Exactly, Dreary!
This is from today's SMH:
North Queensland chief executive Denis Keeffe has predicted the Players Association will eventually forgo the right to take a draft to court in exchange for a guaranteed share of the NRL's income.
Speaking after the Cowboys beat Parramatta 28-6 at Dairy Farmers Stadium on Saturday night, Keeffe also said there would be an external draft in place by 2006.
"A draft is inevitable, it must come into our game," he told Townsville radio station 4TO. "The first step has been taken with the CBA [Collective Bargaining Agreement]. [a draft] is legally a restraint of trade and we have to get the players to agree not to contest it."
Interviewed later by the Herald, Keeffe said: "The players have to be given a guaranteed percentage of the turnover of the game. Once we settle on that figure, what they do in return is undertake not to take the draft to court. That is the way every major professional sporting competition in the world is going and it's the one thing we are missing at the moment."
Keeffe said he expected there to be an external draft for players coming into the NRL in two years' time. He said it would "combine an open draft and a territorial draft".
"Each club would be able to nominate five players from their territory which they have first rights on and after that it would be an open draft," he said. "We have two clubs with no development at all - Melbourne and the Roosters. They will have to be given territories."
When Keeffe's comments were put to Gallop in Newcastle yesterday, he said the only proposal currently on the drawing board was the territorial draft.
"There is a panel working on that," he said. "An internal draft is not on the agenda at this time."
