Wests Tigers have today accepted the sanctions handed down by the NRL in relation to the Ambassador agreement.
The club accept that it made an error in not declaring the agreement as part of the salary cap. While maintaining that it was not its intention to breach the salary cap, the club has confirmed the agreement should have been declared.
Wests Tigers has been fined $375,000 (with a further $375,000 suspended) and a salary cap penalty of $639,800 will be applied to the Wests Tigers over 2019 and 2020, meaning the club will lose $319,900 of its cap each year.
In addition, Wests Tigers CEO Justin Pascoe has been suspended for six months, backdated to December 19, 2018.
The Board of Wests Tigers has accepted these final actions and said that the club looked forward to moving on from this issue with the start of the 2019 season just two weeks away.
“Our initial instinct that the club had not breached the cap was not correct after assessing all of the compiled evidence alongside the NRL rules. We now accept that we should have declared the Ambassador agreement as part of the salary cap.
“We apologise to the NRL for our initial response.
“We look forward to welcoming back our CEO Justin Pascoe in June and would like to acknowledge the strain this has placed on him and his family. Their wellbeing has been a priority throughout this process, and we will continue to provide them with the necessary support.”
“We'd also like to take this chance to thank all of our Corporate Partners, Members, fans and sections of the media for the overwhelming support, both public and private, that we have received through this period.
"Wests Tigers is an extremely proud and united club and we are all very confident that we can put this matter behind us and have a successful season in 2019.”
