Sale Sharks’ co-owner Simon Orange gave a valuable insight on the issue of the Premiership salary cap yesterday, explaining how easy it is for clubs to get around it.
Asked if it was easy to get round the salary cap, Orange replied candidly: “Of course it is. I am sure they [the Premiership auditors] have an investigative team but if they said to me, we want to check CorpArq’s books [his company] , I’ve got nothing to hide but I’d still tell them ‘no’.
“The truth of the matter is if you wanted to do it, it’s easy to do. I am involved in 30 different companies and if any of those companies decided to pay the players or employ their wives… I am not saying nobody could find out but the audit wouldn’t find out.
“I don’t know [if every club is playing by the rules] but I know I have got 34 players and I’m struggling and others have 48 quality players and aren’t [struggling] so I suspect we’re not all the way there yet. But I’m pretty confident we will get there.”