News SMH Phil Gould has slammed the NRL salary cap for decades. Now he can finally change it

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Phil Gould has slammed the NRL salary cap for decades. Now he can finally change it
by Adrian Proszenko


When the NRL resolved to assemble a taskforce to conduct an overdue review of its salary cap, one of the first invitations was sent to Phil Gould.

There are half a dozen committees that have been, or are about to be, formed to review everything in the game – from development pathways to agent accreditation, all the way through to the NRLW structure. It is not unusual for senior club officials to be appointed to them, to ensure the expertise of Penrith’s Matt Cameron, Melbourne’s Frank Ponissi and the Warriors’ Dan Floyd is utilised.

However, the decision to pick Gould’s brain about the salary cap is significant because few people in the history of the game have been more critical of it.

Canterbury general manager of football Gould, Cronulla coach Craig Fitzgibbon, Broncos chief executive Dave Donaghy, Rabbitohs CEO Blake Solly, veteran player manager David Riolo and Dragons chairman Andrew Lancaster – the latter appointed as committee chairman – will ensure the issue is explored by a diverse cross-section of the game’s participants.

“It’s useful to get the views of people that have different roles from different clubs that have been in the game for a significant period of time,” said NRL chief Andrew Abdo at the launch of the NRL’s Beanie for Brain Cancer round at Allianz Stadium on Wednesday.

“The salary cap hasn’t been reviewed for at least a decade and the game has changed quite significantly over that period of time.

“So this is a check in to find ways to make sure that it’s still contemporary, it’s still fit for purpose, and if there are ways we can modernise it and come up with some innovations.”

On the one occasion the committee has met, Gould did not attend, leaving the NRL unsure whether the outspoken administrator will be involved in the process.

What he missed was a discussion about how the NRL could potentially incorporate the best models from other sporting leagues throughout the world. For instance, the NBA has a “stretch provision” that allows a team to spread a player’s remaining salary over a longer period of time when waiving them. So if a player – one usually not performing up to their pay cheque – moves on to another club with a year to go on their contract, instead of suffering all the salary cap pain in one season, a club can spread it out over twice the number of remaining years on their deal, plus one.

To put it into rugby league terms, if, say, Dylan Brown was moved on from the last two years of his $1.3 million-a-season deal with Newcastle, the playmaker still gets all his money, but it is spread over five years of the Knights’ salary cap (2 x 2 + 1).

The NBA brought in the rule to provide more flexibility for franchises to manage their rosters, to ensure that one bad deal doesn’t render a club uncompetitive for years.

While there’s an acceptance the NRL requires a salary cap, to keep the competition even and prevent clubs from spending themselves into oblivion, an overhaul is long overdue. There have been few proper reviews since the NSWRL introduced it way back in 1990, and the argument that teams don’t stay at the top or bottom for long no longer rings true. The Panthers have won four consecutive grand finals, while Wests Tigers are attempting to avoid a fourth straight wooden spoon.

With the introduction of two new teams, coupled with a new broadcast deal and a fresh collective bargaining agreement in coming seasons, it was deemed time to have a close look at the salary cap.

Concessions for loyal and long-serving players, reducing squad sizes to better distribute talent, introducing trade windows, injury replacements, third-party agreements, publishing player salaries – everything is on the table.

This should be music to the ears of Gould, who declined to comment when contacted. For years, through his various media platforms, “Gus” has been providing the NRL with unsolicited advice when it comes to the salary cap.

“It is an absolute waste of time talking about the salary cap because the NRL is not listening,” Gould wrote in his Sun-Herald column in August 2003.

“The salary cap in its current form punishes success. It provides no incentive for development of junior talent. It does not reward those clubs with the ability to develop representative-class players. It gives no compensation to clubs with representative players who have to do without them during the rep season, or even if they lose them to injuries sustained in rep games.”

In May of the following season, Gould wrote: “I have had a gutful of these archaic and ridiculous NRL salary cap restrictions,” in reference to the prospect of Luke Ricketson finishing his career at a club other than the Roosters.

Midway through 2007, he wrote: “I’ve been slamming the salary cap for years and warning of its detrimental effect on the player depth in clubs and the quality of football, and its contribution to the constant drain of players into retirement, overseas, or to rugby.

“None of the half-baked cliches I get from people at head office even comes close to satisfactory.”

More recently, Gould has used his Six Tackles with Gus podcast to warn about the perils of blooding young players too early, or paying them too much in their formative years.

For decades, the premiership-winning coach has complained that head office won’t listen. Now he has the chance to help make the cap fit.
 
Apologies if this is felt to be a better fit for the RL sub-forum, please move it there if so.
 
Time for changes, just needs to actually happen and not be all fluff.

