Salary Cap - urgent change required

[shiloh dc]

The game needs to stop quality players like Jack Wighton and possibly Payne Hass moving to new clubs for significantly less than offered by their incumbent clubs. Wighton is moving to Souths in 2024 for $300K less than the Raiders offered. This doesn't pass the pub test.
The NRL should insist destination clubs include such players on their salary caps at 90% of any registered offers made by the incumbent clubs if the offer is less than that made by the incumbent club. I would allow an increase to 15% for a player returning to a city of his birth or original club.
In the Jack Wighton case, Souths can pay him $700K if they both agree but their salary cap should be debited by $900K (90% x $1M).
Payne Hass has been offered $1.1M per season by the Broncos. If after registering this offer with the NRL (where it becomes a guaranteed offer), he wants to move to another club like the Roosters or the Bulldogs for less, these teams would need to debit their salary caps by $990K (90% x $1.1M). Should he want to go to the Knights (he was born in Newcastle) they would need to credit their salary cap by $935K (85% x $1.1M).
I would only limit this change to contracts registered >400K.

 

[Lethal25]

The game needs to stop quality players like Jack Wighton and possibly Payne Hass moving to new clubs for significantly less than offered by their incumbent clubs. Wighton is moving to Souths in 2024 for $300K less than the Raiders offered. This doesn't pass the pub test.
The NRL should insist destination clubs include such players on their salary caps at 90% of any registered offers made by the incumbent clubs if the offer is less than that made by the incumbent club. I would allow an increase to 15% for a player returning to a city of his birth or original club.
In the Jack Wighton case, Souths can pay him $700K if they both agree but their salary cap should be debited by $900K (90% x $1M).
Payne Hass has been offered $1.1M per season by the Broncos. If after registering this offer with the NRL (where it becomes a guaranteed offer), he wants to move to another club like the Roosters or the Bulldogs for less, these teams would need to debit their salary caps by $990K (90% x $1.1M). Should he want to go to the Knights (he was born in Newcastle) they would need to credit their salary cap by $935K (85% x $1.1M).
I would only limit this change to contracts registered >400K.

For me personally I believe we need to start looking at the cap via a points system and not money. A points system where it still affords clubs opportunity to develop players, reward junior retention & stop clubs using outside of cap money as the lever to entice players.

Whilst I fully anticipate such a system would be extremely tricky to find balance it surely would offer a more level playing field

 

[Jim Dragons]

For me personally I believe we need to start looking at the cap via a points system and not money. A points system where it still affords clubs opportunity to develop players, reward junior retention & stop clubs using outside of cap money as the lever to entice players.

Whilst I fully anticipate such a system would be extremely tricky to find balance it surely would offer a more level playing field

I also proposed similar Salary Cap 'penalties' when news of the Wighton deal first came through. I also see advantage to some form of points system.
The original intention of Third Parties was that the Player or his Manager canvased the deal and it remained arms length from the club and had to be real (payment for work etc). Hence no sponsor of the club can sponsor a player at that club. Third Parties should not be tied to the player playing at any particular club.
The fact that news reports highlight the fact that a player may be signing else where for less on the back of potential third parties shows that the system of Third Parties needs to be investigated often - in particular what the player is doing to earn the payment.
A points system would fix up 3rd parties very quickly.

 

[Dragon David]

I also proposed similar Salary Cap 'penalties' when news of the Wighton deal first came through. I also see advantage to some form of points system.
The original intention of Third Parties was that the Player or his Manager canvased the deal and it remained arms length from the club and had to be real (payment for work etc). Hence no sponsor of the club can sponsor a player at that club. Third Parties should not be tied to the player playing at any particular club.
The fact that news reports highlight the fact that a player may be signing else where for less on the back of potential third parties shows that the system of Third Parties needs to be investigated often - in particular what the player is doing to earn the payment.
A points system would fix up 3rd parties very quickly.

You state correct info Jim. We all know how the TP's should work but why hasn't more investigation like you say been undertaken? It is like if someone cheats in crime they are investigated, why then isn't the NRL doing more to prevent cheating scum clubs? I cannot recall any outside crooked deals ever being exposed so does that mean that there have not been any?

