Third party agreements are hard to police and easy to rort, writes Paul Kent
PAUL KENT, The Daily Telegraph
December 1, 2017 10:24pm
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JAMES Maloney spoke with the blunt candour he is famous for but, with each syllable, the dollars fell away.
This was some weeks back. Matt Moylan had signed with Cronulla and everybody was waiting for Maloney to confirm his trade to Penrith. Maloney turned up to speak as his part of the Australian camp.
Asked why the holdup on announcing he was going to Penrith, he took a machete to the deal.
“I think they’re just trying to pass a third party or something. The contract’s not quite sorted yet, so when it is I can sign on that line,” Maloney said.
The money fell at his feet like dry leaves. Maloney was waiting for the $200,000 Keno sponsorship to switch from Moylan to him.
Maloney is an ambassador and spokesman for the rights of the Rugby League Players Association and so clearly knows the entitlements of players. He might need a little brushing up on what they’re not entitled to, though.
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Clubs are not allowed to organise third party sponsorships, as Maloney was waiting on Penrith to do.
This is exactly what is wrong with third party deals. Small bells chimed inside NRL headquarters as it seemed there was indirect proof that some third party deals are club driven, over and above the salary cap, rather than player driven. If Keno was truly interested in Moylan, not the Panthers, why didn’t the sponsorship follow him to Cronulla instead of staying at Penrith?
Third parties have become such a river of gold that clubs are now guiding prospective sponsors towards sponsoring players instead of clubs.
Maloney got caught obeying that old notion that goes something like if everybody is on the secret then it is really no secret at all, and so he spoke openly and too honestly.
Penrith has yet to lodge the contract but a resolution of sorts was reached last week when the Panthers privately told the NRL it won’t proceed with the sponsorship when the contract is lodged.
Yet no word of an investigation into the Moylan-Keno deal.
To create room in the cap for Maloney, Penrith released Leilani Latu on Thursday. “He has been tremendous for our club and his release from Panthers is purely a salary cap management decision,” football boss Phil Gould said.
Maloney’s honesty is the great truth in the NRL, though. Third party sponsorships are difficult to police and easy to rort. They were originally brought in because clubs argued that legitimate sponsors and therefore legitimate money was being kept away from the game because of the code’s laws against personal sponsors.
The argument grew when the NRL knocked back St George Bank’s approach to personally sponsor Trent Barrett. The bank was the Dragons major sponsor at the time.
NRL chief executive Todd Greenberg remains satisfied with their value. He argues with some merit that he does not want to prevent players earning money outside the game.
A lot has changed since the bank went after Barrett. The salary cap is almost triple. The money players command in third parties is a fraction of what they earn in contract money.
The money is big enough to be worth the risk but not big enough to make a difference. So, are the third parties worth the ills they create?
They destroy any notion the salary cap levels the competition. Some clubs have many more third party deals than others, making the cap redundant.
They encourage cheating, a public disaster that costs the game millions when teams are caught.
In August the last brief on 11 player managers alleged to have helped Parramatta cheat the salary cap was lodged at NRL headquarters. Evidence on one manager runs to more than 900 pages. Thousands of pages of evidence have been accumulated against all 11. Emails and text messages and deals.
The briefs have sat in at NRL headquarters. It is not the NRL’s job to prosecute. That’s for the Rugby League Accredited Player Agent Scheme but it was waiting for financial protection from the NRL.
When Melbourne got busted in 2010, two of the three managers took it to court and it ran to more than $400,000 before the managers finally lost and had to pay costs. The committee has no financial protection so asked the ARL Commission to indemnify them against possible legal action before pursuing action.
This goes to the heart of the game’s problems; as the salary cap seeks to level the spending, the third party payments bend them out of shape again.
Yet for months the briefs against managers have sat in at NRL headquarters, making many wonder why.
Some time ago a whisper went around that several managers who should not even bother turning up to defend themselves, such is the weight of evidence against them, are preparing to fight dirty.
If they get called in to tell their secrets of what happened at Parramatta, they will tell all their secrets.
Others clubs, other officials … all the secrets. Plenty got nervous.
Such an investigation, thorough and proper, might have the effect of a royal commission. A cleansing, an opportunity to begin again. But who is game to go down the rabbit hole?
Ten days ago the ARL Commission discussed indemnifying the committee. It would be easy to deny the agents scheme their indemnity to prevent potential heartache.
They decided the evidence was strong enough to support sanctions against several managers and action will proceed.
And so we wait.
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