hmm, a lot of those clubs paid their young stars overs in the formulative rebuild years - common knowledge that sam mitchell and hodgey are on 3-400k max now, but 10 years ago were in the high hundreds. Its called good list mangament - pay your franchise players ie the ones you want to build a team around for the next 10 years overs early bc youve gotten rid of the older guys on decent coin, which frees up space down the track to bring in high profile recruits