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In 2010 the NRL has delivered another fiercely contested battle for the top eight and near-record average crowds in a powerful vindication of the salary cap – despite the Melbourne Storm dramas.
The regular season wrapped up on Sunday with two typically engrossing late-season clashes.
Manly took on the Bulldogs in front of a big crowd at Brookvale. The Dragons met traditional rivals Souths before a pulsating packed house at Kogarah. In both cases, finals spots were on the line.
These Sunday clashes were a powerful demonstration of the strong case behind the NRL’s salary cap crusade.
Close competitions deliver truly compelling late season football, which in turn delivers bumper crowds, and bumper ratings.
Of course, the other Sunday game told an entirely different story as the cap-rorting Melbourne Storm said a sad farewell to departing stars after a horror season when they were robbed of both points and pride.
Appropriately, then, for the most internally conflicted code in the country, a single day encapsulated in simple form the strong arguments both for and against the defining organizing structure behind the entire competition.
In a press release yesterday, Gallop was quick to establish the link between the captivating final rounds of the competition and the salary cap regime which he has staunchly advocated, thanking ‘the record number of club members and fans who have supported their teams through one of the closest competitions in history’.
Let’s break Gallop’s basic ‘cap = closeness = crowds’ logic into two parts.
Firstly, does the salary cap actually deliver closer competitions?
Well, yes.
Since 1989, using a basic measure of standard deviation, eight of the ten most evenly contested regular seasons have occurred in the NRL’s ‘modern’ salary cap era.
Of the eight closest seasons, all but one have occurred under Gallop’s recent watch (the exception being the in the 1992 competition where only two points separated seventh and twelfth).
Another measure of the evenness of the competition – the range separating the middle two quartiles of the ladder, where the vital bottom spots of the top eight are contested – also identifies the 2000s as producing the most evenly contested regular seasons (again with the exception of 1992).
What about the second arm of the argument – that close regular seasons result in higher crowds?
While correlation doesn’t prove causation, Gallop is also on strong ground here. The closest NRL season in recent history – that of 2005 – also delivered the highest average crowd per game on record (16,468).
Of the eight closer-than-average seasons in the sample, six had greater-than-average crowds – including every year since 2005.
The 2010 season? 3rd closest, 2nd biggest average crowd (16,340) – and the highest aggregate season crowd on record.
(You can view the full dataset on crowds and competition evenness here.)
Of course, the 2010 season also provided a powerful argument against the cap: build it, and they will cheat.
Certainly, this year and recent seasons have now been irreparably marked by the Storm salary cap disgrace. But that argument, in and of itself, is an argument for better cap design and enforcement – not wholesale abandonment of cap restrictions in favour of a free-for-all.
To its credit, in light of recent troubles, the NRL has softened its previously ardent equalization stance.
Whereas previously the NRL was unwilling to deviate from the principal of absolute equality across clubs, it is now broadly accepted that concessions for junior development, long serving players and marketing clout are a must. The only issue is how far these reforms and concessions will go in practice.
While no system will be faultless, a careful reworking of the salary cap in these areas will, over coming seasons, lead to an improved cap structure which continues to give us the close games and the open competitions that fans, sponsors and broadcasters crave.
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