Parramatta Eels salary cap: Club could get below the cap in one move — but will board be willing?

THE Eels need to win just 12 of 15 games and be under the cap to make the playoffs. The solution is simple — but only if the board agree, writes PAUL KENT.

IF the Parramatta board is smart and humble, which you will get long odds about, admittedly, the Eels could be playing for competition points by their next game.

They could even make the finals.

Now we get to see how much the five potentially banned administrators — chairman Steve Sharp, deputy Tom Issa, director Peter Serraro, chief executive John Boulos and football manager Daniel Anderson — really care about their club.

Eels coach Brad Arthur talks to Anthony Watmough — whose retirement could save the season.

In the detail of the NRL’s preliminary sanctions against the club, chief executive Todd Greenberg confirmed that once the Eels get themselves below the salary cap they can begin playing for competition points again.

The Eels need to win just 12 of their final 15 games and be under the cap to make the playoffs.

It is achievable. And the solution is surprisingly simple.

The Eels are $570,000 over the salary cap this season, despite weeks of claims their salary cap sins were confined to prior seasons.

Before they all agree to resign, the board should first agree to pay out Anthony Watmough’s contract under the NRL’s new career-ending insurance scheme.

Under the scheme, Watmough is retired and his full contract ending in 2018 is paid out. The Eels then seek to recoup the payment through insurance.

They have already put a submission to the NRL’s insurer in the early rounds of this season, several weeks after details began to emerge that Parramatta was cheating the salary cap.

But the insurer does not have to pay. It could look at Watmough’s dodgy knee, as worn as a baldy tyre, and declare it a previously consisting injury and give the Eels nothing.

But the Eels can accept the remainder of the contract themselves and pay it from their own account.

It would be their farewell gift.

Watmough’s $750,000 contract would immediately come off the salary cap making the club legal by the time they run out to play South Sydney in nine days.

It will be an expensive decision. The Eels would have to pay all Watmough’s contract plus 50 per cent for 2019.

Good news, though, it is completely legal under what could fast be a major headache of a loophole for the game, but it would work.

What would remain is for Parramatta to apply to salary cap auditor Jamie L’Oste Brown to have Watmough’s payment kept out of the salary cap.

Former Eel Will Hopoate could offer the club another route to get under the cap.

The other lucky break for Parramatta is Will Hopoate’s contract dispute currently before the courts.

An NRL spokesman said on Tuesday that any money awarded in court to Hopoate will be paid as compensation, not wages, and so not included in the salary cap.

With Watmough and Hopoate’s salaries off the cap it all become comfortably legal.

Swift action from the Eels, and full disclosure, would almost certainly see them receive favourable treatment. But would the Eels’ board agree to that?

No.

Refusing to accept the NRL’s decision, the Eels were in the Supreme Court on Tuesday seeking an injunction to delay any decision.

They appear to be in ultimate denial, already manoeuvring to shift blame to past employees. Steve Sharp claims he will resign to save the team but stops short of doing it.

It is disastrous for the Eels’ finals chances.

Next week they would need to win 12 from 15. If the board meanders for another week it will become 12 from 14.

They are already playing in the margins.