One thing that I have always felt that needs to happen is that cap spending needs to be made visible because there is so much speculation out there.
 
bulldogsmyte said:
The most obvious change should be a transfer fee to reward clubs that develop players only to lose them to other clubs.
Click to expand...
I like this, need to start rewarding development clubs. Another consideration is to give more discounts for long service by juniors. If a player is in your junior development for say, 2+ years, then they get a sliding scale discount for cap purposes for each year they have a top level contract from say, 6 years onwards.
 
Psycho Doggie said:
I like this, need to start rewarding development clubs. Another consideration is to give more discounts for long service by juniors. If a player is in your junior development for say, 2+ years, then they get a sliding scale discount for cap purposes for each year they have a top level contract from say, 6 years onwards.
Click to expand...
yes and I think the transfer fee should also factor in the original salary paid by the incumbent club compared to the salary offered by the new club. This reflects the amount of player development contributed by the incumbent club. If club x develops a junior to become an origin player who then leaves for club y then the transfer fee should reflect that massive amount of development by club x. if that player then leaves club y to club z with a marginal increase in salary then the transfer fee should be small as club y contributed minimal development to that player. the club that contributes the most towards a player's development should be rewarded the most from the transfer fee. a club that just simply buys rep players should have minimal reward from the transfer fee.
 
The NRL need to decide WHY they have a salary cap. Is it to even up the competition or to ensure the teams don't overspend & bankrupt themselves. The cap was introduced originally for the latter, but now the amount the NRL gives clubs covers that, so it should be the former. In which case, then a points cap is the only fair method. I did one 25 years ago, but things have changed since then like no City V Country games. It went like this:

- 5 points for first grade experience, junior Aust, NZ or Eng player + an additional 5 points for every 50 NRL games.
- 2 points for every City or Country representation (if you do not play this form of
representative football you would lose one point after 12 months and the other point if you
do not represent in two consecutive years.
- 10 points for every State of Origin game or international game outside NZ, Aust & Eng
- 20 points for every international game (for NZ, Aust & Eng)

You couldn't implement this system next year, but you could have to bring it in, in say 5 years. This would cover for every contract currently in existence as there wouldn't be any contracts more than 5 years currently (now some have 10 year contracts). What total points cap would you have? To decide what total points cap to have, you would apply the proposed points system to every club now & see how many points you would come up with, then average the points for all the clubs and add a little bit of fat. The points would be in effect, say, at the end of the representative season each year, eg this year after the SOO series. This is so you could budget for the following year and still be under the points cap.

Now if you haven't played a SOO game for 12 months you get a 20% discount, 2 years 40% etc & so after 5 years of not playing SOO these points would no longer count towards the cap. The same would apply to test level.

Give something like this to this committee & I am sure they can improve it. It's a starting point.
 
chisdog said:
- 10 points for every State of Origin game or international game outside NZ, Aust & Eng
- 20 points for every international game (for NZ, Aust & Eng)
Click to expand...
Wow, I can see clubs pressuring players to play for Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, etc rather than play for Australia. "Sorry player X, you can't play for Australia, you have to make yourself available for someone else, otherwise that would put us over our points allowance and you would have to leave".

But, a rather big "but", there is a contract in place which would have to be terminated, except the 2 parties involved, the player and the club, don't want the contract terminated. I can see legal issues with the NRL insisting that a player's contract be terminated because he payed for Australia.

The current system is simple, because the contract detriments the amount the player is paid and at the same time how he fits under the Cap. A points system will undoubtedly contradict the contract and the Cap, the above being just one example.


Team Work
 
chisdog said:
The NRL need to decide WHY they have a salary cap. Is it to even up the competition or to ensure the teams don't overspend & bankrupt themselves. The cap was introduced originally for the latter, but now the amount the NRL gives clubs covers that, so it should be the former. In which case, then a points cap is the only fair method. I did one 25 years ago, but things have changed since then like no City V Country games. It went like this:

- 5 points for first grade experience, junior Aust, NZ or Eng player + an additional 5 points for every 50 NRL games.
- 2 points for every City or Country representation (if you do not play this form of
representative football you would lose one point after 12 months and the other point if you
do not represent in two consecutive years.
- 10 points for every State of Origin game or international game outside NZ, Aust & Eng
- 20 points for every international game (for NZ, Aust & Eng)

You couldn't implement this system next year, but you could have to bring it in, in say 5 years. This would cover for every contract currently in existence as there wouldn't be any contracts more than 5 years currently (now some have 10 year contracts). What total points cap would you have? To decide what total points cap to have, you would apply the proposed points system to every club now & see how many points you would come up with, then average the points for all the clubs and add a little bit of fat. The points would be in effect, say, at the end of the representative season each year, eg this year after the SOO series. This is so you could budget for the following year and still be under the points cap.

Now if you haven't played a SOO game for 12 months you get a 20% discount, 2 years 40% etc & so after 5 years of not playing SOO these points would no longer count towards the cap. The same would apply to test level.

