NRL 2023: Canberra Raiders lodge Jack Wighton contract offer with NRL to spook rivals, Paul Kent
Canberra’s decision to formally lodge their offer for Jack Wighton with the NRL is further proof that player salaries should be made public, writes Paul Kent.
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Canberra’s decision to formally lodge their offer to Jack Wighton with the NRL is an odd one on face value.
What are the Raiders suggesting?
The lodgement formalises at head office Canberra’s offer of $1.1 million a year for the next four years while declaring that anyone who wants to try to lure Wighton away had better come up with a knock ’em dead offer.
No longer can the NRL act naive when clubs claim to be unfairly outbid for a player, as Raiders coach Ricky Stuart seemed to say after Saturday night’s game in Brisbane.
The Raiders pre-emptive strike against rival clubs is part of the silent dance that has to be played out every now and then because contract negotiations always contain an element of smoke and mirrors, and other than those in the room few can actually claim to know the truth.
Stuart, a man not known for his subtlety, was cryptic with his reasons why the Raiders have gone so hard to retain Wighton, before the contract was lodged.
“He is a Raider, but to answer your question honestly which gets me in a lot of trouble most of the time, I don’t want to lose Jack Wighton the way we lost Milford as a player, to the Broncos years and years ago,” he said.
What would help fix the whole thing up would be if the NRL once and for all broke the silence and made player salaries publicly available.
Transparency, in a game where so much of the fans’ goodwill is needed, should not be seen as a bad thing for the players.
If anything, it might even help players at struggling clubs get a fairer shake from fans.
It would save some players from the savagery of fans who often ask why their club would trade one player out to bring another player in, not realising how much the club is saving on the salary cap as part of the deal.
That money, fans would be able to see, would be used elsewhere.
Player welfare works both ways.
The players fight any moves for their wages to be made public through the collective bargaining negotiations.
They claim it an invasion of privacy, even though figures are often bandied about through negotiations and many jobs in the public sector are freely available to be looked up.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese earns $564,356 a year, for instance, before allowances.
They argue back at the media, daring us slobs in the media to have our salaries made public. If it benefited public faith, you could be sure it would.
Years ago Steve Mascord took up the players’ challenge and printed his wage in the newspaper and nothing more rigorous happened than a great wave of apathy sweeping the land.
No clocks stopped, no buildings crashed down. Few players even bothered to look.
The reason politicians and judges and other public officials have their wages made public is to maintain integrity. Nobody trusts the small-town mayor driving around in his brand new Bentley.
As a game, the NRL should be insistent on this in the Collective Bargaining Agreement.
Right now there are a good number of fans at certain clubs wondering how their clubs spend the same $11.45 million of the salary cap on players as the other clubs do.
It goes to the essence of the competition.
Over the years all kinds of funny stuff has happened in contract negotiations.
When Canterbury got busted cheating the cap in 2002 most players claimed innocence and, as it turned out, rightfully too.
Players sign three contracts, all supposedly identical, but the Bulldogs were slipping an altered contract into the pile that was not read by the players, who simply assumed they were identical.
This third contract had an altered amount that was then sent through as the NRL’s copy.
The players were oblivious, as were most, except the shuffler dealing contracts.
For a time there was an element of fun at the creative ways clubs got around the cap but, like the modern gangster, all the charm has gone from it now.
Some players still talk with a sentimental tear when they speak of an old club benefactor walking around the dressing room after a game, seemingly randomly handing players an envelope with varying amounts — it was usually about $20,000 — and a soft message to, “Give that to your wife”.
Even the single players had their tickets clipped, until dressing room cameras ended that.
One former player used to get all the door money from the leagues club disco. Others inherited a poker machine at the leagues club.
Another would loan a club benefactor $100,000 to get him through a tough time and at season’s end the benefactor would settle the debt, plus interest, for $200,000.
As the riches grew players bought houses well below market value, a Porsche turned up on the back of a flatbed truck outside one young man’s house, and one young man had a club-friendly builder build his parents a home.
The Raiders simply want Wighton’s offer on the record to keep him at the club, and whoever might come along trying to take him away.
RAIDERS HIT BUTTON ON WIGHTON CONTRACT OFFER
—Paul Crawley
The Canberra Raiders are preparing to go to war with Wayne Bennett’s Dolphins amid fears they could lose off-contract star Jack Wighton.
And in the latest stunning twist, it can be revealed the Raiders have now officially lodged details of their monster four-year $4.4 million offer with the NRL’s salary cap auditor in a bid to ensure rivals don’t offer significantly less than Wighton’s market value.
It comes after Ricky Stuart issued a cryptic message over the weekend that the Raiders didn’t want the tug of war for Wighton’s signature to emulate Anthony Milford’s defection to the Brisbane Broncos back in 2014.
Stuart didn’t elaborate on what his message was exactly implying, but it appeared a direct dig at the Broncos who were then coached by Bennett.
“I don’t want to lose Jack Wighton the way we lost Milford as a player to the Broncos years and years ago,” Stuart said following the win over Brisbane.
At the time Milford was still a teenager and cited family as the reason he wanted to move back to Queensland, although the Raiders were always convinced there were other factors at play.
While the Raiders don’t want to cause any friction with Wighton or his management now, they also believe they have an obligation to their fans and members to make sure the club does its due diligence here.
There have been suggestions as many as 10 clubs have shown interest to sign the 30-year-old with St George Illawarra, Wests Tigers and the Bulldogs all mentioned along the way.
But there is little doubt the Raiders view Bennett’s Dolphins as the biggest threat.
Bennett has gone on the record to state the Dolphins would be willing to splash the cash if Wighton showed a genuine interest in moving to Queensland.
“If we thought he was the right fit for the club and brought the things that we need then we would probably pay more than $1 million,” Bennett said last month.
Privately though, Bennett is adamant he has not yet spoken directly with Wighton. Although the Raiders are convinced multiple conversations have already taken place between their star five-eighth’s management and the Dolphins.
The Raiders as yet haven’t considered putting a deadline on their offer because they don’t want to back Wighton into a corner.
But it is understood Raiders chief executive Don Furner went to the trouble of emailing the club’s offer to Wighton directly to NRL salary cap auditor Matt Faulkner late last week.
While there is nothing to stop any player taking less money to move to another club, by at least making the NRL aware of what they are prepared to officially lodge on their salary cap at least makes it more difficult for rival clubs to lodge a significantly smaller offer under what is considered Wighton’s market value.
For example, given the Raiders have offered Wighton $1.1 million-a-season, you would imagine that will make it extremely difficult for another to offer less and get it approved.
While third-party deals also come into the equation, NRL guidelines stipulate clubs can play no part in arranging those deals.
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Originally published as NRL 2023: Canberra Raiders lodge Jack Wighton contract offer with NRL to spook rivals, Paul Kent
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