St George Illawarra recruiting boss Ian Millward says the NRL’s salary cap offer will make it harder to keep off-contract stars Gareth Widdop and Josh Dugan in a frenzied player market.
The NRL is believed to have tabled an offer of $8.84 million to the Rugby League Players’ Association which is less than the figure the Dragons and many other clubs were using to project their wage bill for 2018.
With Widdop and Dugan both in talks about new deals, Millward said the lower-than-expected number had forced them to re-assess.
“Obviously we were working on a higher figure and that has an effect on our negotiations,” Millward said.
“We’re still very active in discussions with Gareth and Josh and we would like to keep advancing them.”
Millward said recent developments including Melbourne superstar Cooper Cronk putting himself on the open market next year as well as the race to sign Cronulla’s Jack Bird and the Wests Tigers’ “big four” had inflated the market.
“Just recently there’s been so much activity amongst players with players leaving (and) clubs getting quite anxious,” Millward said.
“I can use it with Gareth, we were in negotiations and all of a sudden there’s been a couple of clubs where things have happened and they’re very anxious and the market has gone up.”
Widdop was remaining tight-lipped about contract negotiations when asked about them on Monday.
“The contract side of things, they’re things that just happen,” Widdop said.
“It’s a reality, it will take care of itself.”
Millward said the club would resolve Widdop and Dugan’s contract situations before opening talks with off-contract prop Russell Packer.
“Obviously they have a big impact on our cap,” Millward said.
“We decided because they’re with the same agency and also Russell is with the same agency, we would wait for a decision on those top two before we moved on to Russell.”
With the recent upsurge in the NRL’s player market, Millward said the club was pleased they could sign Brisbane halfback Ben Hunt in January.
“It’s nowhere near some of the figures that were said,” Millward said.
“Which also causes problems at times internally because players see those reports.
“We got in early, we got the figure we were very comfortable with.”
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