www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/leag ... 181s4.html heard it was the eels.

www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/leag ... 181s4.html heard it was the eels.

What's the go with third party deals and how it works with the salary cap.

If a club wants to sign any player they can get someone else to help pay them? If so, why have a salary cap if you can simply get round it this way.

Players earning $1m or a quarter of a squad's cap is nonsense. But the club aren't paying them. Weird. So don't publicise the million as it's not the figure the club are paying.


Get it? Nah, nor me.

first -

1. theres the marquee player allowance, $300,000 per club, exempt from the salary cap
2. the nrl has also brought in a long serving player allowance so if you have a 10 year player $100,000 of their salary is exempt from the cap.
3. then there is 3rd party deals. if you are a 3rd party, not a current sponsor and offering genuine employment then the amount you can play a player is unlimited
4. cars are now not part of the SC so you can offer a car and its not counted.

SO basically, lets say im Bill Gates and im a Brisbane fan with no connections to the club. Brisbane could sign all the best players in the world, give them all salaries that dont break the salary cap and then I could employ them all as employees of microsoft and pay them millions. Is this what you are saying?

It is.

And it stinks a bit. Why bother calling something a salary cap when you can easily get round it.

Where do you get that from, dally? It doesn't sound right.

the salary cap has to go, it's near impossible to enforce. And just look at world sport as a whole, Chelsea or Real Madrid, some of the richest clubs in the world, never have and never will dominate their respective leagues. There's is always competition, it's a team game, that's what so great about it, anything can happen.

Its not really a fair comparison. Chelsea are "new" money just the same as City. No one knows whether they will dominate. Real however have won 31 League titles which counts as dominance in my book. Altho when you have a fascist leader in Franco meaning you can effectively steal one of the worlds best players (De Stefano) then perhaps a salary cap might not have helped with parity there anyway.

I like the idea of the cap. I like NFL and its cap is brilliant but that is in the context of essentially a cartel league and a draft system that tries to bring top and bottom together. Rugby, like football is not in that position so a parity creating cap cannot work as all it will mean is that your best players go to or at least consider another sport. I prefer the % of turnover cap myself to ensure teams are solvent. No loopholes and the current fine structure for any breaches. In those circumstances you are free to pay one superstar any amount below that level and we can see if it really is a team game.

it has to be genuine emplyoment.

brisbane got inglis on $350,000 under the salary cap and the other $300,000 came from 3rd party sponsors

souths are doing the same thing ie $350,000 under the cap and the rest from 3rd party sponsors

if it means keeping thurston and ignlis in RL not union then i dont mind.

its not that easy to get around it, there are limited people who want to do this anyway

broncos fan doenst support cap

www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/ ... 5952398438 talks about GIs 3rd party deals remember the nrl has to approve any 3rd party deals as genuine ie you have to be working for these things. remember its only 3rd parties not connected to the club that are unlimited

www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/ ... 5952398438 talks about GIs 3rd party deals remember the nrl has to approve any 3rd party deals as genuine ie you have to be working for these things. remember its only 3rd parties not connected to the club that are unlimited

still a farce really. Any club who has mates can get anyone they want as long as their mate pays a chunk of money to them for what?

But 31 titles is over a 108 year period, and they've only won 6 of the last 20 seasons. I think to be called dominant you'd need to be winning at least a majority of the seasons. In Greece for example, until last season, Olympiakos had won 12 of the last 13 seasons. That is dominance.

I hear what you're saying, and for a long time i was in favour of the salary cap, but i have recently changed my opinion for the reason i stated before, that i don't think any team will ever dominate.

Also, the argument for many years has been that the smaller clubs will be left behind. I think this is a bit of a loser mentality it's like we want to play to the standards of the bottom teams rather than the top teams. Why not aim higher?

I understand what you are saying but a 30% title percentage is pretty good - there was a war in that time frame an no one else is close. Regardless...I think the concept of parity is absolutely not what the salrary cap is trying to do. The quote "any given sunday" isnt an attempt to say everyone is mediocre altho the implication is that the "talent" is spread. Rather the intent is twofold
1) ensure you see the talent. There is nothing worse than seeing good players sitting on the bench on the off chance of an injury to a star when they are easily good enough to play first grade
2) The most important thing is the competition. All teams want to win but if you imagine a world where you win every game it gets sickly sweet and you do not appreciate. Much better to have close contests across the board and even upsets. If you can only win by budgets then thats not exactly showing the talent of your coaching staff to complement the players is it? Instead the key is to sustain a team over time by building from within.

Those, financial viability for all clubs, and a fair interpretation of the rules are the only things I want from the stewards of the game. The rest is down to the teams. If someone can provide a decent model other than a salary cap based approach then Im all for seeing its merits.