 

[Saints Forever]

Reality is there is no salary cap

The top teams should stop pretending they are good managers of the cap and the rest of the teams need to find the money to seriously compete

 

[Slippery Morris]

As I have said before, Salary Cap should be 3mil and only applicable to players who are bought from another club. All juniors who make their NRL debut and hit 50 games are excluded (around 2 seasons). Why penalise the teams and players for becoming good players and wanting to stay with their mates? If you look at the Storm and Chooks a lot of their good players debuted for them and no other NRL club e.g Slater, Cam Smith, Cooper Cronk, Joe Manu, Cordner, Jake Friend. Why penalise them for picking up good juniors and handing them their debuts. They took the punt and not the teams that had them in their junior system. A lot of their stars are developed from their great coaching structures. They create stars not buy them most of the time.

Clubs get 13mil. 3 Mil goes to purchasing of players from other clubs to plug gaps and 10mil towards their home grown talent plus whatever else you want. If Dogs want to offer 1 mill to a player that is fine as that will be 1/3 of their 3 million cap and 0 to the club that invested in their junior clubs as the can pay the player 1 mil if they want to keep him.

It's not Parramatta, Dragons, Penrith, Souths, Sharks, Broncos and Tigers fault Bulldogs have no juniors and just buy other teams. They had good juniors many years ago (Sonny Bill, Mason, Anasta, etc) but stopped developing since Hasler or the salary cap scandal and now just buy other teams. If you look at the Dogs 1 - 17 next season there is only a couple of juniors.

With this salary cap structure, teams have no excuse to not help pour money into their junior developement systems. It forces then to throw money at these affiliated clubs to build them up. If this was the case the Panthers would not be restricted to pay these young guns unders to stay and would have a player salary bill of 15-20 million for which the NRL gave them 13million for. I am sure a club would come up with 7 mil from pokies or find a way to get around it. It should not be the NRL's problem anyway. They can offer shares, houses, cars etc who cares to keep their juniors. The only thing that the NRL need to look at is the bought players and if they total 3 million a year which is 2-3 marquee players to build your team around of 6x500k players to plug gaps in the squad.

I hope Broncos and Penrith keep all their players to be honest and dominate the next few season as it will then be up to the other teams to get their act together and build their teams on juniors to catch up to them as that will be the only way to do so.

 

[AyiosYiorgos]

As I have said before, Salary Cap should be 3mil and only applicable to players who are bought from another club. All juniors who make their NRL debut and hit 50 games are excluded (around 2 seasons). Why penalise the teams and players for becoming good players and wanting to stay with their mates? If you look at the Storm and Chooks a lot of their good players debuted for them and no other NRL club e.g Slater, Cam Smith, Cooper Cronk, Joe Manu, Cordner, Jake Friend. Why penalise them for picking up good juniors and handing them their debuts. They took the punt and not the teams that had them in their junior system. A lot of their stars are developed from their great coaching structures. They create stars not buy them most of the time.

Clubs get 13mil. 3 Mil goes to purchasing of players from other clubs to plug gaps and 10mil towards their home grown talent plus whatever else you want. If Dogs want to offer 1 mill to a player that is fine as that will be 1/3 of their 3 million cap and 0 to the club that invested in their junior clubs as the can pay the player 1 mil if they want to keep him.

It's not Parramatta, Dragons, Penrith, Souths, Sharks, Broncos and Tigers fault Bulldogs have no juniors and just buy other teams. They had good juniors many years ago (Sonny Bill, Mason, Anasta, etc) but stopped developing since Hasler or the salary cap scandal and now just buy other teams. If you look at the Dogs 1 - 17 next season there is only a couple of juniors.

With this salary cap structure, teams have no excuse to not help pour money into their junior developement systems. It forces then to throw money at these affiliated clubs to build them up. If this was the case the Panthers would not be restricted to pay these young guns unders to stay and would have a player salary bill of 15-20 million for which the NRL gave them 13million for. I am sure a club would come up with 7 mil from pokies or find a way to get around it. It should not be the NRL's problem anyway. They can offer shares, houses, cars etc who cares to keep their juniors. The only thing that the NRL need to look at is the bought players and if they total 3 million a year which is 2-3 marquee players to build your team around of 6x500k players to plug gaps in the squad.

I hope Broncos and Penrith keep all their players to be honest and dominate the next few season as it will then be up to the other teams to get their act together and build their teams on juniors to catch up to them as that will be the only way to do so.

If you look at the Storm and Chooks a lot of their good players debuted for them and no other NRL club e.g Slater, Cam Smith, Cooper Cronk, Joe Manu, Cordner, Jake Friend. Why penalise them for picking up good juniors and handing them their debuts. They took the punt and not the teams that had them in their junior system.

