"A past financial incentive to play for Australia has also diminished. Less than a decade ago, the Kangaroos match fee was $20,000; it is now $3000, just 10 per cent of an Origin match payment, which top Pasifika players who are eligible for NSW and Queensland can still get.
Nine Newspapers reported that these Kangaroos players would get $13,000 for the Ashes tour; several weeks in England and three Tests. Yes: they used to get more for a single Test than they will for this entire tour, off the back of a gruelling NRL season."
I guess playing for Aus just isn't worth much these days...or the tournaments themselves might not generate fuck all income, so not much to share.
Either way, ain't no-one doing this for the money. Matto makes more $$$ watching a cup game
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Money shouldn't be too much of a factor to represent your country.
If the league was making good money from the event then yes as a player involved you should get a fair share of the revenue but I doubt international matches make too much money, they probably cost more to run than they make.
Yeah, but $20000 to $3000 is one helluva drop....if the games revenue dropped by the same factor it is deadman walking
When you consider that a million dollar per season player earns just over $40,000 per game to play club football, leaving the country and there families for about 5 weeks to play for Australia earning only $3000 per game is unfair. We constantly hear that the international game needs to be stronger. Professional athletes should be paid accordingly for representing their countries at what should be the pinnacle of their sport.
How much do you think the game makes from State of Origin? Ticket sales alone would be huge. Let's say over the 3 games 160,000 tickets are sold for an average price of $150 each. This equals $24,000,000 plus broadcasting revenue and sponsorship dollars. The players earn $30,000 per game. This equals just above $3 200,000 in player payments over 3 games. I would guess that State of Origin is worth above 50 million dollars per season to the NRL,
Origin and Internationals are a different beast. I don't disagree they should get a huge cut of the Origin income. Origins a corrupted money spinner match , playing for your country should be a sacrifice . However it should not be compulsory. If you don't wish to play for the honour , then you don't play.
The collective bargaining agreement back in about 2022 changed how representative payments were made. All players agreed via the agreement with the players association.
From memory. It was for a number of reasons.
To help the game recover from the covid impact at the time.
To throw more money at the women's game
To increase the minimum wage for those on minimum coin
To increase the squad depth at NRL level with development contracts and the like
To encourage players to represent Tonga, Fiji, Cook and Samoa to help the international game instead of taking the $$ representing Australia etc
My understanding is that tier 1 internationals with Australia is actually $10'000 per player
tier 2 matches and PM 13 teams etc are at the $3'000 mark.
Happy to be shown wrong, just my understanding.
$10k seems proper, but the whole point of this article is to refute this
Players should not get paid at all and all profits should be tipped into the grass roots juniors . Players at that level are paid crazy money already . If they tipped all that coin into junior clubs ( and not woke shit the NRL blows millions on every year ) imagine how much good they could do .
Im sure they could find other ways to entice players to wish to spend a couple of weeks playing for their country. Maybe the players can nominate their junior clubs to recive their payments
Good idea.
Maybe kill drug tests for Teddy and the boys so they can get some bags in on tour would help sell the deal.
A lot of sportspeople that represent Australia in all different sports get payed hardly nothing, they do it for pride, and honour to represent your country. If your doing it for money no wonder we had so many islanders wanting to represent Australia & our State sides. I'm glad it gone down, players like Ado-Carr would play for nothing.
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