Darren Childs, chief executive of Premiership Rugby: "The decision will show that Premiership Rugby has taken firm action to enforce the regulations and our management of the salary cap has been endorsed by the panel"
Thursday 23 January 2020 13:15, UK
Saracens "continuously and recklessly failed to comply with its obligations to co-operate" with salary cap rules, a report has said.
Premiership Rugby has published the disciplinary report into Saracens' salary cap, and the club has accepted the verdict with no objections.
It was announced last weekend the reigning English and European champions will be relegated from the Premiership at the end of this season in response to their failure to comply with salary cap regulations for the current campaign.
They were docked 35 league points and fined £5.36m in November for breaking the salary cap in the 2016-17, 2017-18 and 2018-19 seasons, but the dossier of an investigation led by Lord Dyson into those breaches has so far not been released.
The report has been adjusted to "omit the names of players and other information that could be used to identify individuals", with a PRL statement adding that "no other information has since been redacted from the report".
It covers the breaches for the last three seasons and not the 2019-20 campaign, for which Saracens have been relegated from the Premiership for breaching the salary cap once again.
In a summary of the decision, the panel said Saracens "continuously and recklessly failed to comply with its obligations to co-operate with the SCM (salary cap manager).
"This failure was all the more serious because in 2015 Saracens settled an earlier charge by PRL of failing to co-operate with the SCM."
Also, the breaches for 2016-17 and 2018-19 were "several and not isolated and involved Saracens massively exceeding the cap for these two years".
Addressing the Saracens official website on Wednesday, the club's chairman Neil Golding said: "With regards to the publication of the disciplinary panel's full report, I am surprised by the suggestion that Saracens are objecting to the publication of the report.
"Since my appointment on January 9, I have spent considerable time in discussions with PRL [Premiership Rugby Limited] and nobody has asked me what my position is on the matter.
"To confirm, we are keen for the report to be published in full, and I made PRL aware of this earlier today. It will provide much needed context and clarity."
Reflecting on the situation, Golding, who succeeded Nigel Wray as Saracens chairman, added: "Prior to my time here, there were discussions with PRL in relation to conducting a mid-season audit spanning several seasons.
"It would be fair to say that other PRL stakeholders were sceptical about our compliance with such an audit. We carefully considered the option of a full investigatory audit.
"However, that inevitably would have involved a long period of more financial and emotional strain, and this, in turn, meant this was not a viable option for us."