Problem with this is if you are trying to develop juniors from your area, it means you have identified them brought them into your junior system as you see they have potential,you spend money/time/coaching them, then you get the roosters who come along and just offer a bigger contract/incentive then they get the benefits, which is unfair, if you buying juniors from other clubs, then you can't be rewarded for that to such an extent

 

[Slippery Morris]

If your coaching staff is good enough then they will identify the best ones to keep. They can then offer them as much as they want to trump teams like the Roosters if they make a bid with no impact to their own cap or make them pay higher. At the moment they cannot compete against the Roosters because they have 3rd parties or are restricted by the salary cap. Plus if another club wants to offer huge dollars to get a junior untried in the NRL good luck to them. It will come off their salary cap.

 

[BLM01]

If you look at the Storm and Chooks a lot of their good players debuted for them and no other NRL club e.g Slater, Cam Smith, Cooper Cronk, Joe Manu, Cordner, Jake Friend. Why penalise them for picking up good juniors and handing them their debuts. They took the punt and not the teams that had them in their junior system.

Problem with this is if you are trying to develop juniors from your area, it means you have identified them brought them into your junior system as you see they have potential,you spend money/time/coaching them, then you get the roosters who come along and just offer a bigger contract/incentive then they get the benefits, which is unfair, if you buying juniors from other clubs, then you can't be rewarded for that to such an extent

I will go a step further with this type of system the clubs with geographically smaller junior nurseries are disadvantaged
The points system which they will never bring on due to admin of it snd players value chopping and changing potentially year on year hence no real contracts is the closest you will get to the fairest open system

 

[steerlerbab]

We, the second rate citizens and the fans would leave a job and go to another job for 5000k pay rise. After tax we end up getting let's say $4000 which is approximately $80 per week. But, a RL player would go for a lot less salary ($300k in case of Jack Wighton and that is $150k after tax - $3000 a week).

Salary cap was a system that made sense in 80s and early 90s (before super league war) where RL players made normal salaries.

That's why we can see some teams that have 5 or 6 marquee players (Storm, Panthers, Roosters, Broncos) and our team dragons can only afford one marquee player.

 

[Slippery Morris]

I will go a step further with this type of system the clubs with geographically smaller junior nurseries are disadvantaged
The points system which they will never bring on due to admin of it snd players value chopping and changing potentially year on year hence no real contracts is the closest you will get to the fairest open system

We hear this argument yet the Storm and Roosters (as I think they would be the most impacted) have been the most successive the last 10+ years. They somehow find juniors to make strong teams as mentioned above. If anything it has made teams get smaller nurseries because the will just buy other teams juniors like the Dogs. They had a huge nursery of juniors but those clubs or competitions have now gone because of no funding from the NRL clubs. Like I said, as soon as a kid hits 50 NRL games they are off limits. Until then the Roosters and Storm can offer say 100k a junior and get 30 of them to bring through. Whatever they are doing seems to be working just fine regardless.

NRL give the clubs 13 mil and they use that as part of their funding to produce juniors which they can keep for the future as an incentive and not give away of they create a team full of rep players due to great systems in place.

 

[Slippery Morris]

The NRL is the only sport where the best players are limited to what they can earn. The highest paid NRL player could probably get 1.5mil yet the best in other sporting codes is much higher. If clubs want to keep their guns they need to pull their finger out and get sponsors that will help pay the bills like all other successful clubs in the world.

 

[BLM01]

We hear this argument yet the Storm and Roosters (as I think they would be the most impacted) have been the most successive the last 10+ years. They somehow find juniors to make strong teams as mentioned above. If anything it has made teams get smaller nurseries because the will just buy other teams juniors like the Dogs. They had a huge nursery of juniors but those clubs or competitions have now gone because of no funding from the NRL clubs. Like I said, as soon as a kid hits 50 NRL games they are off limits. Until then the Roosters and Storm can offer say 100k a junior and get 30 of them to bring through. Whatever they are doing seems to be working just fine regardless.

NRL give the clubs 13 mil and they use that as part of their funding to produce juniors which they can keep for the future as an incentive and not give away of they create a team full of rep players due to great systems in place.

