It looks like the recent changes to the Premiership Rugby salary cap have come just in time for Bath Rugby.
Last month's alterations to the wage restrictions mean that, from the 2015-16 season onwards, the two highest paid players at a club can be placed outside the cap. As a result, those players can - in principle - be paid as much as Wayne Rooney. Or Bill Gates, for that matter.
This season, the salary cap regulations allow for just one player to be placed outside the cap.
Bath executive chairman Bruce Craig has made no secret of his plans to bring more world-class players to The Rec following next autumn's World Cup, and Australia scrum-half Will Genia has long been linked with a move to Bath.
Genia has now fanned the flames of expectation with words that were high-grade petroleum to the highly inflammable terrain of rugby speculation.
In an interview in his native country, Genia all but said that he would be coming to Bath come hell or high water. That's how I read his words to the The Courier Mail, anyway.
The changes to the cap announced in September would certainly facilitate such a move.
And when Toulon's Steffon Armitage – the European Rugby Cup Player of the Year – was this week seeking to zip back over the Channel prior to the World Cup, Bath were at the front of the queue.
Bath and Craig pulled off a colossal coup by signing Sam Burgess from the South Sydney Rabbitohs, and it would be no surprise if, ahem, another rabbit or two is pulled out of the chairman's hat.
The cap has its critics – but Bath seem to be outmanoeuvring most when it comes to using the ever-changing restrictions to their advantage.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From financial discipline to on-the-pitch discipline.
Bath didn't exactly do a Ben Flower on Sunday, but to lose three men to the sin-bin in 10 minutes against Wasps was a rare achievement indeed.
One man in the bin makes life hard enough, particularly away from home. Two looks careless. Three? An abomination, frankly.
The contrast with some of Bath's previous games is intriguing, because the team has been ultra-disciplined at times so far this season. Against Leicester, they conceded just one penalty in the opening half.
Sunday's ill-discipline catapulted Bath to the frosty summit of this season's Yellow Card table, with six sin-binnings in six matches.
And the side with the fewest yellow cards so far this season? Why, that's Northampton - the team that just happens to be at the top of the table. A coincidence? Surely not.
