hayne... just go all ready, you are a stain on society.

[Aeetee]

Am I the only one that thinks "NRL (ie rugby league) first, clubs second, players third" makes perfect sense?

icon_thumbs_u

 

[Nashy]

Hayne. More like... LAME!

 

[Ari Gold]

Ideally we'd lose the Salary Cap - or increase it to something decent and let the clubs that can't keep up die a natural death (cronulla, i'm looking at you). get the comp competitive, get all the best players in the world back into our comp. and at least let the love of the game draw players. Give Lockyer a Million dollars a season ffs he's worth it.

Where is that money going to come from? As it is the Broncos' annual operating profit is ~ $1 million or thereabouts. And they're about the only club that does turn a profit.

Get rid of the salary cap or raise it significantly, where's the money going to come from? Assuming you put it up $2 million, that's an extra $32 million a year the clubs have to find.

Obviously TV rights deals become key, but do we have to rely on that?

Like I said, it's not a magic wand that can produce this kind of money.

The best bet would be to axe Cronulla and either Manly or Melbourne who are propped up by grants and external benefactors. 14 clubs, less to support via NRL grants, can then put the cap up higher.

Though if you axe Melbourne, then you pretty much kill any hopes of further expansion to new markets, anywhere...big call.

Getting rid of two clubs is an absolute must. You do that and you only have to find an extra $28 million!

By reducing the number of clubs you also reduce the supply of corporate opportunities, which should then increase the value of sponsorship to those clubs still remaining.

To be fair, two less teams also means 1 less broadcast opportunity, but I don't think that would affect negotiations too badly given that it's undervalued already.

I also like the idea of a best of 3 Grand Final series. That must be worth a few mil extra in terms of gate receipts, sponsorship dollars and TV revenues in particular. Traditionalists will probably hate it, but I think it has merit.

With all that said, I don't necessarily think you need to greatly alter the size of the player payment pool, just it's distribution. Even if you made the cap $10 million, and every club were able to afford it, the reality would still be that the value of the Sharks playing roster is $2 million. The only difference would be the value to which they were overpaying the players, which is really where the extra money can come from.

For every star player that leaves the code, you can probably point to an incredibly mediocre player whose salary could have been the difference in keeping said star in the game. How much money did Souths waste over the years by overpaying money to the likes of Colin Best and Shannon Heggarty? When stars leave the game, there's simply not enough quality to sustain 16 attractive football sides, and if the game realized this and reduced the number of roster positions by at least 50 each season, you'd see a lot less D-list players being paid to play NRL, and the C-list players being paid a lot less.

And on a final note, I'd like to say how greatly diminished I feel the quality of the NRL competition is by this obsession with equity of talent. If the emphasis were put on quality instead of equity I think you'd have a much more appealing and meaningful product. Honestly, how special is it winning a premiership once in a decade when the intention of the NRL is to basically have every team win it once every sixteen years?

And furthermore, surely the best way to attract juniors to Rugby League is by having guys like Thurston, Hayne, Inglis, Gallen and Thaiday run onto the field playing for the same team, rather than some drab, low quality game between two artificially equal opponents. Put differently, I'm sure Federer wiping the floor against some nonameovic is still a more appealing endorsement of the qualities of tennis than John Isner playing Nicholas Mahut.

 

[Clintos]

Hayne shouldn't be able to talk to the media about another code whilst he's contracted in the NRL, IMO.

Pretty much promoting AFL, while he still has a year to run on his contract. Poor form.

 

[Jeba]

Ideally we'd lose the Salary Cap - or increase it to something decent and let the clubs that can't keep up die a natural death (cronulla, i'm looking at you). get the comp competitive, get all the best players in the world back into our comp. and at least let the love of the game draw players. Give Lockyer a Million dollars a season ffs he's worth it.

Where is that money going to come from? As it is the Broncos' annual operating profit is ~ $1 million or thereabouts. And they're about the only club that does turn a profit.

Get rid of the salary cap or raise it significantly, where's the money going to come from? Assuming you put it up $2 million, that's an extra $32 million a year the clubs have to find.

Obviously TV rights deals become key, but do we have to rely on that?

Like I said, it's not a magic wand that can produce this kind of money.

The best bet would be to axe Cronulla and either Manly or Melbourne who are propped up by grants and external benefactors. 14 clubs, less to support via NRL grants, can then put the cap up higher.

Though if you axe Melbourne, then you pretty much kill any hopes of further expansion to new markets, anywhere...big call.

Getting rid of two clubs is an absolute must. You do that and you only have to find an extra $28 million!

By reducing the number of clubs you also reduce the supply of corporate opportunities, which should then increase the value of sponsorship to those clubs still remaining.

