PARRAMATTA chief executive Paul Osborne has blamed the NRL's "unfair" salary cap laws for yesterday's defection of star local juniors Feleti Mateo and Krisnan Inu to the New Zealand Warriors.
Both players will join the Warriors on three-year deals at the end of this season after Parramatta failed to "even get close" to matching their trans-Tasman rivals.
It's believed Mateo stands to earn around $1 million by switching clubs, while Inu would have been asked to accept a significant pay cut on his current $275,000-a-season deal to remain an Eel.
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"But with the current rules it feels like we are a breeding ground for other clubs who get to negotiate on the same terms as us despite putting nothing into their development.
"Look around the competition ... look at Manly and Cronulla ... there's Parramatta juniors everywhere. It's unfair."
And therein lies the key quotes! David Gallop has resisted significant change to the structure of the cap on the grounds that thus far he's "yet to see a better or fairer model" than the current one. Ozzie has rightfully pointed out the blatant inequity in the current system in so far as we spend $1 million developing players yet are not reimbursed at negotiation time once the player has made a name for himself.
If the current 'fair' cap allows for such injustices there can be no excuse to immediately take submissions on a new model for the salary cap system.