I hesitate, of course, to draw parallels with the structure of rugby league and the illegal drug trade, but ... here we go.
(Hold on to your hats, sports fans, this might get ugly.)
Whether you and I like it or not – and I don't – trying to enforce a law against illegal drugs when there is a huge demand for those drugs doesn't work, never has worked, and never will work. When market forces contrive to give an illegal drug that is in high demand the value of "X" dollars a kilo, a simple factor comes into play when you put huge resources behind stopping that drug.
Supply is limited, and people go outside the law to provide it anyway, even as the value goes up to "3X" or "4X" or "10X". So now you want to put even more resources to stopping that drug, put more people into prison dealing in it? OK, it becomes rarer still and it's value is now up to "20X" meaning the Mr Bigs that provide it, are rolling in it!
As your humble correspondent has long maintained, simply passing a law against something that is in such high demand, moves it beyond regulation, and the net result is the government loses control, and revenue, and the drug itself is more dangerous than ever. The drug is still out there, and the only result is the baddies make profits that would kill a brown dog.
Which brings us of course to rugby league ...
(He pauses. Shifts uncomfortably. Hopes he can bring this off ...)
The current system, as you know, is that rugby league is a fabulously popular game. People love it, television stations pay squillions to broadcast it and the players who provide the raw material for that spectacle are rightly paid a lot of money for that trouble.
But they are not paid their true market worth.
In fact, an illegal cartel formed by their employers, the clubs, under the auspices of the NRL, contrives to pay them well below what they are worth by virtue of the salary cap. Other employees work with the benefit of a minimum wage. The league players work under a collective maximum wage.
The net result, when a whole slew of players have a worth far beyond what they are actually being paid? Well, back in 1995, it resulted in Super League. Rupert Murdoch came in, started a competition of his own, and there was hell to pay. The whole shemozzle was only possible because the players were being paid only a fraction of their worth.
But, here and now, a more obvious example of what happens when a club can afford to pay a player more than the NRL will allow them to pay, is any variety of third-party arrangements. For decades the cliche used to be that they would sign the player for X dollars to play for the club, while employing his wife in the office for 2X – and not worry too much if she didn't turn up. These days, third-party agreements are OK under the rules, with several caveats. One of them as noted in the Herald yesterday is that "salary cap rules forbid any company involved in a commercial relationship with an NRL club to also serve as a third-party agreement sponsor". It is under this regulation that the Eels are being investigated for their TPA with Anthony Watmough.
Ummmm, can I ask what the point of that regulation is? If the Parramatta business community has the wherewithal to come up with the money to bring a player the calibre of Watmough to the Eels, what precisely, is the downside? Where is the conflict of interest, that the TPA is with a club sponsor?
Does it damage Watmough? Clearly not. It gets him closer to his actual market worth.
Does it damage the Eels? Clearly not. Their ranks are stronger for his presence, and he helps make the turnstiles click.
Does it damage the NRL? Obviously not. The more money they can get to their players, particularly money that doesn't come from their own hide, the better. Beyond everything else, it helps keep their players from the ravaging rah-rahs who risk descending from the hills on their regular raids and carrying off their best and brightest to their hilltop citadels to have them play in English, French and Japanese rugby.
So why persist with the nonsense?
Let the players get their market worth, and all is sorted ... except the proclivity of one or two, not Watmough, to partake of illegal drugs ... but that is another story!
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/sport/the-fitz-files/g-20160203-gmkvg5.html#ixzz3z98KeI40
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Replies
Fitz is just advocating for what is already happening currently.
Does anyone really think most of the Roosters TPA's are at arms length, or that Wayne isn't putting in calls to the thoroughbreds to give TPA's to certain players.
I understand that there is a big counter argument in that a company affiliated with the club could just make fake invoices to funnel funds through to players that they have TPA's with, ala melbourne storm, but really this has already been going on for years with little NRL intervention.
Why not make it an open book but adding the cap and max additional payments ie TPA's etc and use that as the yearly figure.
Then make public each squads total cost and individual cost to highlight possible anomalies.
Obviously the current Cap doesnt work for the likes of the Titans or Tigers so instead and it appears to be the clubs who have people in the right places who have no questions asked.
To me there seems to be a witchhunt on Parra. Why pick out Parra when teams like Easts, Melbourne, Brisbane, Rabbits, and Bulldogs have these special salary caps where they can offer good TPA to big names and get away with it but yet teams like Parra, Wests Tigers, Knights and Dragons struggle to maintain to keep the SC (salary cap) and still get busted big times. All we need is people with burning torches and farming tools chanting: 'Kill the wizard, kill the slut, kill the robot with the shiny butt.' It's bloody unfair and yet Roosters and Rabbits get their men and no questions about it...what uncle NicK wants, Uncle Nick gets
We get busted because our accountants are idiots and TPAs cannot be with companies we are associated with. The Roosters now how this shit works and do it above board, Parra doesn't.
You've missed the entire point FitzSimons has made. By outlawing something it becomes lucrative and it goes underground. When it goes underground it's impossible to regulate. Because of the way the salary cap and TPAs are structured, so many of the TPAs that are organised are done out of view of the NRL and only presented once the club has covered its backside. How can the NRL try to regulate something when it's virtually out of view?
If you make laws you have to have the people to enforce it ie boots on the ground.
If you make laws then make it self regulated with little to no enforcement you leave it open to unscrupulous dealing especially when big money is involved.
The risk takers ie those willing to risk they wont get caught, will always flourish under these conditions. The honest will always fall behind.
Put the $ and effort into enforcing the cap or remove it and make it fair for everyone. They are your two scenarios.
Hayne made that point a couple of years ago. He basically said the NRL have control over their images and it's actually quite hard for players to pick up TPAs because they have to fit in the NRL's demands. For mine, that's a severe restraint of trade and a player should be able to agree to any sponsorship they want, regardless of what the NRL wants.
Agree Alan, it's like the illegal import and sale of tabacco in Australia.
I think the point Super is making, and I agree with him, is where you provide a system of proper checks and balances and accountability, it is more difficult for people to do these underhand deals, or rort the system.
From these recent reports it seems the NRL just sign off on TPA agreements without doing any proper investigation.
Agree to an extent. But what happens when you have a player like Milford being pulled away by the Broncos.
Do the Raiders then spend 1.5mil trying to retain him with the money outside of the salary cap grant coming from the leagues club coffers.
If you have a soft cap how does the NRL manage the salary cap grant, i.e. should big end of town teams like Roosters get less of a grant, and clubs like Knights get a big grant to retain their juniors.
I'm not sure what the solution is but the current system isn't working.
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