I see the only important question as this, if the entire 30 man Chooks roster was put on the open market what would its value total? My guess and it's only a guess is close to $13.5m.
The NRL claims that the Cap has 2 reasons for its existence, helping to even up the competition being the minor one of them, which quite plainly it is a complete failure at. The other major claim is that the salary cap helps prevent clubs overspending and going broke. Here's the problem with that claim, let's say the Chooks are legally within the Cap by utilising clever outside the cap payments (Cronk's fully sponsored Harvard degree is an example). The undeniable fact is it still forces other clubs to spend the same amount (call it my guess of $13.5m) to compete, whether it is within their cap or not. It's still money in the end, whether it is included in the Cap or not, so the Cap is in effect not achieving its target of limiting the clubs spending. All it does is distinguish between the money they spend under the Cap and the money they spend outside of it. Which doesn't achieve the objective, the $13.5m (or whatever it is) still gets spent by other clubs trying to compete.
There is only one solution that I see, all payments to players must be reported to the NRL and split between what's in the Cap, what's in registered TPA's and what's in unregistered TPA's. Then published, not individual players salaries, that's a bit rude, but totals for each club, when the season starts, again at the cut off (usually 30th June) and then again at the end of the season. That way when a player signs between seasons or mid season for a club for a lesser amount under their cap then the NRL has the information on hand to compare the outside the cap payments. Plus they have a record of every time the player has registered a contract and what its total value was.
Go Dogs
