Under NRL rules we have to be compliant to a $9.1 million – base salary cap for the Top 30 players. So lets break that down by using an approximation of how back ended deals fuck a club;
1. Mbye, Woods, Graham, Kasiano - We would still be paying $2 Million of their wage in 2019 extending into 2020 & potentially 2021....
2. Tolman, Foran, Klemmer & Jackson (Have to assume Des did nothing linear for marquee players.) would suck down a further $3.2 million in 2019
3. That then leaves 3.9 million for the remaining 26 players in our roster at approx 150,000 per player. (Minimum wage is 100,000 for anyone in the top 30.)
4. There is no chance players like Holland, Hoppa, Frawley, Elliott, RFM etc are sitting on minimum wage so you can see the sort of squeeze we would have because of what Des did.
The fact is all of our contracts are being realigned back to a linear payment over the life of the contract so I can fully understand that back ended deals on contracts that were 3 or 4 years are going to take 3 to 4 years to wash out. That is why we will be in pain and misery until 2021 approximately.
Our problem with this is other clubs can literally cherry pick any talent we do identify because we cannot compete with their offer. Martin & Klemmer will be 2 examples of players that leave because we cannot offer them their market value.