http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/nrl/were-selling-our-soul/story-e6frext9-1225893319275
We're selling our soul
By Ricky Stuart From: The Sunday Telegraph July 17, 2010 12:00AM
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WHO knows when it started spiralling out of control? Away from what we used to know.
It first struck me back when I was coaching the Roosters and Craig Fitzgibbon, one of the great warriors, was practising his goalkicking after training.
"Hey," one of our young players yelled at him, "kick us one of your balls."
Fitzy gave him a look that suggested he would rather rip his arm off and slap some sense into him with it.
Maybe he should have, in hindsight. Respect and responsibility are missing from too many of our young players today.
In some respects it's not their fault. It's ours. We give them too much money. We bring them into first grade too early.
We allow them to believe they are better than they really are because so much of playing first-grade football is about confidence and we need them to be confident in our team.
In every sense they are professionals.
In every sense but the right sense.
We have abused the word professional in modern rugby league.
A kid shows some application for five minutes in a game on Sunday afternoon and we applaud him for being professional. He makes a play that brings us to our feet and we say it's because he's so professional.
We carry on like this when those of us who have been around for more than five minutes know that professionals don't clock off.
Professionals are men like Craig Fitzgibbon, there after training practising his skills well after the unprofessional players have gone home. Some time ago it changed.
I believe the reason it changed is because of the salary cap and the pressure it brings on how clubs are forced to spend their money.
Because of that pressure we are not spending what money we have the correct way.
The problem then affects us in two vital areas.
It's relevant now because of last week's events surrounding Melbourne's salary cap fiasco.
I have heard a lot of argument about the salary cap and how it promotes cheating, and how if we bring in concessions it will stop the need to cheat.
What I believe is we are not spending our money the right way as football clubs.
The nature of the salary cap means clubs have to compete harder for young players, in order to get the best young kids we can at our clubs and make it harder for other clubs to then come and poach them.
It means a lot of kids today, who don't play regular first-grade football, are earning six-figure contracts and living what I would call a privileged life as a "professional" player.
That's the first problem with the cap. Too many kids have it too easy, too early.
They fail to learn respect and responsibility. And with that we get what we had in the case of the young kid with Fitzgibbon, where a young kid who should still be playing first grade now has long disappeared from the game.
It all came too easy for him, and when the time came for him to put up he didn't have it in him.
The other problem is bigger.
Forced to spend so much money on our kids, it quickly eats into what we have available for players at the other end of their careers.
We still find the money to pay our marquee players, the likes of Darren Lockyer and Johnathan Thurston and Billy Slater, because we need those players to be successful.
Where we struggle is for the players who are about the same age but aren't match-winners, in the true sense.
It forces coaches to make a tough decision.
Do I take the old-timer for $130,000 a year, with perhaps just a season or maybe two in him, or do I put that money into a young kid and hope he kicks on to be something special?
Nearly every young player needs three years training and playing at NRL level to finally become a first-grader.
Most coaches will put the money into the kid, because that has the potential for the greater pay-off down the track.
But what this has done to our competition is strip it of the older, experienced players who bring benefits which we are only now beginning to realise are no longer there. They bring stability and mentoring for our young players.
We hear a lot about how exciting the game is today.
While the modern player is more brilliant than footballers of the past - a benefit of full-time coaching - I am dead-set sure that the modern footballer is nowhere the complete footballer like previous generations.
Some of the decision making, for instance, that young players come up with today staggers me.
As well as stability in week-to-week performance experience, older players also bring stability to the culture of your club.
Unfortunately, those players are heading to England earlier and earlier now, picking up nice contracts there because we choose to put our money elsewhere.
The NRL could easily fix this by bringing in a draft and payment ceilings for young players.
Those two things alone would do the job.
It would ease salary-cap pressures within clubs, it would actually prolong careers because clubs wouldn't feel pressured to blood their young players so early, and it would free up money to pay players in their late 20s who are leaving our game far too early.
Most of all, if would improve the football.
It would be to everyone's benefit.
