Salary cap changes have led to growth of NRL super clubs

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By ScottWoodward.me, 31 Oct 2013

It is only a single word, but in 2014 and beyond, that word we see a dramatic change in the National Rugby League competition as we knew it.

Already we are seeing “a new breed” of super clubs starting to appear. In the case of the Brisbane Broncos, re-appear.

The clubs that will do well in the short to medium term are the ones that have carefully read the NRL “fine print” from the reference centre, under the heading “Salary Cap Breakdown” and “What players can earn outside the salary cap”.

Most clubs have focused on the $550k Marquee Player Allowance, but that is a pittance compared to what players can earn from corporate sponsors.

The NRL copped a heap of flak from the media when Karmichael Hunt and Israel Folau left the NRL for other codes and did not want to lose anymore high profile players, especially the human goldmine, Sonny Bill Williams.

The corporate sponsorship rule was re-written and the pivotal word “unlimited” was included.

This means in layman’s English that a club can now technically pay each of their top 25 players $5m each, providing they can find enough corporate sponsors who are not associated with the club and who do not use the game’s intellectual property (no club logos, jerseys or emblems) and provided these are pre-approved.

Don’t laugh now but they also included the clause: “These agreements may not be negotiated by the club as an incentive for a player to sign a contract, nor can they be guaranteed by the club.”

Ok, you can laugh now.

Are they serious?

Why on earth would Russell Crowe ask Steven Spielberg to give GI 500k for a bit part in a movie if not as an incentive to play for the Rabbitohs?

Redfern to Hollywood is a big stretch.

Do you remember the NRL’s ex CEO David Gallop stripping the Melbourne Storm of two of their premierships for unauthorised corporate sponsor payments?

Well, the new boss, Dave Smith has just it made legal and the Storm is likely to ask for their trophies back.

The thinking clubs have embraced the new rule and have put their running shoes on. The weaker, dysfunctional clubs will drop back. The gap will increase and this sea change goes against the original salary cap’s brain child.

The New Zealand Warriors are owned by two of the richest guys in their country and they are not used to getting beaten.

Billionaire Sir Owen Glenn, the sixth richest man in New Zealand recently purchased a 50% stake in the Warriors from Eric Watson ($250m) and they wasted no time in throwing millions at England’s champion fullback Sam Tomkins to come to Auckland.

He is reported to be on a $1m plus a year contract but before an offer could be made the owners had to pay out his current SL contract, believed to be $650k.

Coaches are not included in the cap but the Warriors also offered Storm coach $1.5m a season to make the switch. He refused.

Tomkins is the best back I have ever seen play the game outside of Australia and his signing is a massive coup for the Warriors and the NRL.

The Brisbane Broncos are another club with astute owners, but they will end up with a red hot team more by fluke than good management.

Last year’s player of the year, Ben Barba will run out for the Broncos next season because his children have moved there.

Kangaroos and Maroons captain Cam Smith will next month announce a move back home after the conclusion on the next season and will state “family” reasons.

Anthony Milford, the hottest young player in the game will also be heading to Brisbane either in 2014 or ’15 also with the sympathy line “family reasons”. While he is pondering however, his current club the Raiders have tabled a $1m a year deal for the 19-year-old.

If you think that the Broncos will be hard to beat with Barba, Milford and Smith all in the one team well you need to go back and read the fine print again.

Did I hear one of the Broncos Board members say that Dally Cherry- Evans is a Brisbane boy? “Let’s get him to say he is home sick and we can give him a million a year.”

DCE is under contract to his club Manly who have a dysfunctional board and are one of the poorest clubs in the NRL with many players on back dated contracts that have gradually blown out each season.

This will make it very difficult to hang on to the games hottest property, and while the Broncos are happy to strike while the weak are at their knees, this “loophole” in the salary cap is not what the NRL designed it for.

This new opportunity was how the Panthers Phil Gould was able to offer Jonathan Thurston $1.2m and while he refused, the Panthers have been pro-active in signing some highly skilled players.

They look set for a bright future.

No club has a more revered board than the premiers, the Sydney Roosters and putting together corporate sponsorships should just be a matter of hitting speed dial.

If you think the Melbourne Storm were a bit stiff in getting sprung for something that is now legal and you think that they are in trouble with their best three players on the wrong side of 30 then you should know this.

They have a very astute board who will ensure that they remain an NRL force as they comprehend the rule book better than most.

You are naïve if you think they have been idle.

The term “unlimited” will mean that the creative boards will ensure that their club always has a bevy of rep players, while the poor and less connected will starve.

The importance of juniors will not be a great as the rich clubs will simply just go out and outbid a poor club for their promising junior or rep player.

Why would you invest tens of thousands into a junior programme when you can just go to the market and get a player that you know can play first grade?

The skills of a Recruitment Manager will be different now.

Instead of watching a 15-year-old and after talking to him and his family before forming an opinion if he will make it and is worth a long investment, the major skill now will be to buy proven players who will give the team the required balance to win the competition.

