Taking lid off salary cap
10 August 2007 AFL
Gerard Healy
IS THE salary cap in danger of becoming a mirage?
There is a view, increasingly supported by significant football personnel, that the cap is in danger of becoming merely a base payment structure for some clubs.
The true position, it is believed, is that major payment disparity is found between clubs, orchestrated through investment and promotional deals arranged by the stronger and more connected clubs for their star players.
These deals have one simple intention: to bolster the players' wages significantly outside the cap, so they stay at the club.
They are also sufficiently distant and justifiable to satisfy any AFL investigation under the current parameters.
This, it seems, is the new business of football management at the top end.
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One thing the AFL can do in the short term is address the antiquated restriction on clubs to pay at least 92.5 per cent of the cap.
The cap minimum has been shown to be flawed in the past five years. Carlton, which has won three wooden spoons in the period, has been forced to pay close enough to the same as the premier, West Coast.
Money that could have been shaved from wages should have been put into leadership programs, rehabilitation facilities, coaching and recruiting football department staff to get the club moving again.
But surprisingly Carlton, like every other club, is said to pay 100 per cent of the cap 100 per cent of the time.
Why would all clubs, top and bottom, be paying the same?
Something doesn't add up.
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Market forces should dictate the lower end of the cap to a greater degree so player payments more reflect performance, maturity and demand, not some arbitrary figure common to all.
Currently we have the best 10 players at Carlton and Richmond getting the same, if not more, than the best 10 at West Coast. But the distortion is probably even greater in what is paid to the next 10 on the list, for it is depth as much as top-end talent that wins premierships.
It seems silly that when a club wins a flag, its biggest concern is keeping the list together because of an expectation of even greater reward for players.
Logic dictates this is the time you should be paying 100 per cent of the cap and not when you're on the bottom with a team of youngsters.
Room should always be left for the improvement of the list, but it never is. It doesn't make sense unless top-end players are earning big money outside the cap.
Fixing the bottom end may help diminish the demand for distortion at the top.
Full article at:
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/footy/common/story_page/0,8033,22218019%255E19742,00.html
