New NRL roster system will prevent Farah-style Tigers exile

[Dogs Of War]

https://www.nrl.com/news/2018/02/26...revent-robbie-farah-style-wests-tigers-exile/

Coaches will no longer be able to exile big-name players in a bid to encourage them to leave under changes to the NRL roster system requiring each club to finalise a 29-man squad by March 1.

The changes also make it more difficult for Todd Carney or Dave Taylor to return to the NRL this season, although clubs do not have to add the 30th and final player to their roster until June 30 and some plan to leave a spot for a mid-season signing.


Robbie Farah is the most well-documented example in recent years of a star player on big money being unwanted by his coach and repeatedly overlooked for first-grade selection.

Despite being the NSW State of Origin hooker in 2016, Farah played just six NRL matches for the Wests Tigers as Jason Taylor chose Dene Halatau, Matt Ballin, Elijah Taylor, Kyle Lovett, Manaia Cherrington and Jacob Liddle in the dummy-half role.

Under the new system, which was agreed upon as part of the collective bargaining agreement with the RLPA, each club must select 29 players for their NRL squad by March 1 and 30 players by June 30, who are included in the $9.4 million salary cap.

The increase in roster sizes, from 25 players in previous seasons, coincides with the abolition of the second-tier salary cap and means coaches cannot call on players outside their NRL squads without dispensation from the salary cap auditor.

To receive approval to use a player from the NSW or Queensland state leagues, a club will need to convince the NRL salary cap auditor they do not have anyone available in their top squad capable of playing his position.

This means few players would get a chance in first grade from outside an NRL squad, as Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs winger Marcelo Montoya – the club's leading tryscorer in 2017 – did in round three last season.

Eventually, the roster restructure could lead to a genuine second-tier competition in NSW to mirror Queensland's Intrust Super Cup, in which all teams are run independently of NRL clubs.


As a result, Carney has been signed by the Cairns-based Northern Pride and Taylor was recruited by the Central Queensland Capras to play in the Intrust Super Cup – not as a back-up for any NRL club.

With NRL clubs not needing to finalise their 30-man squads until June 30, they would be able to negotiate a deal for Carney or Taylor before then if they believe they would boost their roster.

Manly Warringah Sea Eagles officials say they will not need to seek an exemption and will meet Thursday's deadline to finalise their 29-man roster, despite the club's salary cap issues which prevented them from bidding for Trent Hodkinson earlier this month.

The most significant difference to the new roster system is the increase in the size of each club's NRL squad, with the minimum wage for players 1-26 being $100,000 per year and players 27-30 guaranteed to earn 70,000 per year.

The decision to increase NRL squads is aimed at providing stability for those five players who were previously on second-tier contracts as only three clubs – the Bulldogs, St George Illawarra Dragons and Canberra Raiders – used only 25 players last season.

Gold Coast Titans used 34 players, while North Queensland Cowboys used 32, Melbourne Storm and Newcastle Knights used 31 and South Sydney Rabbitohs, Wests Tigers and New Zealand Warriors each used 30.

According to NRL.com Stats, clubs had an average of 4.9 players unavailable for selection through injury each match, with the Cowboys averaging 7.19 unavailable players per game.


Each club is also allowed three-to-six players on a development list, who can be paid up to $60,000 each but are not permitted to play in the Telstra Premiership without approval from the salary cap auditor.

This is only likely to be granted if the club does not have any player in their 30-man NRL squad capable of playing a certain position and wants to use one of the rookies.

Players on a development contract for two years are entitled to an annual 10 per cent salary cap discount for the duration of their careers provided they remain with that club.

It will be interesting to see who the Dogs name in the top 29/30 as we have talent coming through, but which players do they see as the ones who are going to play this year.

 

[Mr Invisible]

Who the fuck thinks up these ideas... And the NRL wonder why they are losing players to other codes.

This effectively stunts the potential for someone in NSW RL to step up.

What if a team gets a heap of injuries?
What about promoting rookies?
Who polices if a player is capable of playing a position or not?

This is all kinda of stupid if you ask me. Leave it at 25 with the ability to promote players, and simply introduce a rule that if a player has played more than X amount of games in the NRL, they can't be promoted outside the Top 25.

Simple as that.

