the argument.

If the aim of the SC was to improve competitive balance, then I think there would be some prospect of it being upheld. But the actual aim of the SC is, in a nutshell, mainly to stop clubs overspending and going bust (because it is directly linked to income) . Would that pass muster? .


It is arguable that it could, but ultimately IMHO the argument would be lost, as there are just too many obstacles to jump before the ECJ would make such a finding.

If you can get hold of it, do read a very good article titled "The Problem With Salary Caps Under European Union Law: The Case Against Financial Fair Play" by Johan Lindholm, which puts lots of flesh on these and other relevant arguments, and contains hundreds of references and authorities.

I agree pretty much entirely. It's not that a Salary Cap per se cannot be justified. I just don't think ours would be.

I'll keep a look out for it

LOL @ thinking the cap is a restraint of trade. There's a reason sports AROUND THE WORLD use them, if they weren't legal they'd have been picked apart decades ago.

Unless you can provide examples of when a player has literally been unable to play RL in this country due to no teams having the available salary cap space made available to teams by the RFL? If you can't then there's your answer to restraint of trade being a thing.

Lol indeed.

I take it you have no examples (with sources) of a Rugby League players ability to apply his trade in the UK being hindered by the salary cap then?

Every single player to have played for the last 15 years. Source. Being able to understand what the word cap means