To be fair, two less teams also means 1 less broadcast opportunity, but I don't think that would affect negotiations too badly given that it's undervalued already.

I also like the idea of a best of 3 Grand Final series. That must be worth a few mil extra in terms of gate receipts, sponsorship dollars and TV revenues in particular. Traditionalists will probably hate it, but I think it has merit.

With all that said, I don't necessarily think you need to greatly alter the size of the player payment pool, just it's distribution. Even if you made the cap $10 million, and every club were able to afford it, the reality would still be that the value of the Sharks playing roster is $2 million. The only difference would be the value to which they were overpaying the players, which is really where the extra money can come from.

For every star player that leaves the code, you can probably point to an incredibly mediocre player whose salary could have been the difference in keeping said star in the game. How much money did Souths waste over the years by overpaying money to the likes of Colin Best and Shannon Heggarty? When stars leave the game, there's simply not enough quality to sustain 16 attractive football sides, and if the game realized this and reduced the number of roster positions by at least 50 each season, you'd see a lot less D-list players being paid to play NRL, and the C-list players being paid a lot less.

And on a final note, I'd like to say how greatly diminished I feel the quality of the NRL competition is by this obsession with equity of talent. If the emphasis were put on quality instead of equity I think you'd have a much more appealing and meaningful product. Honestly, how special is it winning a premiership once in a decade when the intention of the NRL is to basically have every team win it once every sixteen years?

And furthermore, surely the best way to attract juniors to Rugby League is by having guys like Thurston, Hayne, Inglis, Gallen and Thaiday run onto the field playing for the same team, rather than some drab, low quality game between two artificially equal opponents. Put differently, I'm sure Federer wiping the floor against some nonameovic is still a more appealing endorsement of the qualities of tennis than John Isner playing Nicholas Mahut.

I agree wholeheartedly with this post.

The NRL seems to love it that we have different Premiers all the time, but is that really all that it is cracked up to be? I know it's easy as a Broncos fan to say this, but the successful clubs deserve success if they are good at what they do, and as far as running a well-recognised sporting brand goes, we are one of if not the best in the League at it. But instead of rewarding us for our success by letting us spend the money we have, we have this ridiculous restraint in the interests of bringing us back to the field.

I do think there needs to be a salary cap as far as paying players from your books goes, but why should these elite players not be allowed to earn as much as they can through third party deals? They've earned the right FFS!!! They are the best at what they do, they deserve to be on good money, yet they are among the lowest paid elite athletes on the planet.

And as Ari eluded to, this "levelling out the talent" thing, is not levelling out talent at all, it's thinning it out. Each year we see our best players end up in Rugby, AFL or overseas, whereas in the other codes their players hardly even think about jumping across to Rugby League. Just makes for a poor overall quality competition as evidenced by the 2010 Premiership which was probably the worst for as long as I have been watching Rugby League. Just glad the Dragons won so that we can say a truly decent football side won it (though obviously would much much much rather a Broncos victory regardless).

 

[Coxy]

We suffer from two drains. Our absolute superstars like Hunt, Folau, Tuqiri defecting to other codes when near their peak of their powers.

And as I said earlier, our "Depth talent", the hard workers, not overly talented, but nevertheless critical experienced heads in teams that guide the youngsters.

So many squads these days are 1 or 2 "stars", 2 or 3 relatively experienced first graders, and then 20-odd kids! It's ridiculous.

 

[Professor47]

It brings up an important issue regardless.

The old school line of thinking "They get paid 400k a year, if they don't like it then they can go jump in the lake" is GARBAGE.
One day maybe we will be as big as other sports and the players will be on 1mill salaries etc. There is no reason not to think big. The game should be taking small steps... not saying "there will always be another kid who comes and replaces bla bla bla"

We've lost so many quality players... Imagine what our product would be with all those players still here. F*ck agendas aside and which players are tossers etc... who CARES... Some players will ALWAYS be douches and some players will ALWAYS be champs... For every Mason there will be a Tongue etc etc.

The NRL - 10/20 years from now... gambling sponsorships, pokies, alcohol advertising, privatisation etc etc... brainstorm, put in the table. Get with the f*cking times.

 

[Kimlo]

Doesn't he have like a 4 year contract?
Seriously STFU and just play out your contract enough of this threatening bullshit, you can't go anywhere anyway....

Annoying mut.

 

[Charmamba]

Doesn't he have like a 4 year contract?
Seriously STFU and just play out your contract enough of this threatening bullshit, you can't go anywhere anyway....

Annoying mut.

Yeh like how Sonny Bill Couldn't go anywhere..

 

[Kimlo]

Sonny bill paid a million dollars before he could come back to Australia and play sports.
If he wants to go overseas then I'll be happy.