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Managing a club’s salary cap is now more of a minefield of risk than at any time since a limit was introduced in 1990.
Clubs are so desperate to lure or retain marquee players that they are paying too much and not leaving enough to build a decent team to around them.
Keeping 17 players on the field who are capable of winning the competition over the duration of a season requires a good combination of shrewd retention and recruitment mixed with strong talent identification and development and of course luck.
Plenty of luck.
The strategy that seems to hold sway in this era is trying base the team around massively paid marquee players.
Craig Bellamy’s strategy has worked brilliantly for years. He places the best meat and potatoes he can get around superstars Cam Smith, Cooper Cronk and Billy Slater, and then he makes that cattle adhere absolutely to game plans and to their individually assigned roles.
It seems a straightforward model, right?
The problem is that while it is possible to recruit superstars, you generally can’t get or afford three at one time. Further, while the Storm’s tactics, discipline and game plan are easy to see, no other side seems able to produce – or are prepared to produce – the standard of professionalism and sacrifice required to replicate it.
(Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
So basing teams around star players seems to be the go.
But what happens when you pay big money for a player and they don’t work out?
I asked my Twitter friends for their best examples of big-name signings that were flops. They nominated the following:
However, the reality is that there will always be successful signings and unsuccessful ones while trying to manage the salary cap.
The 2018 Roosters were widely accused of rorting the salary cap. However, the reality is that the huge signings of James Tedesco and Cooper Cronk meant they had to shed a lot of depth.
Trent Robinson has gambled that fringe players like Zane Tetvano, Ryan Matterson, Isaac Liu and Victor Radley can replace the likes of Aiden Guerra and Kane Evans effectively.
(AAP Image/Paul Miller)
Similarly, Shane Flanagan has put lots of his eggs in the Josh Dugan/Matt Moylan basket, hoping the old men in his pack can go another season – and that those two players will actually perform to their undoubted potential.
Then there are the Sea Eagles, who seemingly put most of their eggs in the Daly Cherry-Evans basket.
The Sea Eagles are now fully feeling the repercussions of the DCE deal. Along with their punishment from the NRL for their cap breaches, Cherry-Evans huge contract – as well as the hefty ones belonging to Tom Trbojevic, Martin Taupau and Jake Trbojevic – means there is little left in the kitty to assemble a decent entourage for them.
Throw in a decent handful of injuries and the Sea Eagles look in dire straits. Of course, not so dire that they are prepared to play Jackson Hastings…
So while there is no question that marquee signings can reap huge rewards – for example, Sonny Bill Williams, Cam Smith, Billy Slater, Johnathan Thurston and (so far) Ben Hunt – there is also the big risk of lack of depth that goes with it.
As I said above, a side needs plenty of luck to win a title. Luck with injuries, with up-and-coming players rising to the challenge and with the journey men you signed working out really well.
If you look at the Premiers for the last 20 years, the thing they will all most probably have in common is that they had luck in regards to all of these things.
When the Raiders fell just short in 2016 it was in no small part due to the in-game bad luck that were the injuries sustained by Jarrod Croker and Joey Leilua. However, the reason they got that far was that all of those three factors had until that point worked out for them.
(AAP Image/Paul Miller)
Firstly, in 2015 the Raiders had signed three players – Blake Austin, Sia Soliola and Josh Hodgson – who all massively exceeded expectations and continued to do so into the next season. Further, in 2016 Elliot Whitehead arrived from Catalans, Aidan Sezer arrived from the Titans and Junior Paulo from the Eels. That put the Raiders in the position where they actually had Shaun Fensom, Paul Vaughan and Sam Wiliams in the Mounties. That depth, mixed with few injuries, saw them challenge for the title for the first time since 1995.
Of course those strong results meant the players market value rose and the Raiders were unable to keep that depth in 2017.
When news leaked this week that Raiders junior Shannon Boyd had turned down the Green Machine’s offer and was almost certain to leave the club there were many who didn’t understand it.
However, the rationale is very simple. Ricky Stuart and Don Furner know that if they want to achieve the ultimate success, they must get that depth back. The way they believe they can do that is by the players buying into the team. That buy-in isn’t just in regards to training, dealing with fans and sponsors and in playing the games; it also has to be about taking less money than they can get elsewhere to help the team achieve the best possible depth.
The payoff is that that depth may yield the greatest reward of all: premiership glory.
The off-contract players must decide whether they are actually committed to their team and their teammate s or whether they are for sale to the top bidder.
If they decide to take the biggest contract, that is surely their right. Footballers have a very short window to secure their future.
However, the players who hold out for top dollar should consider that they may actually be damaging their chances of achieving the ultimate prize: winning the premiership.
Of course, their player manager may well be more concerned about the size of their immediate cut and be far less likely to point that out to their client. The players need to ask themselves what they are really trying to achieve.
But if enough of the players do buy into the club by taking less (and less will still be a very good amount), and they achieve the ultimate success through it, it could change the face of salary cap management permanently and make the marquee player, and the risks that go with them, a rare thing.
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Poll
Who do you think is the biggest big-name signing flop of the last twenty years?