Coronavirus 2020: How overpaid stars led to NRL’s cash crisis
Long before every day Australians started fighting over toilet paper in supermarket aisles, there was an arms race underway in the NRL almost as ridiculous writes PAUL CRAWLEY.
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Long before Australians started fighting over toilet paper in supermarket aisles, there was an arms race underway in the NRL almost as ridiculous.
It related to clubs fighting among themselves for best available talent, yet some of their recruitment/retention decisions were outrageously shortsighted.
It’s only now with an entire planet gripped in a state of confusion over coronavirus that the NRL is facing its own reality check.
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That is, they will have to be far more selective about how much they pay players in the future.
The fact is the salary “cap” might soon become irrelevant because clubs won’t have enough in the can to get anywhere near it.
And ask yourself this: can the game justify the likes of Ash Taylor, Ben Hunt and Kieran Foran earning $1.2 million a season?
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Anthony Milford and Michael Morgan are also $1 million players.
Josh Dugan on $900,000, Shaun Johnson and Darius Boyd pocketing $800,000, Dane Gagai $700,000.
Don’t get me wrong, Gagai is a good winger. But $700,000?
Reagan Campbell-Gillard $900,000?
I won’t argue Latrell Mitchell is not worth $800,000 at Souths given the Tigers were prepared to go to $1.2 million.
But what Latrell’s move also exposed was that young Adam Doueihi was on $550,000 this year.
Again, Doueihi is a handy young player, but the emphasis should be on “handy” and “young”.
Yet Doueihi’s earning as much as Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
Yes, market forces determine player wages.
But then we hear this week that the NRL only has enough money stashed away to survive three months if the coronavirus brings the competition to a grinding halt.
It’s embarrassing that since the commission came into power they have blown $1.8 billion with nothing really to show for it, other than a game that survived on the smell of an oily rag for 100 years.
At least Peter V’landys has already forecast some heavy cuts in NRL administration, and there are long time executives who really should be made accountable given the game’s dire predicament.
But there would also be little argument among fans that the salary cap also needs a rethink.
You could go through every roster and find examples of players earning far too much money, and it’s not just recognised NRL players getting paid overs.
Stacks of rookies are pocketing huge coin because clubs get caught up in this arms race, paying for potential often never fulfilled.
Years ago Wayne Bennett suggested we follow the lead set by sports around the world and put a cap on rookie wages but it was howled down.
So now the game can’t afford to keep many of those journeyman who used to hold up clubs in times of injury crisis because this 30-man roster system with six development players doesn’t allow it.
And yet we can pay Ash Taylor $1.2 million a season?
When Taylor signed I clearly remember Fox Sports NRL360 host Ben Ikin warning that with big money comes expectation and the burden of responsibility.
That has taken a toll to the point where Taylor’s football will probably never recover.
But is it all his fault, would he have fallen so hard if Gold Coast was more responsible?
Last weekend Taylor was embarrassed by Jack Wighton who just signed a contract upgrade of $900,000 a season.
At least Wighton earned his after proving himself in Origin and winning a Clive Churchill Medal.
Josh Hodgson is also on top dollar at the Raiders but worth it.
So is Daly Cherry-Evans and the Trbojevic brothers at Manly, Cameron Smith and Cameron Munster at Melbourne and Jason Taumalolo at the Cowboys.
James Tedesco and Roger Tuivasa-Sheck of course are worth whatever a club is willing to pay. Luke Keary, a three-time premiership winning five-eighth, is in that bracket.
But who else in the NRL can justify that absolute top-end money?
Nathan Cleary, Kalyn Ponga, David Fifita and Payne Haas are the best of the young emerging stars, but clubs would still want to be careful forking out long term $1 million contracts at this stage.
The Dragons made the mistake of going off early giving Hunt his payday.
On Sunday night Benji Marshall embarrassed Hunt’s Dragons, and Benji’s on $280,000 this year.
The unfortunate by-product is there are plenty of NRL players earning their keep _ and many at the bottom end of every club’s top 30 roster could rightfully consider themselves underpaid.
But their plight gets lost because the salary cap is so out of whack.
And so are some attitudes.
This week Manly’s Addin Fonua-Blake turned up at training wearing a face mask and proceeded to show how out of touch he was by stating he should still be paid all his money if the competition is called off.
When we get through this and have time to look back and think where the game should head next, this is one thing that needs serious attention.
Sure, we can’t blame players for getting what they, or more relevantly their over-influential managers, can financially secure. But the reality is that a good deal of them are getting it far too easily.
Yet, as the game confronts perhaps its greatest test of survival ever (and they have been some good ones in the past), their first insular and selfish reaction seems to be “don’t touch our salaries!”.
When the latest CBA was negotiated and players secured a minimum share of NRL revenue, they pumped out their chests and boasted of becoming ‘partners’ and ‘stakeholders’.
Have we witnessed anyone from the RLPA or players individually, since their figurehead leader Cameron Smith so quickly blurted out that we should suspend the NRL competition forthwith, offer that as ‘partners’ they should volunteer to take a hit – as a respectable stakeholder should – on that same revenue as it goes south and not north?
That reality check has probably never crossed their minds.
Too many have been conditioned to being too pampered for too long – and the clubs and head office have been too complicit in creating that environment … that may have just become unsustainable.
Originally published as Coronavirus 2020: How overpaid stars led to NRL’s cash crisis