Fluffy
Journey Man
Daly apparently signed (by what I've read) a contract worth 1 mill to 1.1 mill per season. The club upon signing, has said that he is their "marquee player" (watch the Kelly interview very soon after on the official site), which entitles 600k worth of 3rd party deals (if Kelly / Penn / Barrett / Zorba are worth their salt which I think they might be in this area) to reduce that cap hit.
Therefore, Daly's true cap hit given 3rd party agreements would be more along the lines of $400k - $500k.
This isn't then taking into consideration Daly joining our youth team (NYC) in 2008. Given this, 7 full years at the club including junior years, means Daly's tenure means he can be part of the long serving player allowance reduction. We know that is $200k per club. While we'd have a few players that JUST miss out like Jake and Tom, we'd have Stewart, Matai, Buhrer and Daly. Assume that dispensation is split equally (even though I don't think it would be applied to Buhrer or maybe Matai by the club, but more towards Stewart / Daly), worst case, that's another reduction in cap hit of minimum $50k, bringing his cap hit to $350k - $400k (or LESS).
THEN, more might of been built into Daly's contract like Education or Transport allowances (which aren't also included in the cap hit itself) - this might make it $300k - 350k.
All these are within the rules.
This is the reason we have much more cap space than people feel. If that $50k was applied to Daly, people then need to reduce Stewart's, Matai's or Buhrer's (or a combination) but another 150k - so say Matai who might be on 250k - 350k - his actual cap hit might only be 100k - 200k.
THEN use the education allowance and transport allowance in contracts. If you applied that to quite a few players (we all know transport costs are a joke), reduce it yet AGAIN, because Matai for example might be:-
Contract - $300k (made up of:
+ Salary: $160k
+ Long Serving Player Allowance: $100k (not counted against cap)
+ Transport Allowance: $20k (not counted towards cap)
+ Education Allowance (not sure) $20k (not counted towards cap)
So actual cap his is $160k.
That's why people who say we are close to the cap in my opinion, may be really, really off, and in the end, is Daly's contract given what he adds to the team, all that bad? So what if it's 100k - 200k more because Kelly pulled it at one stage to force his hand into a decision.
Just think, if they hadn't farked up the contract last year at 850K instead of 1.1M he would have taken up zero cap space and you would have 100K more to attract other players