You need to define what is a club junior
Is it who you play Harold Matt’s for? Etc
Some clubs don’t have Harold Matt’s etc
Melb poach from Brisbane / QLD cause they have a strong scouting presence there
It is SGBall levell same deal
Some clubs will be disadvantaged
Look at our clubs we have 2 lots of juniors in St George and Illawarra due to our region size
Some clubs will whinge until they all nurture juniors from day Harold Matt’s level snd up which they wont

 

[Slippery Morris]

Whatever Storm and Roosters do it sure works a treat. THey seem to have some links to clubs in the bush.

 

[BLM01]

Whatever Storm and Roosters do it sure works a treat. THey seem to have some links to clubs in the bush.

Nothing to do with juniors. It is what is supposedly what is spent outside the cap that counts and $$ spent.
e.g. NRLW Roosters. Able to sign all the guns because outside the cap and playing / training committments they have well paid jobs representing the club at schools etc organised by PM's
The obvious question is why are we not offering the same and how is that outside the cap?..or do the giirls work differently
Nevertheless it comes down to owners / sponsors with deep pockets, some with short hands.
Once you attract big names with success, others follow and becomes a snowball affect
The NRL Roosters as did the Dogs last year have 2 x Reserve grades teams How does this happen?
Although for the Roosters one is 1st and the other last.

 

[getsmarty]

‘Isn’t there a 2027 World Cup?’: Rugby clue in Haas’ new deal as Broncos face huge ‘juggling act’

‘Isn’t there a 2027 World Cup?’: Rugby clue in Haas’ new deal as Broncos face huge ‘juggling act’

www.foxsports.com.au

 

[getsmarty]

Deal done: Haas rejects 16 rivals, rugby to become highest-paid Broncos player ever

Deal done: Haas rejects 16 rivals, rugby to become highest-paid Broncos player ever

www.foxsports.com.au

 

[getsmarty]

‘I’m not buying the fairy tale’: Dogs questioned over TPJ payout that creates $500k advantage

‘I’m not buying the fairy tale’: Dogs questioned over TPJ payout that creates $500k advantage

www.foxsports.com.au

 

[shiloh dc]

So we find out today that Sam Burgess planned to bring Dom Young to the Bunnies in 2024 using a TP's from a wealthy Souths supporter.
This clearly shows that if you want to recruit any SOO/test players you need to supplement their contract with TP's.
It confirms why teams like South/Dogs/Roosters seem to be recruiting all the best players.
The NRL should publish the list of the total 2023 TP's by team so we can see how many of the Top 8 teams are there because they gain a salary cap advantage through TP's.
If you could audit the financials of such TP sponsors - chances are you would find a connection to their club.
I suspect Dom Young might be getting 600K+ from next year. This is money teams without TP simply cannot pay for wingers.
There is no integrity in the salary cap - fans are being shortchanged. If the NRL won't eliminate TP's (or introduce a draft) they should introduce a luxury tax on TP's to be channeled direct to grassroots footy as follows -
0-1M (in TP's) - 25%
1M+ (in TP's) - 50%
So if each team spent 1M on TP's - grassroots footy would be better off by 4.25M.

 

[Maximus]

The game needs to stop quality players like Jack Wighton and possibly Payne Hass moving to new clubs for significantly less than offered by their incumbent clubs. Wighton is moving to Souths in 2024 for $300K less than the Raiders offered. This doesn't pass the pub test.
The NRL should insist destination clubs include such players on their salary caps at 90% of any registered offers made by the incumbent clubs if the offer is less than that made by the incumbent club. I would allow an increase to 15% for a player returning to a city of his birth or original club.
In the Jack Wighton case, Souths can pay him $700K if they both agree but their salary cap should be debited by $900K (90% x $1M).
Payne Hass has been offered $1.1M per season by the Broncos. If after registering this offer with the NRL (where it becomes a guaranteed offer), he wants to move to another club like the Roosters or the Bulldogs for less, these teams would need to debit their salary caps by $990K (90% x $1.1M). Should he want to go to the Knights (he was born in Newcastle) they would need to credit their salary cap by $935K (85% x $1.1M).
I would only limit this change to contracts registered >400K.

In the Wighton case, one is signing him to play centre and the other to play 5/8th. And this isn't a situation where they are pretending to play him at centre only to switch him, since they've got a significantly better 5/8th already on the books.

A 5/8th is undoubtedly worth more than a centre, and the contract values reflect that.

The pub test is not really good enough if it can't distinguish the value of 2 different positions.