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I'd love this to play out for a few more weeks now. The journos have really played all their cards and have nothing left!
PARRAMATTA captain Kieran Foran has praised his players’ ability to keep winning despite the threat of losing competition points, saying of the salary cap saga: “It really is nothing to us”.
Parramatta’s Anthony Watmough request a test for NRL CEO Todd Greenberg
ONE of the great reasons Todd Greenberg was appointed chief executive was because, to quote, he “knew football”.
Now comes the test.
The NRL is considering whether to permit Parramatta’s request for Anthony Watmough to retire and collect career-ending insurance.
It would mean the remaining three years of Watmough’s four-year deal with Parramatta, including this season where he is yet to appear, would be paid out in full but not included in the salary cap.
Around the game the clubs are watching, interested and ready. The potential implications of an insurance payout will be monumental, and they know it.
For those who dispute this, let’s remember the circumstances Watmough arrived at Parramatta. In football terms.
He was offered a four-year deal that dwarfed everything Manly could offer.
They privately wondered how he would ever see the deal out and were not prepared to risk Watmough’s troublesome knee lasting four more seasons as Parramatta were.
Anthony Watmough watches on from the sidelines. Picture: Gregg Porteous
So Watmough became the first link to break the chain, leaving a close bond of premiership winners as others, like Glenn Stewart and Kieran Foran, also left.
You could argue Watmough’s presence at Parramatta was an added encouragement for Foran to link with the club.
It left Manly in a rebuild. They admit they had to pay overs to retain Daly Cherry-Evans, offering the longest contract, and therefore job security, in the game’s history.
Alas, as Manly believed, Watmough’s knee was hurting and so they saved themselves the burden of an injured player on their salary cap. The Eels claim, though, that Watmough suffered fresh injury to it over the summer and therefore it was not pre-existing.
So it’s off for assessment.
If Watmough’s injury is approved the Eels will pay him out and claim it under ­career-ending insurance. The moment the injury is claimed, and therefore excluded from the salary cap, every NRL club will search for players not far off retirement.
Kieran Foran left Manly and joined Anthony Watmough at Parramatta. Picture: Gregg Porteous
A simple offer will be put to them. They will offer low-end money up front with a balloon payment in the final two contracted years. Under the current agreement, insurance covers the final two years of a playing contract up to $500,000 a year. It will also pay 75 per cent of it for a season beyond the contract end.
Few clubs will care about the amounts because they know they will never have to pay it or count it against their salary cap — because it will be written off under insurance.
It won’t be hard to prove. There is hardly a player in the game not carrying some sort of chronic injury. But it will get the player at their club for the short term, which might be enough to turn the club around.
Let’s remember, Watmough’s arrival at Parramatta certainly encouraged others to think blue and gold. Talk to Manly fans watching Foran on Thursday night.
Such a move has the capacity to distort the salary cap completely out of shape.
Manly signed Daly Cherry-Evans to the longest contract in the game’s history. Picture: Gregg Porteous
Until now, when players began to age, a club’s best action would be to do what they all do, which was try to offload him to the English Super League at a reduced contract and be encumbered with just a percentage of his contract on the cap, offsetting the rest in England. Not anymore.
Every NRL contract is now guaranteed for its duration. If a player retires prematurely through injury it puts the onus on the club to recoup their money from the insurer.
Poor clubs cannot afford to risk an extra half million dollars a year on a player who might not pass the insurance test.
Rich clubs can though. And they will.
They already are stocked full of ways to navigate the cap. Many already use ex-players in ambassador roles, not because they are ­particularly friendly with the sponsors but because it is a way to delay contract payments on the cap but still reward the player.
You need to look at this for only five minutes to see we now have another way to test the cap.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sp...g/news-story/1c49ab5bd30fe893acda4157c32f6335
