Of all the poor decisions made by Australia’s sporting organisations in the last 20 years, and there are many, the salary cap has to be the worst.
This immoral policy has succeeded in crushing the individuality and culture of clubs, rewarded laziness at the expense of enterprise, and made criminals out of what should be a perfectly legal operation.
To see the cap justified on fairness is comical. Here’s why.
Consider a club that attracts fans, and connects with the local community. It attracts legitimate lower grade talent to play for it and develops these players. It might even develop some of them to be first grade, professional players.
Suppose the club spends several million dollars investing in the infrastructure to develop these players, in whatever form it may be – scholarships, facilities, coaches.
The player then becomes of a very high quality, but the club who has spent perhaps millions of dollars making them cannot pay them their market value – it would push them over the salary cap.
Instead, a club who has invested nothing into the development picks up the player, who is now playing for a team where he has little connection.
This is the real world effect of the salary cap, crushing the incentives for enterprise and the individual community of a club, and arbitrarily rewarding clubs who are deemed to be worthy by the charity of head office.
The resulting lack of talent, from lack of investment from the clubs creates a hole. A hole that head office typically decides to fill, with competitions like the Under-20s.
Of course, who are the better recruiters? Is it centralised bureaucrats in Sydney, with no community connection to clubs? Or is those who are on the ground, with an in depth understanding of youngsters in the local community? The game as a whole loses.
The result is that a premiership is no longer about the local club and community effort to support it, and it shows. It gift wraps premierships to teams out of nothing more than a lottery, which is justified because it allegedly ‘shares the premierships around’, which of course demeans the whole meaning of a premiership in the first place.
The great community teams of famous past are no longer possible under the salary cap. The cult like status of the Brisbane Broncos of the 90s, for example, or the Paramatta of the 80s, will never happen again.
It’s this system that sees the GWS Giants in the preliminary finals but unable to come close to filling a stadium or developing their own players.
It is high time the NRL and AFL turned to the EPL’s lead and ditched the salary cap. Perhaps if clubs want better players they should work on creating a better connection to the community and to their fans, and developing them themselves. After all, isn’t that what sport is all about? The community and the club, and people!
If it turns out Cronulla have violated the salary cap, then I will happily stand firm and applaud them for taking a stand against the tyranny of NRL head office, who has continuously crushed the concept of a club over a long period of time.
The salary cap destroys community, and stops players from being able to be paid their true market value. It is immoral and unethical. Bin it.
zhenry
Guest
Thankyou Peeeko for the detail in dismantling the above authors argument. Socialism is a contentious issue with the corporate media as their survival or pay checks mostly come from the corporations, and those corporations (and private banks) in crucial times rely on the 99% to bail them out: Socialism for the rich and austerity for the 99%. If you maintain that a society needs a value system other than ‘profit above all else’ you can be considered a socialist; amougst the long history and various definitions of socialism.
M
Guest
Who wrote this ?
Short Memory
Roar Rookie
I guess if we went your way we'd at least be able to book our tickets for the GF at the start of the season... We'd probably even be able to block book them years in advance. As long as we're Broncos, Roosters or Storm fans.
Greg
Guest
Us older people will remember what it was like before the salary cap was introduced. Clubs were spending money they didn’t have trying to keep up and the only way the could survive was by merging and I give you St George~Illawarra, West’s-Tigers and the ill fated Northern Eagles. Then there were those clubs that didn’t survive such as North’s, Newtown and for a while Souths. As most people here would agree no cap no comp.
Lroy
Guest
The irony is the administrators insist ''they'' should get market rates!! No finer example of hypocrisy in the world. Game is making more money than ever, yet the players arent getting it. The only people who benefit from the salary cap are lawyers who no one has ever heard off. Players have short careers, in fact, the fact they spend years playing football probably hurts their earning capacity outside football. Cap is crap..get rid of it, let the players earn what they are worth. No other occupation would stand for it, why should footballers??
Adam Bagnall
Roar Guru
Also look at how the Premier league is dominated by the same clubs every year, not sure I'd want that in league.
Emcie
Roar Guru
I was just trying to think of somewhere that would create someone that cares enough about politics to actually lable something socialist, sweeping generalisations and all that
egbert
Guest
As others have stated, the factual errors, shallow interpretations and dubious arguments are plentiful in this piece. However, why is socialism mentioned in the headline when the article doesn't seem to directly align the so-called evils of the salary cap with socialism? The author may well have those sentiments but I fail to see a link explicitly made between the salary cap and socialism (regardless of whether this is valid or not), thus the headline is a bit of a leap...
