Would a salary cap free-for-all clean out the NRL's dead wood?
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One of the so-called "Doomsday Scenarios" regarding the salary cap for 2018 is that there will be none.
The NRL headlines this week have surrounded player transfers. Cooper Cronk quitting Melbourne apparently trended worldwide on Twitter – although he does have a name which makes mentions easy to track.
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One of the so-called "Doomsday Scenarios" regarding the salary cap for 2018 is that there will be none.
The NRL headlines this week have surrounded player transfers. Cooper Cronk quitting Melbourne apparently trended worldwide on Twitter – although he does have a name which makes mentions easy to track.
- Luke Brooks has re-signed with Wests Tigers. There are eight and a half Sydney clubs and the sixes and sevens at all of them are at ... sixes and sevens over their futures.
But long after all the personalities – even Cronk – fade into history, the next eight months could be remembered as a turning point for not just the player market but the entire competition. In case you're not across it, the NRL has proposed an $8.85 million salary cap for 2018 and some clubs have already budgeted – even committed – to up to $10 million.
The root of the problem is that the NRL promised all the clubs 130 per cent of the salary cap. So, as you'll be aware if you've been following this, it's in League Central's interests to keep the salary cap as low as possible.
If the solution next year is to allow all clubs to honour their commitments – a similar official blind eye that helped St George Illawarra and Melbourne accommodate orphaned players at the end of the '90s and led to them playing each other in the 1999 grand final – I am not convinced we'll ever get the salary cap back.
Many clubs have been searching for a gap in the fence, a hole at the back of the cap, and if they got through it once they would never be evicted.
Discord has always been a staunch defender of the salary cap, pointing out that we have suburbs playing, in one case, an entire country and that we need artificial barriers to have a meaningful competition in our small, divided market. I would never object to the salary cap on the same basis as colleague Peter FitzSimons; professional sport is not for the players, it's for the fans and the imperative to attract more viewers and more participants.
But looking around the attendances so far this season – yes, I know it's been raining – I'm starting to wonder if a free for all, survival of the fittest scenario might not bring the NRL kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Sure, you may be loyal to your club first but if you landed here from Mars – or New York – would you not be stunned about such an elite competition, with a $2 billion TV rights deal, being played among Sydney suburbs in front of empty seats?
Where are the market forces? That, after all, is what Ken Arthurson and John Quayle intended in 1995 when they brought in North Queensland, South Queensland, Perth and the Warriors – law of the jungle. Then, that very weekend, Super League came in and it became law of the boardroom.
All three attempted joint ventures since have involved ARL clubs. Aside from Perth, all of the clubs who sided with News Corporation in '95 have survived as stand-alone entities.
A situation in which Brisbane and Sydney Roosters, as an example, are allowed to flog their opponents for a few years might force the sport to make some of the tough decisions it needs to future-proof itself against the incursions of global sporting brands like Premier League and the NFL and the generational planning of the AFL.
Lopsided results and impending bankruptcy might be the only way we make those calls: expansion, relocation, further amalgamation and even closures. Otherwise, it's just one big cartel where no one wants to share the loot for the greater good of the business.
At the very least, it's intriguing to extrapolate what would happen if there was no salary cap next year, then what would happen the year after and the year after that.
Who would flourish? Who would flounder? What decisions would endangered clubs make to survive?
- Interesting to see how this plays out.
