Parramatta Eels must offload one more player to fit under salary cap before Friday’s game with Rabbitohs
18 minutes ago
Christian NicolussiThe Daily Telegraph
PARRAMATTA will have to offload one more player to fit under the salary cap and be free to play for competition points against South Sydney on Friday night.
The Daily Telegraph can reveal Anthony Watmough’s potential retirement payout, along with Ryan Morgan’s recent move to Melbourne, still looks set to leave the Eels short of the $570,000 they must shed to be salary cap compliant.
Eels consultant Ian Schubert met with the NRL on Monday and emerged two-and-a-half hours later to declare Parramatta would be salary cap compliant by Friday’s game.
“Most certainly the club will be cap compliant. We’ll have a full capacity on Friday night and we’ll be playing for points,” he said.
Schubert unsuccessfully argued the $570,000 the Eels had exceeded the cap was an inflated figure.
He will now come back to the NRL with a final proposal, as early as Tuesday, but more likely Wednesday, as to how the Eels will make it work.
While Morgan’s move south knocked off $70,000 from the Eels’ cap, the sticking point remains Watmough’s mega deal and how far his payout is backdated.
If Watmough was paid out from the start of the year, the Eels would become cap compliant.
But Watmough was still training with the Eels until suffering a knee injury in February, and documents for his enforced retirement were not officially lodged by the club with the NRL until last week, just after they were hit hard for their cap breaches.
It’s believed Watmough’s payout will wipe between $400,000 and $450,000 from the cap, which will still leave the Eels with a shortfall. That will determine whether the Eels need to release a top-line star or a second-tier player.
The club will not only need to identify that player, but also secure them a suitable home by Friday’s deadline, the same day the club host South Sydney at a packed Pirtek Stadium.
“There’s a number of options we have to consider,” a source close to the Eels said.
Schubert refused to discuss specifically about his meeting with former understudy L’Oste and Weeks.
“The club’s very confident we can get to where we need to be for this weekend,” he said.
“We’ve got a little bit of homework to do, throw some numbers up in the air and see what happens. It’s a matter of understanding where the NRL comes from as much the NRL’s understanding of where the clubs come from and the difficulty of trying to manage the cap.”
Consultant Ian Schubert will meetwith the NRL again this week to sort the situation.
Meanwhile, Tim Mannah will be ruled out of Friday night’s game with an ongoing shoulder injury. But, barnstorming backrower Tepai Moeroa will come back into the side after missing the last-start win over Canterbury on April 29.
The Eels are still without captain Keiran Foran, who is still seeking treatment for personal issues following a relationship breakdown.
Centre Brad Takairangi filled in admirably in the Eels’ 20-12 round-nine victory
