The NRL gives clubs a grant to cover the salary cap. I guarantee you if the salary cap decreases by X% so will the players contracts. Also clubs signing players now (e.g. Frizell, Latrell) are signing players based on X% of the salary cap (the same % which = what they'd be on if the cap stayed the same). Until we know what they salary cap is going to look like moving forward those players aren't going to know what they're going to be earning. This was spoken again on Fox with Kent relaying what I'm telling you (I also said this before Kent said it today).
Every club will be able to pay the salary cap whatever it is (as again they get a grant from the NRL). Pay cuts/no work is happening everywhere, not just NRL. Also again it is across the board for every club and player.
If we can't agree on this we're just going to be going around in circles. I'm pretty confident it'll pan out the way I'm saying but we'll have to wait and see.
The players have current legally binding contracts. In order to change that requires BOTH PARTIES to agree to the change, the effective result being a new contract. If the player/s don’t agree then they are entitled to seek legal recourse to have their contracts honoured.
I know what I would do, I would tell my players that we will honour their contracts, pay them the agreed amount in full, regardless of how much the NRL pays us. When the club’s business returns to normal, as it most certainly will, we can afford it. The clubs that can’t, we’ll that’s their problem. We have lost and let go a plethora of quality players over the last 4 years because of salary cap constraints, plus many players we would have liked to have signed but couldn’t. The clubs that took our players because they could offer more money didn’t care and neither should we when the shoe is on the other foot.
Think of the player loyalty it would generate, we would be known as the club that financially supports its players and honours its contracts. It’s an ever so easy spin to generate positive publicity, “we don’t believe in cutting our players’ salaries just because the NRL screwed up its finances”, “players have mortgages and families to support” etc etc. There’s a once in 20 years opportunity here and we should take it.
Go Dogs