I won't labour the point because I dont know the figures. I'm not criticising the current Admin. It's all the Dibbies.
But if we are still backending/paying Tolman, Hoppa, JJ, Elliott, Mbye then where the hell did the money go a few years ago.
One example of what I'm saying but you can times that by say 6 players....
A scenario... and figures are guesstimates...
Tolman on $600,000 now.
2017 on $300,000 then
2018 on $300,000 then
2019 on $500,000 then
2020 on $600,000
The figures are not exactly factual but its the sc amount effect I'm interested in.
Ie if Tolman, JJ, Graham, Mbye, Hoppa, Elliott, Klemmer, Woods all on backended contracts that jumped up higher in their last year of contract, then what the hell were the other players being paid in 2017, 18, 19 that balanced out the 9 million sc?
The figures have never made sense to me.
The salary cap contracted payments are double audited, firstly by the club itself supported by a statutory declaration signed by the Directors and then by the NRL auditor, plus professional sports people are always on the ATO hit list. We have to spend 95% of the Cap every year and we have complied with that otherwise we would be being fined and that would be heavily reported on.
To answer your question, at the time when the current guys on back ended contracts were in their lower $ years there were other players in the years of their higher $ contracts, eg; Eastwood in 2018, Mozzies in 2018, Reynolds 2017, Klemmer 2018, Mbye 2017/18, Graham 2017 etc.
Thats' why it hard to offload a player in the last year of a 3 year contract where they are in the higher paying back end of their contract. For example, if a player is on, say, $1.8m for 3 years, meaning he is on an average $600k (which may well be his market worth) per year, but if he is on $900k in his last year no other club is going to take him off our hands and pay him $300k over market value. Understandably they would want us to pay the over market value for that year. Legally I'm not sure how we can pay them after their contract with us has expired. For obvious reasons NRL players aren't allowed to have registered NRL contracts with and be paid simultaneously by 2 different clubs. We could pay the other club but I'm not sure how that would included in our salary cap and excluded from theirs. Because in the end what's included in the Salary Cap is the only thing that is important, to us anyway as we have no shortage of money. May not be the same for cash strapped clubs.
The concept of back ended contracts is that in any one year you have, say, half of your players on less than half of their market value (worth). So you have, say, a $13m team whose contracts for that year total only $9.6m and as a result win the premiership. The idea then is to offload players (premiership winning players) in the middle years when their contract is around their market value (worth). Then start the back ended contracts merry go round all over again with a new batch of players. The problem for us was we didn't win the premiership, so no one wanted the players we needed to offload, as a result they stuck around until the latter years of their contracts where they were on way more than their market value (worth). Why should they leave and give up the pay back for the sacrifices that they made in the early years of their contract.
The back ended contract effect lasts for longer than the 3 or 4 years typical player contract term. For it to work there has to me a mixture of players in their early (lower paid) years whilst others are in their later (higher paid) years. When it all falls apart, as it did for us in 2018, then it's at best a 3 year repair and even that depends on good management to stay under the cap, especially in the 2nd and 3rd years. That's why 2021 is the year that we get to play with a full deck of cards.
Happy New Year to All
Go Dogs