It is understood the Tigers have $700,000 of space in their cap and are actively trying to recruit Souths winger Robert Jennings. Forward Zane Musgrove's future at the club is uncertain after he was charged with the alleged indecent assault of a 22-year-old woman in Coogee last month.

As revealed by the Herald earlier this week, the Tigers were bracing themselves for a heavy reprimand following a two-month investigation by the NRL's integrity unit into the Farah deal.

But nobody in Tiger land expected Pascoe to lose his job – not least because other members of the board, including Go, were aware of the deal.

They have until the end of January to respond.

"We do not accept the allegations outlined in the breach notice," Go said. "We reject that the club has breached the NRL rules or that our conduct warrants the sanctions proposed. The breach notice relates to events that occurred some time ago, in relation to an ambassador role for Robbie post-retirement. The arrangement was entered into years after his playing contract had been signed and had nothing to do with Robbie's playing commitments. The club derived no competitive advantage from the arrangement."

Pascoe has told the NRL he offered the ambassador role to Farah during the former NSW hooker's ugly departure to Souths in early 2017. It was considered a goodwill gesture as Farah was squeezed out because of a fallout with coach Jason Taylor.

As far as the NRL is concerned, the Tigers and Pascoe breached salary-cap rules because they did not disclose the arrangement.

There is no suggestion that Farah or his agent, Sam Ayoub, have done anything wrong.

"When a player leaves your club, you have to declare and disclose the entire remuneration," Greenberg said. "On this occasion, a significant portion was not disclosed to the salary cap auditor."

What also raised the NRL's suspicions was that the Tigers had asked for salary-cap relief after having to pay out almost $1 million to Farah after he signed with Souths because the Tigers claimed he had been "destabilising influence".

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"There's a provision in our rules that enable clubs in circumstances when they move players on for reputational reasons to apply to the NRL to have money excluded from the salary cap," NRL chief operating officer Nick Weeks said. "After Robbie left, and the club paid him money that was owed to him under his contract, they approached us to exclude some of those payments on the basis that Robbie was a destabilising influence on the club.

"What they didn't disclose is that the club had earlier entered into an ambassador agreement to bring him back. On our assessment of that, that's misleading. We put that to the club, and we've asked them to give an explanation. That's the contradiction we're struggling to understand."