Because there is a salary cap. You can't bring real world circumstances into it and say "If I want to work for another company for less money because of various reasons", that's fine. But your profession isn't governed by a cap to try and level the playing field. By saying there should be no notional value you open up a lot of gray area and how can we be sure they wouldn't be getting payments on the side or other incentives.
In this case the whole 'needs to be closer to family' thing applies even less in this case due to the amount of clubs he could have played at and still been in Sydney.
Hey B4L, I agree totally, but now you are talking about why it is a good idea with respect to evening out playing talent, which is a departure from the legality question which is what started all this :)
Imagine if there was no notional value. A crafty club could ring up every player in the QLD origin team and sign up the whole 17 (just short term), each being paid one seventeenth of the cap, end then they field the QLD origin team each week - literally buy a premiership. And all they have to say is take a pay cut for 1 year to all but guarantee you a premiership and then you can go earn what you deserve later. An extreme example sure, but conceivably possible, and as such it needs to be avoided.
I understand the need for a mechanism or process to avoid this possibility for the good of the game, no argument. I'm just saying that there are very legitimate question marks about the legality of how it has been done.
We live in a time where there is a huge focus on equity, procedural fairness and transparent process. My particular field is heavily impacted by this, and the policies that I write and processes that I oversee, are done so from this perspective - because we are directly regulated by the Aust Govt and this is what they require. Perhaps this skews my judgement?
What I can say for sure is that I could not justify the notional value thing, not the way it at least seems to work. Much like the NRL I could implement such a thing, but doing it isn't the test. The test comes when someone challenges it. In likelihood nobody will challenge this so we'll never know but if it were challenged, and if that court considered procedural fairness and transparent process as would be a reasonable expectation, then it would stand a good chance of falling over.
To attempt to meet the needs of talent distribution and procedural fairness and transparent process, you would need a system that allocated a certain dollar value to a player based on certain pre-defined and published criteria, for example, how many rep games you have played.
Whilst imperfect, something like that (you would probably want more criteria than just rep games) would at least prevent someone from fielding the Origin team, and still meet the (assumed) need for equity, procedural fairness and transparent process.
I guess the point is that however the NRL decides a notional value, it has to be based on something measurable, and equally applied. The way it seems, it's just "oh we think this player is worth that" and applied whenever they choose.
Yes, some kind of process is needed, but what we have isn't it, and it would not survive a challenge
if it were measured against today's standards. I have zero doubt about that.
What I don't know, is would an Aust Govt court measure such a case against today's commonly held norms of equity, procedural fairness and transparent process like they would every other case? Or would they make an allowance because it's not a normal job, it's sport?
I guess we will never know, but I have my suspicions (obviously, LOL)