Penelope Pittstop said:
antonius said:
The Knights have to borrow between $250,000, and $500,000 every year to meet their shortfall, they are struggling every season
And the reason for that is, what?
You questioned “why does our club have to borrow every year?” too meet player payments is the simple answer, the final payments are due at the seasons end, when we are at our most vulnerable, Financially, I was using that as an example of how close to the wire our club (and probably a lot of others) are each year, adding $250,000 a year to our expenses won’t help that one bit. Now you can say “that’s your clubs fault”, maybe it is, but we don’t have the luxury of a benefactor, or a licensed club, we have sponsorships yes, but in the end we spend everything we make, some of your fans have said “well if the games to hot, get out of the game” great, hows that going to save the game, if that’s the attitude? As for Con Constentine, yes he kicked in a bit of money every year, but in the end he wanted too much control of the club for that money, something that wasn't possible. Con also took over the running of the liscenced club he was no more successful with it than we were. It also went belly up with him at the helm.
Pen, I don’t have any problem with your side wanting a raise in the cap. What I have a problem with is the method used ie: - “raise it or we’ll test it in court” I just can’t see that as being a reasonable approach, or being good for the game. Phil Gould can come out with statements like “we want our players to be fulltime and not have to work at a job”. I’m sorry I don’t swallow that line, neither do I swallow the line that the players will all go to union (that one is the most ridiculous of all, a $250,000 raise won’t change that.) It’s simply about trying to hang on to what you’ve got; again there’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s the same for everyone else. Saying clubs will die if it isn’t raised is another stupid statement, how does that equate?
Nothing would please me more for my club to have more money, I don’t think they deliberately try not to have any. The simple fact is that there is only so much sponsorship to go round, plenty of other sporting clubs/groups have priced themselves out of their games (Soccer is a prime example,where junior clubs are proping them up.) Do we want league to do the same? I think more effort should be put into trying to get the NRL to come up with a bigger slice of the pie for clubs, then yes they’ll be able to use that money to increase player payments. That way nobody is disadvantaged, the road the Roosters are going down will allow some clubs to increase player payments, whilst others will not be able to, they will just become uncompetitive, or bankrupt, how is that good for the game? Believe me I’m not Rooster bashing here, if it were any other club, my attitude would still be the same. I’ve argued with people from my own clubs forum about player payments, and getting allowances for service etc, in the end you still have to have the money to pay them. More money from the the big players (Free to air TV, and pay TV) is one avenue that should be looked at a lot more seriously IMO.