Give something like this to this committee & I am sure they can improve it. It's a starting point.
Click to expand...
This system or similar points systems has been dreamed up by plenty and has always been crap.

The absolute achilles heel of it is you have somebody or somebody’s determining the value of a player. And I bet you won’t cry conspiracy when a Bulldogs player is chosen to play for Aus or given points on some other similar system over a Roosters player that makes that Bulldog player break our points cap when the judgement is made by an Aus coach or official with previous ties to The Roosters.

There’ll be howls of conspiracy every single time a players worth is judged by someone who’s given the authority to do so by their judgement.

There is ONLY one way to determine a players worth with integrity - and that’s how much someone is willing to pay them.

We just have to figure out a better way to
make it work.
 
Ripley said:
This system or similar points systems has been dreamed up by plenty and has always been crap.

The absolute achilles heel of it is you have somebody or somebody’s determining the value of a player. And I bet you won’t cry conspiracy when a Bulldogs player is chosen to play for Aus or given points on some other similar system over a Roosters player that makes that Bulldog player break our points cap when the judgement is made by an Aus coach or official with previous ties to The Roosters.

There’ll be howls of conspiracy every single time a players worth is judged by someone who’s given the authority to do so by their judgement.

There is ONLY one way to determine a players worth with integrity - and that’s how much someone is willing to pay them.

We just have to figure out a better way to
make it work.
Click to expand...
And how do you determine that when clubs are quite prepared to pay players in brown paper bags added with the fact that someone might say they don't want to play for one club for whatever reason to ensure they get to the club of their choice. Unfortunately, you can't force them, or the players will strike or sue the NRL for restraint of trade like Terry Hill did.
 
The salary cap is a great mechanism that the NRL should be proud of having. There are no glitches at all. All clubs comply each and every year. It is the most transparent mechanism in professional sports. However, the NRL know they must improve year on year to remain as the beacon for, and the envy of, the professional sporting world with the salary cap. That is why the NRL is considering appointing Gerard Sutton as the salary cap auditor.
 
chisdog said:
The NRL need to decide WHY they have a salary cap. Is it to even up the competition or to ensure the teams don't overspend & bankrupt themselves. The cap was introduced originally for the latter, but now the amount the NRL gives clubs covers that, so it should be the former. In which case, then a points cap is the only fair method. I did one 25 years ago, but things have changed since then like no City V Country games. It went like this:

- 5 points for first grade experience, junior Aust, NZ or Eng player + an additional 5 points for every 50 NRL games.
- 2 points for every City or Country representation (if you do not play this form of
representative football you would lose one point after 12 months and the other point if you
do not represent in two consecutive years.
- 10 points for every State of Origin game or international game outside NZ, Aust & Eng
- 20 points for every international game (for NZ, Aust & Eng)

You couldn't implement this system next year, but you could have to bring it in, in say 5 years. This would cover for every contract currently in existence as there wouldn't be any contracts more than 5 years currently (now some have 10 year contracts). What total points cap would you have? To decide what total points cap to have, you would apply the proposed points system to every club now & see how many points you would come up with, then average the points for all the clubs and add a little bit of fat. The points would be in effect, say, at the end of the representative season each year, eg this year after the SOO series. This is so you could budget for the following year and still be under the points cap.

Now if you haven't played a SOO game for 12 months you get a 20% discount, 2 years 40% etc & so after 5 years of not playing SOO these points would no longer count towards the cap. The same would apply to test level.

Give something like this to this committee & I am sure they can improve it. It's a starting point.
Click to expand...

I also put a points cap proposal to the NRL. Firstly in 2009 when Gallop was CEO and then again when Todd Greenberg was CEO. On both occasions I didn’t not receive a reply, not even one thanking me for my input.

I won‘t be writing to them again.

Like you I believe the original idea of the Salary Cap was to stop clubs going broke. That’s not the case now. It certainly does not even up the talent among the clubs to create an even competition.

A summit like this one could work with better sharper minds on the realities of the game than those that reside in NRL Headquarters, most of whom have never been part of the competition at an Elite level.
 
chisdog said:
And how do you determine that when clubs are quite prepared to pay players in brown paper bags added with the fact that someone might say they don't want to play for one club for whatever reason to ensure they get to the club of their choice. Unfortunately, you can't force them, or the players will strike or sue the NRL for restraint of trade like Terry Hill did.
Click to expand...
I did say we have to figure out a better way to make it work.

But that doesn’t change that there is no better way to determine the value of a player than how much someone is willing to pay them.

If Phil Gould wants to pay Locky Galvin $750k then Phil Gould is deciding how much that effects our SC and the effect on recruitment and retention moving forward. Nobody outside the club is having any effect on that.

If you have a points system than somebody outside the club is deciding how much that effects our Points Cap and the effect on recruitment and retention moving forward. Nobody inside the club is having any effect on that.
 
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