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Even the threat of a superstar like Greg Inglis leaving South Sydney to play rugby union overseas wouldn’t be enough to justify NRL boss Dave Smith throwing hundreds of thousands of extra dollars at him to stay.
The so-called discretionary power Smith gave himself to spend money not counted in the salary cap to keep superstar players who are considering offers to leave the competition has always been out of order with the financial lines along which the game is run.
He hasn’t used the power yet, although indications were he was quite prepared to in an attempt to convince Jarryd Hayne not to leave Parramatta to try to break into the NFL.
But Hayne had his heart set on the move and having had the courage to make a decision that could cost him a lot of money if he failed, extra money would have been unlikely to change his decision.
The story in yesterday’s The Sun-Herald that the Inglis camp has an overseas agent assessing interest in him from European rugby clubs is followed by a story in today’s Sydney Morning Herald in which Allan Gainey, the Australian agent for Inglis, says he constantly fields inquiries from overseas union and league clubs regarding Inglis.
Inglis is contracted to Souths until the end of 2017 and whether any overseas interest ever develops into an actual move remains to be seen.
But if that did happen and Smith then offered a stack of money to Inglis on top of his contract payment to stay, that just wouldn’t be fair to the other 15 clubs in the competition.
It would amount to a massive free kick to the Rabbitohs, the same as it would be to North Queensland if the same thing happened with fellow superstar Johnathan Thurston, or another superstar such as Billy Slater from Melbourne.
If the league wants to make it easier for clubs to keep superstar players in the face of big offers from overseas, it should introduce a marquee player component to the salary cap which allows for one player’s contract payment not to count at all under the cap.
Some clubs would be better placed than others to come up with the extra money themselves or find sponsors prepared to foot the bill, but at least every club would have the opportunity to play by the same rule.
If an Inglis or a player of similar stature in the game was paid extra by the NRL to stay, the other elite players would be entitled to have their noses out of joint.
And what is to stop a superstar player’s management from seeking huge overseas offers in an attempt to draw the extra money out of the NRL?
I’m not suggesting that would happen in the case of Inglis, but there is obviously the potential for it to happen with a superstar player.
Whatever overseas interest there is in Inglis may come to nothing. He may have no real desire to leave the NRL. But it is a smart manager’s job to always be aware of what sort of interest there is out there for his client and what sort of offers that interest may generate.
If Inglis does have an interest in at least exploring other opportunities, then he is not going to be lacking when it comes to information.
But if it came to the crunch with him or another superstar, the NRL shouldn’t be in the business of producing extra money to try to keep the player.
The league should give the clubs the power to do that, if they’re good enough.
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