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Last week, the Daily Telegraph’s Phil Rothfield and Brent Read created a sensational mountain out of a mole hill rating each team’s roster by today’s dollar value.
What an absolute waste of time.
Yes, the usual suspects were on top of the list, i.e. Roosters, Panthers, Storm, Rabbitohs and Broncos. But to rate each team based on each player’s value if they were on the open market is nonsense. Buzz and Ready all but admitted this too stating the Cowboys would have been $2.5 under the salary cap but, because they had an unexpected good year, they are now marginally over.
That’s garbage journalism.
Why don’t they write about the real elephant in the room which is third party agreements. This is where there is a disparity in the cap between the top teams and the wannabes.
One team cities have the advantage over most Sydney clubs. The Storm, Cowboys, Broncos, to a lesser extent Warriors due to being lil’ bro to Super Rugby.
The Sydney market is saturated with nine NRL teams, two AFL, two A-League, two BBL teams, basketball and netball all competing for sponsorship dollars.
This is where the Roosters, Panthers and Souths have the advantage over the likes of Wests Tigers, Dragons, Sharks and Bulldogs. Big business connections are why we consistently see teams like the Roosters have $2M more playing talent than any other team.
Now what constitutes a third party agreement?
It’s when a company approaches a player wanting to top up their salary for minimal/no return. It is the third party that makes the approach without the club’s involvement.
It is naïve to believe this is what actually happens.
In 2015, Manly Captain and part-time acrobat, DCE was on the cusp of signing with the Gold Coast Titans and backflipped to stay at the Sea Eagles for reportedly 1.5M per season.
A chunk of this money was under the salary cap with the remainder being from “potential” third party opportunities. Make of this what you will.
We have seen multiple clubs stripped points and/or fined over third party rorts.
The Eels infamous “Signature Club”, The Sea Eagles, Sharkies… all trying to stay competitive with the teams that have a lazy extra 1-2M to spend.
Coaches v Doctors
Over the weekend, we saw multiple coaches criticise the Bunker’s independent doctor for calling five players to have an HIA.
Knights coach Adam O’Brien and Raiders’ Ricky Stuart being the most critical. The later even stating the NRL and RPLA do not trust him to do the right thing.
You are 100% correct there Ricky. Coaches are the reason the rules keep changing as they work out ways to manipulate them.
Coaches cannot be trusted.
