Nigel Wood defends Rugby Football League (RFL)'s decision about Barrow Raiders
While talking to reporters on Saturday, October 8, Nigel Wood, the chief executive of Rugby Football League (RFL), has seconded RFL’s decision to punish Barrow Raiders for breaching the rules regarding payments of players.
The club had been in the RFL's eye for quite a while for breaching the salary cap rules. For that matter it was charged with a fine and an investigatory body was set up to dig the matter in detail.
In the wake of the investigations, RFL reached its decision about the club's future for breaching the operation rules. According to the tribunal's decison, the club had been relegated to the second tier Championship One after the deduction of 29 points,
the franchise had amassed during rugby League season 2009.
Also,the chairman of the club, has been banned from the world of rugby for eight years.
Wood is backing RFL's decision and according to him the punishment should be so severe that no other club musters up the courage to go for such extreme measures.
While commenting on the RFL's decision, Woods' stated, "Whilst it is unfortunate that Barrow sought to cheat in the way they did over such a sustained period of time and went to such lengths to hide this behaviour, this action demonstrates that the investigative
systems and checks we have in place do work. All the clubs are subjected to regular audits and we conduct frequent interviews with administrators and players to ensure the rules are applied."
He further added that some of the information that was provided by the club during investigation is still not making much sense, therefore evaluation is still going on for that.
Woods seconded the degree of sanctions that the club had to face and branded them necessary, "as a deterrent to any club or individual who might consider breaching the rules."
It was also clarified by Woods that the rules and regulations devised by the RFL, have to be respected by all clubs unanimously. This is very essential to keep the integrity of competition and the sport alive.
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