Leicester are set to lose a second high-profile player to rivals Bath with Sam Vesty set to join Lewis Moody at The Rec next season. Tigers chief executive Peter Wheeler is resigned to the loss and says the Guinness Premiership salary cap constraints hinder player retention - he talks to Paul Rees in The Guardian.
"Leicester fans have expressed concern at the loss of two players who have spent their senior careers with the club and have questioned whether the Tigers have been financially constrained by building the £14m Caterpillar Stand, which was opened earlier this season.
"The new stand was a big commitment and it will take time for it to come to its potential," the Leicester chief executive, Peter Wheeler, said. "We are pleased with how our gates have picked up but we are not selling out every week, as we did before. It will not be too long before we do. We can only spend on wages what the cap allows and that also goes for our academy. We are not the only club that feels the cap is more trouble than it is worth. It is costly to police and administering it takes a lot of time. The benefits of it are not definable apart from an evenly based league in which any one team can beat any other on a given day.
"We also have to think about Europe. England only has one team in this weekend's Heineken Cup quarter-finals and while that is not a concern as a one-off, it would be if it happened again next season. Having a cap makes it more difficult to hold on to players and while you would like to keep someone like Lewis Moody for all his career, the cap means they can often get better wages elsewhere."
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