Player transfers is a big topic, particularly with players moving mid year, breaking contracts and looking at expansion. Let's be fair there is never going to be a universally loved idea that everyone is on board. The current structure is November 1 players can negotiate for the following season. Meaning they sign with their new club 12 months out from starting pre-season with them. I feel that is not a good look for the game and for fans. However, it makes sense in the eyes of players and the RLPA. Their argument to themselves would be it benefits them since if a player like Brown signed with Newcastle for 2026 in November 2024, anything that happens in 2025 is all good as he has a contract for 2026. I mean let's be fair we all knock that philosophy until we are in that spot too.
Now August 1st was tried and was a complete disaster. June 30 is the timeline for mid-season signings. Trades have been mentioned as an option, to me it can sort of work but unlike AFL who can trade draft picks as well as players, for NRL we can only do player trades. It can work like we can say we want Payne Haas and we give Brisbane 3-4 quality players. Would never happen but it is an example.
I propose the best way of doing transfers is simply the day after the GF is free agency. There can be a tampering period of around 24-48 hours where clubs can talk to players but not actually offer a deal. Then once that is over they can offer deals and sign. One arguement i heard was players didn't want to move so quickly, so like if a player moves to NZ or from Sydney to Brisbane or vice versa. To that i say BS as if majority of players had the chance to go for a better opportunity, particularly to Brisbane or Melbourne they are taking it regardless. Many would do so within a week for a mid season transfer. Next argument is pre-season training as teams, mostly those who missed semi's, go back early November, it is not enough time to get ready for pre-season. Again, BS as most of the players that are big signings come back mid to late November or even later most times.
Another option i would suggest is making August 1st the time where they can sign for the following year. Argument from clubs and players would be the distraction nearing semi's. Again, no perfect system but one that could work. Or do you go the route of making June 30 the time where you can sign? Gives players that time to set up for 2026, clubs and coaches to be ready to fill their roster for 2026 and is a buffer from semi's. With roughly about 10 weeks from semi's at that point.
One thing i would love to see added on top of transfers are designations and a marquee allowance. Marquee allowance has been mentioned for a long time from fans and i think it has merit. It can be similar to what the NFL have as a Franchise Tag where clubs designate a certain player the tag on a pro-rata salary based on their position and if they were on it before. If you go on it two years in a row the money increases significantly that stops teams from using it on one player all the time. NRL will be different though, sign a player and you can allocate a player each year or for his term. So for example Moses just re-signed, we can say to the NRL we want Moses to be our marquee player until 2029. That $1.3 mil is off the cap entirely. It is fair as every team would have the same designation, granted not every team is going to have a player on that much, but every team has the chance to have a significant amount of salary cap space taken off each season. For teams like St. George Illawarra it might be harder at the moment as they may not have that one player they know in say 3 years time will still be there, unlike us where it is obvious Moses is the one and is signed til 2029. This adds strategy for teams. Yes it makes it harder in the market to buy players but it also encourages from building from within as you can sign more rookies with the extra space.
If not marquee, or if it can be added, maybe a long serving player allowance. Of course there has to be a strict criteria. Could be a player with over 200 games for that club or played 7-8 years with the club. In this case maybe it is not the full amount taken off instead maybe a percentage of like 50%. It rewards loyalty, players and clubs. Majority of these players that qualify would have been juniors of the club. Makes fans happy even more and promotes the key to developing your own talent in order to save money and have quality players.
As for other designations, you could also take a note from the NFL and out designations on certain players for clubs. Like for example players like Charlie Guymer could come off contract but have some sort of tag where he is restricted to us first and we can sign him or say we dont want him and he can then move on. After a certain amount of years he then becomes a free agent once deal is done. Though that might be a bit illogical for NRL standards, instead maybe a tag involving a policy that players like say Guymer in first 3 years of NRL can talk to other clubs but deal cannot be signed until we make a formal offer or have a chance to counter an offer from another club. I know that happens in the game but it could be a rule.
Again, a lot of this wont even come close to happening and taken a lot of influence from NFL. Though changes need to be made to current transfer systems.
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The salary cap is now actually restricting the bottom clubs from getting better, they cannot offer anything special to sway enough players to join them to make them top 8 again. The elite clubs have a free reign now to just keep getting bigger, and as they dig deep into their "away from salary cap incomes" the smaller clubs have absolutlely no way of competing for talent.
Having the same handful of clubs playing finals footy most every year, surely is not good for the league and the clubs going into the future.
Unless they pay overs which stuffs your cap but clubs like Penrith built from within. We are starting to do that.
Maxing the salaries doesn't help as if a player can only get say $800k max, they will go to the better team and win a comp. At least now teams can overpay and get someone. Same with survival of the fittest.
I mean Canberra of all teams this year come out on top of the regular season. A place that is not attractive to players. The cap is nowhere near perfect and not doing what it is made for completely but there is still an importance of it.
Policing the cap is 100% what they should do by making it public. NFL do it. Michael Ennis once said I don't people knowing what I'm on when walking down the street. Majority of the big names we know what they are on. Only reason they say that is cause with this they can cheat the cap with TPA's and dodgy undervalues.
So get rid of the RLPA, they seem to be the stumbling block to Everything. Or if you have to have a players association, allow only non NRL players to be the chair and paid positions, players are approached for their thoughts and opinions. Same as referees, get an ex international rugby union referee to oversee them, not someone who has been indoctrinated by the game. Salary cap, employ a third party fully removed, and then properly punish non disclosure at 8 points a game, after an arbitrary date each year, I.e. round 6.
You cannot just get rid of RLPA, players would strike. They need a governing body to protect them. They do what they are invented to do, look after the players.
RLPA is the players union, but fuck'em....bone 'em....make 'em do what they told
LOL..Good luck with that
Off season trade window get rid of third party deals
Getting rid of TPA's or capping them and public showing them is how you control it
Brett Allen god bless him mentioned a soft cap years ago to allow the team that developed a certain player to be able to match whatever any other club is offering goes a long way to keeping your best players and rewards clubs that are really developing there own and building there clubs in that manner.
The club that puts the hard yards in shouldn't be put out to pasture because some other club comes in with chequebooks and TPAs.They should have the final say if a player is to be let go or not.
So a club has 10 plus players in there top thirty s and each one gets rewarded so know they can spend more on the other 20
1cap is the fairest way to do it get rid of tpas
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