You estimate 4 million; okay Pearce was on around 850k that leaves 3,150,000 for the remaining or an average of 262,500 for each which would make the Roosters fools in my opinion if they paid some of those guys that much.If the minnows were being paid a basic contract that would mean that some of the others would have been on fairly decent coin by your reckoning but it had been indicated that that was not the case when some of the contracts were being talked about...always stayed for less etc.come time to negotiate.
Probably the only one on decent coin on the above list would have been Pearce . Uncle Nick himself mentioned that the Roosters do not dabble much in third party deals. Really hard to fit a lot of high paid players under the cap in that case with minimal third party. Don't forget about all the upgrades as well and good wages for players such as Mitchell, Hargreaves, Cordner, Friend, Keary, Ferguson, Tupou to name a few and then of course we have the new two million dollar men Cronk and Tedesco.