David C
Guest
Stupid article. The opening paragraphs don't tell the whole story. Here's why. "Consider a club that attracts fans, and connects with the local community. It attracts legitimate lower grade talent to play for it and develops these players. It might even develop some of them to be first grade, professional players. Suppose the club spends several million dollars investing in the infrastructure to develop these players, in whatever form it may be – scholarships, facilities, coaches." ....only for another rival club to throw a truckload of money at said players who gleefully accept saying "See ya later boys." Takes me back to the days of Manly trying to buy their premierships by pinching Souths premiership players while later gutting the cream of Wests' best, Brown, Boyd and Dorahy. No wonder we hated them so much back then.
peeeko
Roar Guru
NBA has a cap
shane
Guest
publish my other comment u dogs
Geoff Foley
Roar Rookie
Another reason there are fewer Canberra locals at the Raiders is the failed push from the Raiders board from a few years ago when they tried really hard to get better cap discounts for home developed players. Little financial incentive left now in a pathwasy like that. Focus now is on small town NSW kids (i.e Riverina/South Coast) who see Canberra as the big city lights, and Hodgson's mates from the UK where Canberra is viewed as a warm, exotic destination but also not too different to DPR Yorkshire. Also a small line of players coming from the historic contacts at Souths Logan and in NZ which is good to see.
Crosscoder
Roar Guru
The Sharks operate already on a far smaller budget than the Broncos,Eels,Roosters etc,and 3rd party agreements are negligible also by comparison. And have been fairly competitive over the years also. If the salary cap was abolished you'd end up with about 6 teams monopolising the code, and in a competitive sporting market just about kill it off. Ask yourself why the likes of the Eels,Dogs(since improved) and Manly have had crowd drop offs,their fans believing it's like going to a turkey shoot, and their team being the turkeys. They still have to spend 95% of the cap as required by the RLPA agreement, before NRL books closed off
Beastie
Roar Rookie
Don't do drugs kids.
boboo7
Guest
Salary capping is necessary, albeit imperfect. The EPL, NBA etc are largely a jokes of competitions. Most teams have no chance whatsoever to compete with the big 4 or 5 teams. It all about money and billionaires having a plaything. The only chance you generally have is that a billionaire might buy your club. As soon as a lower team gets some talent it is bought off by the big sides. Parity keeps the competition relevant. The EPL and NBA are so big they can deal with the lack of competition in the group - and lets be honest he NBA is basically entertainment. NRL, AFL would quickly fade if the big clubs could just buy all the talent.
John
Guest
Banks merge to compete, they merge with other finance companies to increase their reach and range of products. Airlines merge and form alliances or offer different routes. If a club wanted to reach a wider audience for example they could merge with an A-League club, share resources approach sponsors that can then have an all year round exposure. They could merge with another NRL club and move to where there are more business opportunities. It's all about strengthening the longterm financial viability of the clubs without them having to depend on NRL handouts. But with NRL essentially funding the current status quo this sort of thinking will never exist.
Geoff from Bruce Stadium
Roar Rookie
You obviously don't live in Canberra Emcie. We are full of socialists - loud and proud - and possibly the biggest supporters of the salary cap. If we didn't we wouldn't survive against teams like the Broncos and Roosters and other teams with deep pockets. At least having a cap gives us some hope. And the Raiders gave up on the home grown youth policy after Carney and Dugan dumped a couple of large ones on the club. Have a look at Ricky's recruitment policy - most are from the UK or NSW and Qld. Cotric, Wighton, Croker and Williams might be the only local juniors in the current squad that I can thinkl of. Its a different wordl now. But we're not frightened to give the refs a spray though when we think they deserve it as well as the NRL when they stuff up.
Geoff from Bruce Stadium
Roar Rookie
This article is such a load of rubbish. If the NRL ever reverted to an EPL system where there is no restriction on salary caps I will cease following the code immediately. The current EPL system favours half a dozen clubs that have the deepest pockets (and we all know who they are) and apart from the odd exception like Leicester City winning a couple of years ago you know from which group of clubs the winner will come from. That's why I no longer have any interest in watching or following the EPL. With the NRL its a more of a lottery and I like it that way. In the past 20 years there have been 12 clubs that have won the comp and another two have contested a Grand Final. Only two clubs - the Raiders and the Titans have not contested a Grand Final. I can't thinl of a better endorsement for the current system than that By having a salary cap it provides each club with the same financial resources to assemble a squad capable of winning a title. It is then up to each club to provide the quality of coaching staff, training facilities and club membership to attract players to the club. The system works even though we see examples of where clubs try to rort the cap and clubs are punished appropriately where it is proven. Leave it as it is. You may lose a couple of juniors to other teams by not having sufficient cap left to keep them but so what - you pick up others. The current system rewards those clubs smart enough to balance their roster appropriately within the cap ceiling. And what's wrong with a bit of socialism?
Big Daddy
Guest
If there's no salary cap what's to stop the NRL saying you don't get a grant. No salary cap also means that private ownership is appealing. The world wide leagues with no salary cap only works because they have competitions like champions league where they have better competition and are willing to spend to win it. At top level rugby league we only have the NRL and super league so the open market is fairly limited. Outside the salary cap some club's struggle financially . I don't think the author even thought about this before he wrote it.
Bunney
Roar Rookie
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