As it is, this is just rules for rules sake (and might cause salary cap issues for some teams if they banked on Top 25 only). I mean, someone explain how Roosters can fit 30 players under a $9.4 million cap when they have 4 players taking up $4 million comfortably.

 

[Alan79]

It does seem pretty ridiculous for the NRL to set up a system like this. It makes it very difficult for a club to reward a player who works hard and shows a big improvement by giving them an NRL debut.

 

[Trafford10]

. I mean, someone explain how Roosters can fit 30 players under a $9.4 million cap when they have 4 players taking up $4 million comfortably.

Nope.
And they're $750,000 under the cap.

 

[Trafford10]

How does it work for players at the club ourside the 30.
Is there a cap applied to the rest of the squad?

 

[Mr Invisible]

It does seem pretty ridiculous for the NRL to set up a system like this. It makes it very difficult for a club to reward a player who works hard and shows a big improvement by giving them an NRL debut.

Well there is little to no incentive to have a juniors program anymore now it seems, if they'll be locked out from first grade promotion.

 

[Baby Blues]

This surely promotes clubs to hoard players. Sign your 3 best 18 teens to development contracts and they’ll have a 10% cap discount as long as they stay with the club.

 

[CaptainJackson]

This is the players board guaranteeing their own futures. Doesn't fit in unique jobs like a professional sports player

NRL has this wrong

 

[CrittaMagic69]

This surely promotes clubs to hoard players. Sign your 3 best 18 teens to development contracts and they’ll have a 10% cap discount as long as they stay with the club.

Clubs should get a cap discount for players they promote from the lower grades. The loyalty thing they have atm is a joke.

 

[Oatley Dog]

Settle down. Every club gets to nominate 29 of their 30 players they intend to use in FG for the season by next week. So we essentially have settled squads across the board. So if you are a kid with some promise and you don't get in the top 29 you then have the opportunity to look around or put your head down and work towards maybe scoring that 30th position at the halfway mark. It's not like your papers are marked never to play FG. It just means you aren't in the top squad for this year. No big deal for mine.

If a clubs roster gets smashed due to injury then I am sure the NRL has the capacity to permit additional players to come into the squad. Realistically most clubs expect to use over 30 players a season so I'm pretty sure the NRL can accommodate it.

The good news is that if you have bought a squad of duds you are stuck with them for the season - as you should be. Makes recruiters the new millionaires of the the sport doesn't it...get it right and everyone is your bestie. Get it wrong and you get the chop. No more Crusher type issues.

 

[JayBee]

Clubs should get a cap discount for players they promote from the lower grades. The loyalty thing they have atm is a joke.

Phil Gould proposed about 10 years ago that the cap should be reduced, and only count for players you have not developed.

Obviously this opens up pandoras box of what classifies as a junior (for example, think Braith Anasta or Willie Mason with us... where do you draw the line? Both joined us from other teams at a young age, but we blooded them into reggies then 1st grade)

In theory, sounds awesome. If we had that in play from 2003-20010, we would of just about won it every year. The problem is, it favours teams with huge junior bases (NZ, Penrith, Brisbane etc).

 

[Baby Blues]

Clubs should get a cap discount for players they promote from the lower grades. The loyalty thing they have atm is a joke.

Teams with bigger junior bases will have too much of an advantage. Lower grades don't matter and you're better off having a requirement of having certain amount of players in your team that are juniors if you're trying to use the promote your own angle.

 

[Mr Invisible]

So if you want to get rid of a player using up too much cap, you just assign them at start of year to outside the Top 30 (and banish them to NSW Cup), and they don't count towards your clubs cap.

BRILLIANT IDEA NRL!

 

[Horny Wog]

Who the fuck thinks up these ideas... And the NRL wonder why they are losing players to other codes.

This effectively stunts the potential for someone in NSW RL to step up.

What if a team gets a heap of injuries?
What about promoting rookies?
Who polices if a player is capable of playing a position or not?

This is all kinda of stupid if you ask me. Leave it at 25 with the ability to promote players, and simply introduce a rule that if a player has played more than X amount of games in the NRL, they can't be promoted outside the Top 25.

Simple as that.

As it is, this is just rules for rules sake (and might cause salary cap issues for some teams if they banked on Top 25 only). I mean, someone explain how Roosters can fit 30 players under a $9.4 million cap when they have 4 players taking up $4 million comfortably.

