RLGC president Peter Daley thrilled with the early success of landmark new player points system

Get the first look inside Rugby League Gold Coast’s new first grade player points system. We have revealed the team totals from round 1, with a shock moneyball contender reaching less than 30 per cent of the threshold. See every team’s total here.

Southport Tigers player Jaline Graham. Photo: Regi Varghese

A ball is yet to be kicked this Rugby League Gold Coast A-grade season, but clubs have already been given a glimpse of how the new player points system will work.

RLGC president Peter Daley has labelled it a resounding success as an equalisation measure.

“It’s evened the competition out, it’s really given everyone a boost where they can be on a level pegging,” Daley said.

“Entering this season it was interesting the comments from the coaches, who they predicted may win the grand final … there was variety there.”

Prior to the implementation of the points system, a Southport side boasting an abundance of top-level had claimed the past two premierships, winning the grand finals by a combined margin of 72 points.

“Everyone’s starting to promote their own juniors which is what we’re about,” Daley said.

“We’re always happy too to have those NRL experience come back into our competition to give us a profile, as long as it’s spread around.

“Our local juniors are the winners out of this. We don’t not wish some NRL players to drop back into our competition, but not at the rate that was happening and into one club.”

Torrential rain forced last weekend’s round one fixture to be postponed on short notice, but teams were named and thus their total points calculated.

To the surprise of many, Southport had the lowest total of any club, only using 26 points and falling well below the 100-point threshold.

Daley couldn’t speak highly enough the club’s efforts.

“I said last week … you better go and check Southport, that can’t be right, but it is right,” he said.

“So well done to Southport with all those junior boys coming back.”

Establishing and finetuning the points system, which is the first of its kind in Queensland, and based off the one used in Newcastle Rugby League, was a lengthy process spanning six months.

Daley said the league the despite being the first to implement such a system in Queensland the league had no trepidations.

“We always knew it was gonna work but we didn’t think it’d be working this well at this stage,” Daley said.

Currumbin Eagles signing and former NRL star Joel Thompson is worth 15 points, making him the Eagles most expensive player from the round one side. Picture Glenn Hampson

“Where we’re sitting now and we’re surprised clubs are so low, it’s more than achieved what we hoped to achieve.

“We probably thought it would take us three or four years to get to where we are, we thought there would be sides playing every week stuck in the 90s.

“We have one of the better junior catchment areas in Australia and not all of them are going to play NRL or HPC, so the next level is the Gold Coast A-grade competition.”

He encouraged any other Queensland leagues staring at a “lopsided” A-grade competition to reach out.

“It’s like our salary cap, if other league’s are having that same problem we’re more than happy to share what we’re doing,” he said.

“They would no doubt tweak it to suit their comp like we have, but there’s positives all around, any league can give us a ring that’s for sure.

“You can see what it’s done for us, here we are talking so positive and we haven’t even kicked a ball, that’s how happy we are.

“It’s a combination of clubs and the league getting together and doing what’s right for rugby league on the Gold Coast.”

See the full breakdown of how points are attributed to players below.

Originally published as RLGC president Peter Daley thrilled with the early success of landmark new player points system