A salary cap for a club's roster makes sense somewhere along the line. It limits how much a club can spend on their players and helps reduce the chance of clubs going broke due to overspending on their roster.
A salary cap for off-field departments makes little sense and could in fact harm the game and put players' welfare at risk.
The NRL is a professional sporting competition, the players are full-time as are the coaching staff. Putting a limit on how much a club can spend on their coaching staff, football department and facilities is an overreach by the game and tantamount to restraint of trade.
The salary cap in itself is a restraint of trade but it is tolerated as a means of attempting to keep a level playing field. If a player or the RLPA took the NRL to court over the salary cap, they'd probably win.
As the game has become more professional so too have the footballing departments of clubs.
It's no longer simply about the team with the best playing roster. So much of today's game is about sport science, nutrition, recovery and strength and conditioning.
Those services, at the elite level, are not cheap.
If you put a cap on how much a team can spend on those services you limit innovation and you limit different approaches to that area of the game.
Recently Parramatta built a new training facility at the Old Salesyard Reserve complete with a new gym and regular hiring of cryo-chambers to assist in recovery.
If the off-field cap existed would Parramatta have been able to build that facility? I imagine not.
The NRL is a competition. A COMPETITION.
Competition is defined as: "the activity or condition of striving to gain or win something by defeating or establishing superiority over others."
The off-field side of rugby league is almost as important as on-field performance. If you try to make the off-field side completely even, you punish clubs like Parramatta who are trying to better their players and look after their players.
The NRL currently has a fixation on protecting players from injury. See the concussion rule and the fact hard hits are now penalised.
Yet clubs who invest in the wellbeing of their players by pouring money into their football departments could potentially be punished simply because some other clubs don't have the financial acumen or business sense to be as diligent.
The NRL should be trying to lift those clubs who are struggling with their facilities to improve their services rather than drag the others down.
That's the way a business is run. A good business supports innovation and invention, it doesn't punish it.
Players have the power to take the game to court. It's happening in the States to the NFL with ex-players taking the game to task over their handling of concussion.
The NRL may think they're levelling the playing field, but they're putting the welfare of players at risk and opening themselves up to court cases in future years.
This is not the way to attempt at evening out the competition. Maybe they should look at the structure of the salary cap and Third Party Agreements before interfering in club operations off the field.
Replies
Totally agree, thing is with the Saleyards & our set up, which I would think is owned by the Leagues club rather than a football club, & permitting the eels to use it, the NRL should have no ability to try & control facilities owned by what is essentially a private enterprise & industry, same with Penrith & their new whiz banger.
The dorks are in the wanting to reduce the ability of clubs to provide for enhanced player welfare benefits. If the NRL was serious with the Concussion laws, they should have at a minimum two reserve players that can only be used to replace a concussed player.. that allows for a back & forward. Having a normal bench player used as a concussion replacement does not help the overall welfare of the players as it is now, if the concussed player fails the return test the side is penalized by the loss of an interchange, benefitting the opposition.
Having the concussion replacement is of welfare benefit even if he stays on the field when the concussed player is ruled out, 17 players for each team.
At least the Broncos will be ok....
Pretty sure Bennett coaches them for 50k a season.
its a tough one , but the current set up is as easy to exploit as an 18 Y/O with daddy issues .
Currently think the player doesn't voluntarily come off but is ordered to after a head knock, not sure?
Remember the example set by Nathan Peats saga?
NRL is much stricter these days with the concussion rule, so no club MD is prepared to take much if any sort of risk. Having a replacement for concussion gives the opportunity to ensure there is no player put at risk.
-
1
-
2
of 2 Next