Warriors rubbish reports of salary cap issues

Sam Tomkins shows his disappointment while Dragons players celebrate a try on Saturday. Photo / Getty Images

Warriors managing director Jim Doyle has rubbished suggestions the club is in danger of exceeding the salary cap and says they are currently realigning their roster to enable them to recruit better players.

Doyle described a report by Sydney's Triple M radio, which said the club was looking to offload players, including Sione Lousi, before next year to ensure they remain under the cap, as "a lot of nonsense".

The story also claimed the Warriors had signed Roger Tuivasa-Sheck "on massive money" for next season and said the Sydney Roosters probably aren't "overly happy that the club's gone and signed someone, stolen one of their players and now they find themselves over the cap for next year."

Doyle was adamant the Warriors were under the cap prior to signing the Kiwis international, who is a straight replacement for outgoing fullback Sam Tomkins, and said the pending departure of other players had helped improve their spending power.

"It's a lot of nonsense. First and foremost the club hasn't really spent up to the salary cap before so that would mean there is space left," said Doyle.

"Sam Tomkins is going and Roger Tuivasa-Sheck is coming in and theoretically you've actually used none of your salary cap because one is going out and the one is coming in. And with people like Sam Rapira going at the end of the year, plus others, we've still got space now.

"We're realigning our roster so that we can get better players, not to release our salary cap. We'll have a lot of players who will go between this year and next year but that's to allow us to get better players."

Doyle explained the decision to let players go was made in the interest of improving the club's fortunes after failing to make the top eight since the Warriors played in the 2011 grand final.

"We haven't made the eight in the last three years and we're obviously under pressure this year, so you do the same thing with the same people you get the same results," he said.

"And the results are not good enough so that's why we're realigning our roster, not because of salary cap stuff."

With Tuivasa-Sheck and Issac Luke already signed for 2014, Warriors coach Andrew McFadden is also searching for another experienced back to fill a similar role to steady and reliable centre-winger Jonathan Wright.

"We just need to keep getting more quality people and more quality players around," McFadden told Radio Sport yesterday.

"We're going to have probably no less than 11 players leave our squad next year and we've definitely got to change things up.

"We're looking for another Jono Wright and we're still looking for some quality as well but we've just got to make sure that it's the right one. We're not going to make any knee-jerk reactions."