These players will likely be between 20 and 25. Watch what the Panthers have been doing.

But they must remember that they cannot negotiate their multi-million dollar deal as an incentive to sign a contract…yeah right!
 
All it will take for it to collapse like a House of Cards, is for a Corporate to default on payment.
As the Clubs can not be held culpable, due to the NRL Clause ruling out their ability to guarantee the deal.

Lawyers at ten paces as the Player sues their Agent who put together the deal :cool:

Murky arena, this is :(
 
What the scum did is STILL illegal - guaranteeing TPAs (third party agreements). Hell they even included TPAs without any 3rd party being allocated to them!
 
I thought that all 16 clubs had a say in new ruling etc for the nrl - I cannot believe the majority of club signed off on this as it would be like signing your own death warrant
 
The writer is uninformed. I wonder how many other NRL clubs turned a profit this year.
 
HappilyManly said:
All it will take for it to collapse like a House of Cards, is for a Corporate to default on payment.
As the Clubs can not be held culpable, due to the NRL Clause ruling out their ability to guarantee the deal.

Lawyers at ten paces as the Player sues their Agent who put together the deal :cool:

Murky arena, this is :(

You are very clever : :angel:
 
This went on in Brisbane for years until Ken Talbot's plane went down in New Guinea. At one stage they had 12 of the Australian team running on each week and Talbots mining company was paying Wayne Bennet a million dollars a year to coach.

One city Teams have the means to double or triple their salary cap with big local corporates footing the bill.
 
Las Vegas Blvd said:
HappilyManly said:
All it will take for it to collapse like a House of Cards, is for a Corporate to default on payment.
As the Clubs can not be held culpable, due to the NRL Clause ruling out their ability to guarantee the deal.

Lawyers at ten paces as the Player sues their Agent who put together the deal :cool:

Murky arena, this is :(

You are very clever : :angel:
Of course she is. She's a woman:p
 
And people wonder why I want to see Manly take over the whole Northern Shore....

Ask yourselves one question where are most big business's based in Sydney....
 
eagles2win said:
And people wonder why I want to see Manly take over the whole Northern Shore....

Ask yourselves one question where are most big business's based in Sydney....

You are 1000% right Norths aren't coming back that area should be ours to spend money on and get juniors. Foz for example is from Asquith and should be clased as a manly junior
 
Not even the NRL are this stupid.

Anyone can see that this will make recruitment and retention grossly unfair. Brisbane will become pretty much unstoppable. Why would a marquee player accept half the money to play for a team with little chance of winning a premiership ?

Stuff like this has the potential to kill the competition off.
 
It could all be overcome and fixed by the use of a point system.

For example your top 25 players cannot add up to more than 25,000 points.

Points as I have heard before would be allocated as follows:

Australian reps 2,000 each

SOO reps 1,500 each

City/Country or other countries e.g. Fiji 1,250

1st year in grade 400 points, second year 600 points and third year 800 points and fifth year 1,000.

Then build in reductions for junior development and length of service.

Local junior minus 50%.

Ten years or more service to one club minus 35%

It then becomes a management issue that is totally transparent and not able to be rorted.

This vision would have the NRL issue a points rating for each player with an appeal process if players or clubs found it erroneous.

Each player would then be paid what he was worth and could earn as much money as he was able during a relatively short career.

The only proviso would be that he may be worth more points to one club than to another.
 
The point System is a great idea, if it based on the value of the Player to the NRL as a whole - not just to a specific Club ie (SBW, Falau,DCE, JT..)

A simple mathematical weighting system (sudoku :idea: or simultaneous linear equation) could be developed for all the variables as mentioned above.

Each player attribute weighted as:

plus a percentage for Representative Games
--Sliding scale for Country level, State level, City level and Nines/not 13 a side Games. To be reviewed each year so that past Representative Players are not disadvantaged by a higher loading once they are no longer competing at rep level.
--The above scale to be applied to a Player's past sport so that RU, AFL, NFL at the above levels of representation is equivalent to the NRL Players' loading.
--I would like the Countries outside of Oz,NZ and UK to be deemed to be State level loading at most.
--No loading for Dally M etc as these are totally subjective and would unfairly weight a Player based on his popularity with the Media.
--No loading for Grand Finalists as this is also outside of the control of an individual Player.

minus a percentage for Length of continuous Service at a Club
-- This would then take care of Local Juniors being discounted as they come through the ranks of a single NRL Club.

Then the Salary Cap is objective and Clubs are able to recruit based on NRL wide rankings - Moneyball style.

The monies that each Player gets is then limited by the financial viability of a Club. NRL must introduce this requirement, otherwise all Clubs that do not have Private Owners will overspend with no recourse as the Broadcast Licence is based on 16 Teams participating each year.:cool:

But if Manly, Knights etc want to limit their roster to the Salary Cap then they can recruit from the pool of non-rep Players.
 

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