Fuck that, I'm putting $200 on them to get the spoon they have to get caught

 

[Oatley Dog]

So if you want to get rid of a player using up too much cap, you just assign them at start of year to outside the Top 30 (and banish them to NSW Cup), and they don't count towards your clubs cap.

BRILLIANT IDEA NRL!

Seriously, do you even think before writing this tripe? I don't have to read the policy to know that all player contracts are registered with the NRL so they know exactly who is in the top squad and who isn't. So, hypothetically if we wanted to get rid of Tolman off our books by not nominating him as one of the 30 the NRL would step in and tell us he has a valid NRL contract and he is in the squad. Our only option then would be to get him a spot elsewhere or pay him out - which would come out of the cap.

 

[Mr Invisible]

Seriously, do you even think before writing this tripe? I don't have to read the policy to know that all player contracts are registered with the NRL so they know exactly who is in the top squad and who isn't. So, hypothetically if we wanted to get rid of Tolman off our books by not nominating him as one of the 30 the NRL would step in and tell us he has a valid NRL contract and he is in the squad. Our only option then would be to get him a spot elsewhere or pay him out - which would come out of the cap.

*rolls eyes* so you reckon once you contract a player they are automatically locked into the Top 30 for the term of the contract?

HIGHLY doubt it!!

 

[Baby Blues]

*rolls eyes* so you reckon once you contract a player they are automatically locked into the Top 30 for the term of the contract?

HIGHLY doubt it!!

It’s difficult to really analyse this without knowing how players outside of the top 30 are paid. I would assume that once you have your contract registered with the NRL you can’t be demoted to outside the top 30 until it expires or your contract is terminated

 

[Oatley Dog]

*rolls eyes* so you reckon once you contract a player they are automatically locked into the Top 30 for the term of the contract?

HIGHLY doubt it!!

If you sign a contract of the minimum value then you are a contracted player and locked into the top 30 and counted as part of the salary cap. What is so hard to comprehend about that? So you think the club can sign 50 players to NRL contracts and only 30 of them will count? Really? Do you really think that the NRL is so low on intelligence that they have no idea how their actual business runs? I'm sure some club or other will find a way to work around the system. That doesn't make the system wrong it just means that some clubs will do anything to win. Fair dinkum find something that has at least an ounce of commonsense to bag them over.

 

[Mr Invisible]

If you sign a contract of the minimum value then you are a contracted player and locked into the top 30 and counted as part of the salary cap. What is so hard to comprehend about that? So you think the club can sign 50 players to NRL contracts and only 30 of them will count? Really? Do you really think that the NRL is so low on intelligence that they have no idea how their actual business runs? I'm sure some club or other will find a way to work around the system. That doesn't make the system wrong it just means that some clubs will do anything to win. Fair dinkum find something that has at least an ounce of commonsense to bag them over.

We are talking about the NRL here. Intelligence is in no way a high priority.

Here's the problem with the idea if you are saying those players are locked into contracts: How does a team then recruit?

They lock in 30 players in NRL contracts. All are contracted for 2018-2019 seasons.
In 2019 they want to recruit 2 players, but they already have 30 NRL contracted players.

This would mean they'd HAVE to swap that player to another club in order to find a spot in their 30.
But that other club also has 30 players locked in, so would have to retire or not sign a player in their 30.

So with that in mind a player with an NRL contract cannot be locked into the Top 30, as that would effectively kill any chance of clubs recruiting.

Unless I'm missing something obvious in all this.

 

[EXPLORER]

Who the fuck thinks up these ideas... And the NRL wonder why they are losing players to other codes.

This effectively stunts the potential for someone in NSW RL to step up.

What if a team gets a heap of injuries?
What about promoting rookies?
Who polices if a player is capable of playing a position or not?

This is all kinda of stupid if you ask me. Leave it at 25 with the ability to promote players, and simply introduce a rule that if a player has played more than X amount of games in the NRL, they can't be promoted outside the Top 25.

Simple as that.

As it is, this is just rules for rules sake (and might cause salary cap issues for some teams if they banked on Top 25 only). I mean, someone explain how Roosters can fit 30 players under a $9.4 million cap when they have 4 players taking up $4 million comfortably.

this system will last 2 years max then boom, it will be changed for sure