There has been some talk about the NRL introducing a marquee player allowance, which would help clubs recruit a marquee player outside of their salary cap. This has come about as the game aims to bring Israel Folau back to our game.
My idea is to introduce a Marquee Player Draft. I'd suggest that 32 players would be a part of this draft, two for each club. In the first instance, clubs would nominate their up to 2 of their players as their marquee players. These players would be paid a premium directly by the NRL. The NRL would negotiate their wage and could have the freedom to go as high as they wanted, if they deemed the player valuable enough to the competition. There would be no limit on third-party earnings with these players.
By the June 30 deadline, each club would nominate up to three players to be a part of the Marquee Player draft. Each player would have the option to agree to become part of the draft, or continuing to play under the salary cap - as such there would be no restraint of trade. A club that wished to have a third marquee player could probably do so, but it would be at the expense of weakening the rest of their roster.
Clubs would automatically retain their marquee players if the club wished to do so. This would have the affect of encouraging one-club players, which I believe is good for the clubs, the player and the game.
After all those players had been assigned, any players left as part of the draft would then be available, with the team finishing last getting first selection, and so on, as with a normal draft.
So in the case of Israel Folau, the NRL could pay him whatever they wanted, but he'd have to join whichever club drafted him. The best young players coming up would automatically be distributed around the competition, further helping to level out the competition.
In summary, a Marquee Player draft would achieve a number of NRL objectives:
1) It would allow the NRL to keep whatever player it valued as part of the game
2) It would help to even out the competition and make sure all clubs were able to attract players with that X factor that you need to be competitive in today's competition
3) It would help clubs keep their best players that are generally most related to the club. Benji would be staying with the Tigers under this system.
4) I believe it would also help stop salary cap rorting - clubs would find it far more difficult to come up with dodgy third parties to make up the difference between that and the NRL contracted players.
5) It would introduce another huge interest factor in the game. Who is each club putting forward, who aren't they? Who gets drafted, who is dropped off. The draft night itself I believe would be a massive event and also generate huge ratings.
Replies
Parra would dip out - we only have ONE player who could be called a "Marquee Player"
Would you put him up for draft?
I think the majority of clubs would have 2 or 3 marquee players, but I also think the majority of clubs would want to keep them. I can't see parra letting go of Hayne, or as you say the tigers Benji, or the sharks gallen etc etc etc.
On that basis I don't see it working.
I mean how do you determine marquee status? is it money paid, ability what? If its money then Sandow is probably our second marquee but no other team would touch him so he wouldn't agree to be on the market.
If he was performing parra wouldn't let him go. There are too many difficulties.
If they are going to bring in a marquee system it has to be every club nominates 1 player ( the highest paid ) and that player is exempt from the cap, simple.
A lot of suggestions here for a marquee draft make a lot of sense, especially in trying to even out the competition.
However we should all be realistic as to what the current hype is about.
I haven't heard anyone of notice talk about the draft or marquee players to even out the competition. Its about keeping the talent in the game, and bringing talent back/to the game.
Do you really think other successful clubs are interested in bringing talent to support bottom teams?
Perhaps in the future, however this in my opinion is just drummed up so that the NRL can kick in a bit of $$ or just allow clubs to sign a player or 2 for any amount and further their chance at the title. And that's just a handful of clubs with a lot of pulling power.
What the NRL should be doing is encouraging clubs to build talent. Perhaps implement a transfer fee that must be paid to the club if they sign a junior they have been developing that's based on % of contract value for example.
This will force clubs that are cashed up but add little to junior development to start looking at grassroots.
At the current rate with more schools offering & promoting soccer, AFL & Union in a decade the NRL could find itself with a limited talent pool. You just need to go to any field and see how many kids are playing soccer now instead of footy to see the knockon effect in a decade or so.
But you don't see any of that being mentioned to encourage development. Because the cashed up clubs can just buy or offer better opportunities to players.
So lets just offer a marquee to help out the top performing clubs with no real definition of what is marquee.
After all in the star studded roosters, bulldogs, cowboys, broncos, manly who are full of internationals what is a marquee?
As for drafts, how do you force a player to move to another state or play for a club they dont want to?
Would you rather 1mil and stay in QLD if you family and friends are there or get 1.1Mil and move to canberra for example?
players are people too and cant be just moved due to a draft with no say.
How about we keep the system as it is but just get someone who isn't an incompetent twat in charge of it all? A group of 5 non-biased board would be good
drafts go hand in hand with salary caps, just a regular draft that forces the best young players each season to the teams that need them the most.
Phil Gould thinks it's a bad idea...so it might be the way to go.
SMH
Agree fishy - anything Goose disagrees with has got to be good for the game.
That said - I don't see how the NRL could ever get enough of a brains trust going to even figure a draft system out.
The only draft we get out of them is Shoe-in-butt telling US how much we MUST pay our players.
Some obvious exploiting:
1. The player with the option to join the draft or not? Yep, a player with the behind-the-scenes shove out the door!
2. Nominate your marquee player? Yeah, OK, here's Billy Rogers. Don't like him, no worries. Here's Rocks Roberts. Is anyone seriously suggesting clubs will give away an asset?
3. A 3rd marquee player weakening the roster? Um, Storm, anyone? As the Storming cheats have shown, if you can hold on to Cronk, Smith and Slater, via cheating, well you can build around that spine. I imagine many clubs tying up a spine and having interchangeable troops after that, which could have the effect of even further reducing the game plan variety than we see now, because even more clubs would operate Storm-style, basing a style around a spine and having little independent talent elsewhere in their line.
4. Which Marquee player would voluntarily go into a draft knowing they may have to uproot their family and leave their friends to go to a random team with less than 6 months notice to do things like buy a house etc? Yep, can see that one attracting the cream of the crop to aid talent distribution. Not!
I feel I must be drastically misunderstanding the proposed scheme!
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