By Tom Decent26 May 2018 — 6:00am
https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/sp...bulldogs-salary-cap-woes-20180525-p4zhk9.html
Former Bulldogs chief executive Raelene Castle has broken her silence over the salary cap mess at Canterbury, saying she is “very comfortable” with what transpired during her time in charge and that new coach Dean Pay needs to accept it will take time to build up the roster he wants.
Bulldogs officials have revealed the club
cannot be active in the transfer market until 2021 because players were offered back-ended contracts while Des Hasler was coach.
Comfortable: Rugby Australia CEO Raelene Castle says she has no problems with how she left the Bulldogs.
Photo: AAP
Castle, now the Rugby Australia chief, was CEO at Canterbury for four years until last May and has attracted criticism for her role in the club's handling of the salary cap along with Hasler and deposed chairman Ray Dib.
Speaking to Fairfax Media on Friday she said she had a clear conscience about her time at the helm of the Bulldogs.
“I’m very comfortable with the plans that the recruitment committee had been working on in relation to delivering what Des wanted; to try and win a premiership over those two years,” Castle said at Spotless Stadium, the new location for the Sydney Sevens in February.
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“He worked on a roster, we worked on a roster with a recruitment committee that we believe delivered outcomes for those next two years. Then Des's contract was terminated, a new coach came in and the coach has got a version of how he wants to run things and those two things don't match.
“[If Pay] wants to make changes, he's going to have to work through that. A new coach comes, as many coaches do - Nathan Brown coming into Newcastle, Ricky Stuart coming into Canberra - those things take time to evolve into the way the head coach wants.”
Pressed on contracts specifically and whether there were any regrets over how they was handed out, Castle replied: “There was two marquee players signed at the end of last year in Aaron Woods and Kieran Foran. That's as much as I'm comfortable to say.”
Between seven and 10 Bulldogs players are on back-ended contracts for next year, while the club is also paying five players, including James Graham and Sam Kasiano, to play for rival clubs. Canterbury's roster problems have been attributed to the club having worked towards an estimated new salary cap of $10m for this season when the ultimate figure ended up being $9.4m.
While NRL has said it is the responsibility of clubs to manage how they contract players, the Bulldogs have already implemented a number of new signing protocols to ensure things don’t get out of hand again.
Castle’s comments come in the wake of claims by former Wallabies coach Alan Jones that she was the “architect of the Canterbury Bulldogs ridiculous back-ended contract policy”.
In a column published in the Australian on Friday, Jones was scathing of Castle and questioned whether RA had done enough due diligence before she was appointed chief executive.
“It is immensely disturbing to rugby fans that Raelene Castle was, in part at least, the architect of the Canterbury Bulldogs ridiculous back-ended contract policy,” Jones wrote. “Her involvement in this shows that she’s either naive in contractual matters or what would be worse, doesn’t care about the mess she leaves behind.
“If the board of Rugby Australia did no due diligence ... then they have betrayed our game.”
Castle refuted Jones’ claims.
“After a six-interview process and extensive interviews and reference checking, the [RA} board are comfortable with the process they followed,” Castle said. “At the end of the day I work in rugby now and I'm focused on the rugby role and that's what I'm concentrating on.
“Alan is entitled to his views. He's got views. We've got a plan we're working towards and there's lots of great things happening in rugby. We've got some challenges but we've got a plan as to how we're going to fix them.”
She's fukin delusional! Glad she is starting to cop some questions about her role.
