THE fall-out from the Salford losing their salary cap appeal has generated a debate that goes way beyond what the future holds for Marwan Koukash and his Red Devils.

The decision to dock the club six points and fine them £5,000, after they were found guilty of breaching the salary cap in the 2014 and 2015 seasons, was upheld by independent body Sports Resolutions last week.

The tribunal found Salford guilty of seeking to avoid declaring payments made to Tony Puletua by entering into a contract with the player via another company associated with the club.

And they were also punished for the non-declaration of benefits to Lami Tasi and Theo Fages.

The shenanigans over the issue has led to some to call for another look at the salary cap, with, among others, Sky Sports pundit Phil Clarke calling for it to be scrapped.

The former Wigan loose forward concluded this week: “As a neutral observer who hasn’t seen the evidence, I would say it just looks embarrassing for the sport. We do not appear capable of monitoring the cap so I would vote to get rid of it - it is time to scrap the salary cap.”

Let’s look at the facts.

The Salary Cap allows Super League clubs a maximum spend of £1.825m on their top squad of 25 players, or in the case of Catalans Dragons €2.3m.

That cap includes all benefits too, whether that is accommodation or payments to wives, and it also counts payments directly from sponsors or businesses close to the club.

On top of that cap limit each club is now allowed to spend extra on their one marquee player.

When the salary cap was brought in 1999 it was for two primary reasons.

The first was to basically ensure that one or two clubs do not monopolise all the best talent, meaning quality players are distributed more evenly across all 12 clubs.

The other was to stop clubs from living beyond their means and save them from being over ambitious.

Maybe the two go together – whenever discussions about scrapping salary cap come up it is always worth recalling the years between 1988-95 when Wigan monopolised the Challenge Cup and took the lion’s share of all the other pots too.

It killed the game – because Wigan had cottoned on pretty early that if they got a winning Wigan side then the fans would pack Central Park to the rafters.

That in turn meant they had more money in the coffers for signings and so the cycle continued.

They ended up buying players that they did not even need.

Some, mostly in Wigan, would say that this was their reward for success and ‘if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em.’

Well Widnes did try to join em, but that didn’t end well. The Chemics, as they then were, scoured the world for talent in an attempt to challenge Wigan in the 80s and early 90s, but finally came unstuck under the financial strain which led to them becoming a selling club before going belly up ahead of the start of Super League.

People have been itching for a cap increase or its abolition intermittently. And there were a few echoing that after the NRL clubs, where the cap is much higher, whitewashed Super League for the second year running in the World Series.

And when the latest league player has a dabble with the XV-man code the murmuring begins again.

On that front it is barely a trickle, so that should not influence anyone’s decision on this subject.

Which players do advocates think would still be playing Super League had there been no salary cap or a much higher one?

James Graham would have still gone to the NRL, in all likelihood Sam Burgess and his siblings too would not have been persuaded to stay in the northern hemisphere.

As for union, it is probable that some have switched codes as much for the profile and career opportunities as much as the money.

The sad truth is Super League cannot get into an arms race with rugby union and the NRL and spend money it has not got.

Some will argue that if clubs have sugar daddies willing to pour money into a club, who are we to stop them?

But that ripping up of the established order by essentially buying a team’s success would wreck the game in two ways.

The first would be the knock on effect it would have on prudent clubs, who have built their support base and invested accordingly, not simply on the top team, but the junior set up beneath it.

Sadly, if the salary cap was scrapped I doubt it would deepen the quality of the playing pool by much.

Sure, English clubs would be able to bring in more quality Australians, like they did in the early noughties when Lyon, Fairleigh, Renouf, Barrett and Johns lit up the comp.

But most of the current players, for good or ill, would simply get a wage rise.

An overall consequence would be a return to an uncompetitive Super League, whereby half the fixtures are foregone conclusions because the richer clubs would cream off all the best players from the clubs below.

Maybe one concession in the debate should be to reward clubs that grow their own, so a portion of the salaries of homegrown players like Jonny Lomax or James Roby, for example, become exempt from the cap.

Provided, of course, clubs can do so without heading for financial ruin.

This would encourage good practice across all clubs, not simply those with a rich benefactor who would happily sit back and pluck starlets from a nursery they have done little to top up themselves.