The salary cap isn’t about restraining a player’s earning capacity, otherwise TPA’s would be illegal. The salary cap isn’t about evening out the competition either, otherwise the competition would be far more even than it currently is.
The salary cap has always been about limiting the spending of clubs on players, in the interests of keeping clubs both solvent in the short term and viable in the long term. Without the salary cap, we all know that clubs would spend themselves into dust for a premiership, and very few would survive for any length of time.
Fans, and club officials want to be winners, and they want it now. You’d see teams worth triple that of the opposition that sweep all before them.. then that club go broke. The landscape of the game and the teams involved would become a revolving door of success, debt and failure. The salary cap goes a long way towards mitigating the effects of glory hungry clubs seeking today’s trophy with no thought given to the future of their club..
The salary caps goals are to spread the talent "for the good of the game" and by doing so it aims to reduce the wealthy clubs capacity to tap into "unlimited funds" as the NRL feel not doing so will result in a game that is less attractive for fans, sponsors and the media.
The cap also tries to save clubs from themselves in reducing the ability of wealthy clubs to drive up the price of players to levels weaker clubs cannot sustain.
The above encourages an environment that is conducive to a restraint of trade, if clubs can't control their spending so be it, the strongest survive.
I never said a "Restraint of trade" is currently illegal, just that it should be illegal in my eyes, in the past i think it was seen as such.
(Competitions here and around the world have caps so obviously they are seen as legal in the current environment)
Having TPA's doesn't mean a restraint of trade no longer exists, it just offers an option to compensate the player outside the restrained demands within the NRL rules.
I never said i think the salary cap will even out the competition but that is "one of" the hopeful outcomes of having such a system.
Because Coaching and performance analysis is really in it's infancy in Australia(relative to professional competitions around the world) the Coaches that are above the pack will stand out and create success even under a salary cap environment---even more so as they target resources in the right areas better, know what kind of KPI's offer the best chance of success in relation to picking and recruiting players and also tactically understand the games finer points in much more detail.(Case in point Hasler vs Barrett aka me, not)
This is why Melb, Manly and the Roosters have dominated the GF's over the last decade or so, the rest of the coaches and performance analysis staff are not up to the same standard far from it, the gap is closing though as younger coaches are exposed to the above teams systems and using them elsewhere.
You could probably argue the benefits of a plan to exceed the cap to win a comp knowing full well you intend to shed players (usually the older ones) in years to come so there will be a rebuilding stage anyway---best to have the fine and be caught after the fact during a rebuilding stage.(in most cases it will only prolong the rebuild by 2-3yrs max)
