Quote: nick hkr "While I appreciate spending time away from family, and the stresses and strains playing a game must come with I have nurse friends who are lucky to get one day off fortnight, work double shifts and get paid a hell of a lot less than 35k a year! Also take in to account the length of the players days, not many clubs drag their players in at 6am anymore and most will be at home or in the pub having a nice cold beer by 4pm.
A nurses career may go on longer but you say that as if the rugby player has no choice in the matter. He among many others are encouraged to go to college, many Rovers players have their courses funded and many already have the qualifications to go out in to the real world and start earning a healthy living. They do not in the majority just get thrown on to the scrap heap at 35 with a handshake and well wishes.
Also house prices may be that high over there but Gareth is 22 and knows he will earn mega bucks (injury permitting) within a short period that he will be able to buy a tidy house in the sun from. I'd be lucky to get a mortgage for 60k and I can tell you something that ain't gonna buy a lot!
As said he should and probably is very grateful that he is earning anything just to play the game that he loves while getting to hang around with his mates all the time safe in the knowledge that he is one day going to be pretty rich from doing just that.
On a side note how many days off do soldiers get while serving in Afghanistan? Their wages including bonuses probably don't come to that 35k amount and I'd bet the injuries sustained there are a little more worrying for their families.
Sports stars get paid healthily and fair enough it is accepted now, I am not going to take that away from them but when the minimum wage for a youngster in the first team is 35k and people say this isn't much is a really poor way to look at life and I may be wrong but to me it looks like those people have probably never had to worry about where the next penny is coming from and never truely learnt the true value of money.'"
Valid points in a few areas and especially on the nurses, forces and to a degree I will add the teaching front, they deserve triple the pay that they are currently getting because of the nature and hours worked on the job. I understand where you are coming from, but I still stand by my comment that footy players deserve everything they can get, for the reasons previously mentioned, you say there is life after footy, but not all players have the option to re-train in a different field, then they have to start all over again on a minimum wage because of their lack of experience in their new professions!! Also how many of us have journos following our every move, they cannot let your hair down for fear of it appearing in the tabloids, I know people will say it goes with the job, but I don’t think I would like to live a life like that, so fair play to them if they get paid a lot more than most of us because they have to put up with a lot more than the most of us.
But getting back to the topic, I was only pointing out that the journos get things so wrong to build a story and I was correcting that point, a journo was trying to make out that half the Storm side was only on minimum wage so that they could keep the big 3, Cam, Cooper and Slater. When in fact with match payments they would be on double that if in 1st Grade.
