Sean, you are usually a good read but that article was garbage.
The best sports league in the world has high profile players and high profile clubs.... and a salary cap.
This sport is full of chicken littles. Every time a fat merkin threatens to leave the code because he might be able to only afford 300,000 cheeseburgers a year everyone runs around like the sky is falling.
The problem with our game isn't the salary cap, it is that our spineless administrators have bowed to the demands of the self interested and created loopholes everywhere that are exploited and hard to police.
Raise the cap, close the loopholes, and stop jumping at shadows.
And while we are at it, we need to stop the kickbacks from clubs demanded by managers. Everyone knows it happens, no one has the cojones to stand up to it.
I appreciate the candour - happy to take it, but I didn't mention salary cap because the few that have one don't apply it with rigour of the one in the NRL.
NBA has one but it is a "soft" cap full of exceptions/holes and it is just under 60% of revenue. NFL has had one (but might not for much longer) where the cap is approx 60% of the NFL's revenue. AFL is full of holes when it suits, and admissions were made earlier this year about how many 3rd party deals there are (and the lack of close scrutiny).
The common thread to all of those comps is they have no or little competition for their players from other comps/codes. English & French RU are starting to apply caps and are ending up with same difficulties/compaints found in RL.
The NRL club grant will soon match the salary cap. So, in effect, who is paying the players?
Before the SL war & tv money the NSWRL contributed very little to club finances - the clubs paid for the players at something like 80% of their income (gate takings and sponsorship/LeaguesClub).
When the NRL grant matches the cap the clubs will have that rate down to zero.
NRL clubs are pulling in $13m-$20m a year to run the club, but soon will pay nothing for players. Sure running a club in 2010 is different to 1980, but it is a myth to believe that the cap has stopped club spending - it hasnt -they are still raising as much as they can, spending it where they see competitive advantage (eg coach, staff, facilities) & finsihing the year off with nothing in the bank or a loss.
Put all of that together, mix it with the reality that RL alone (unlike every other major comp with a cap) has athletes who can and do transfer well to other codes/comps, and that in Aust/NZ RL is not the only game in town for fans, sponors & tv. The cap in its present rigid form is the wrong tool.
Even the application of the cap causes cross-code stories and free plugs for other codes to come up all the time - ARU & AFL get free marketing via the NRL cap. Outside of NSW/QLD they see NRL players freely talk of swapping codes, seeing the world, new challenges...It reinforces the belief that the NRL is a stale comp heading backwards, that not even the star players want to be part of it - and that's the message it sends out in those very same markets that RL seeks to grow the game in! Key decision makers in national and international companies may well form the same assupmtions about RL.
I've never said RL should be a free-for-all in club-land - but it is obvious that applying a hard cap without exception and encouragement, while no one else in RL has their incomes/spending capped, is just wrong - it is wrong to place it all on the players.
And to top that, when was the last time the NRL comp got a buzz from bringing in a player from another code? The NRL comp should aspire to be the best pro rugby comp in the world. Before RU went pro RL didn't get every player it wanted as some were reluctant to give up amateur status. Yet when that barrier came down, and the world has since been flooded with 15 years of pro rugby players, all RL has got is Gareth Thomas in Wales at the backend of his career.
I can't agree with those that say another player will come along, there's more where he came from, if he doesn't like it then leave, the game itself will see us through, we have the greatest game of all, the comp will become a farce without a cap...Do people seriously think that is the sort of thinking that got RL from 1895 to 1994?
Paul Gallen got an award today named in honour of Harry Sunderland - do a search on him and read up - the man was loved and hated here and in the UK - he was a RL adminstrator that tried things - some worked, some failed miserably. But he never stopped aspiring and trying to make RL the best it could be as a professional sport.
I'm sorry, but a hard and rigid cap is the most unoriginal idea any sport could burden itself with and expect to grow, and maybe survive.
Sorry, didn't intend to write that much!
Why are they so mean to Souths BunniesMan?
