At first glance, Sydney’s reported offer of $10m over nine years to Lance Franklin – fresh off the back of last year’s multimillion dollar poaching of Kurt Tippett – is evidence enough that Sydney’s extra salary cap allowance has to go.
The argument goes that if the premiership-winning side of 2012 can afford to further enhance its list so dramatically, then there is something up with the system.
If Sydney won that flag with a glittering array of superstar talent, I’d be inclined to agree.
The fact of the matter – and a point that many pundits and rival club presidents are choosing to ignore – is that Sydney won that flag with a champion team, not a team of champions.
A team it cobbled together from recycled players other clubs didn’t want anymore and its own second-tier talent.
There were very few high or even first-round draft picks in the 2012 premiership team. Before the season began, the vast majority of the football public expected the Swans to continue to slide down the ladder, not challenge for a flag.
Much of the current Swans line-up were signed at bargain-basement prices before they were premiership players. And plenty are either on the veteran’s list or on their way to retirement, freeing up even more space.
So, it is in that context that the poaching of Tippett and now Franklin needs to be viewed.
Even with a normal salary cap, the Swans would have had ample room to manoeuvre.
Secondly, 10 million dollars is a headline-grabbingly huge amount of money. Spread out over nine years, it actually isn’t so outrageous.
The Swans are gambling that Franklin is going to be one of the tiny minority of players that continues playing deep into their thirties. It is not Sydney’s enlarged salary cap that has allowed this move to happen, it is their willingness to take a risk.
The reason Sydney are willing to do so is because their premiership window is wide open, and what matters most is they get Franklin playing well now.
If in five years their time has passed, it doesn’t matter so much if a large chunk of the salary cap is going towards a hobbled veteran who can barely compete.
The situation is similar to the Brisbane Lions in their heyday, where they signed a number of heavily back-ended contracts with superstars such as Voss.
Yes, they forked out huge amounts more than the player was worth in his final years (including a season where he didn’t even play), but they had salary cap room to spare as they were in rebuild mode and playing low-wage kids anyway.
There should be a debate on the merits of extra salary cap space for Sydney teams, but Franklin’s signature should not be a key part of the discussion.
Sydney have taken a huge risk to get him, and only time will tell if it was the right move.
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