NRL 2022: Player salaries need to be made public in the simplest fix for the salary cap

In a competition that is portrayed as a level playing field, PAUL KENT has a solution to shine a light into the game’s dark corners that would end its absurd false economy.

Some clubs are simply better at working the salary cap – but should player salaries be made public?

How the big front-rower ever fared at maths in high school will always remain one of those unanswered questions, but he knew enough to know what the short end was.

He was on the rise at the time, unlike now when his veteran status is fully stamped, but as the contract ended a rival coach put a deal to his manager that might suddenly have him looking at waterfront property.

Sadly, after an appropriate pause, the manager hit the coach with the bad news.

Thanks, he said, but he was staying where he was.

Six or seven weeks later the two clubs were drawn to play each other and it just so happened before the game they bumped into each other in the grandstand where immediately the big front-rower apologised.

In the end, he said, he just couldn’t bring himself to leave.

The coach understood completely.

“I just can’t believe you knocked back $700,000,” he said.

What?

The front-rower felt faint and had to be steadied by several small men. Did he hear right?

No such figure was ever presented to him.

There are 40 good reasons why salaries in the game should be made public, and this is only one in the big city.

If convention allowed the rival club, in this case, to go public with its offer then it is certain the front-rower would have seen the figure published and rushed to his manager for a conversation.

Some clubs are simply better at working the salary cap – but should player salaries be made public?

In a game where clubs form alliances with managers, and managers stacking pockets of players at clubs to give them a worrying balance of power over future recruitment, published salaries would shine a light into the dark corners.

In almost all cases it would save the club and the deserving player, in the name of fairness, although not necessarily the manager.

All this is worth raising because the cap is in the news again. Earlier in the week Phil Rothfield and Brent Read published their real time tally of the salary cap and it was a flame to haystack. Fans were immediately in uproar at the disparity between teams.

It didn’t matter it was all fair and above board.

The truth is the figures revealed not so much a flaw in the salary cap as an indication of how well each club is run, in terms of cap management, and how well those players are coached.

Good coaches will have a player performing close to his ability, the not so good won’t.

Good clubs pay proper value, poor clubs don’t.

This has been written before, this false economy in the NRL.

Australian Rugby League Commission Chairman Peter V’landys. Picture: NRL Photos

Every club works on the same salary cap but it is well known players will accept less to play at a successful club, with genuine premiership chances, than to accept the same offer at a poorer club.

Battling clubs, trying to climb off the bottom, too often have to pay overs to draw players, which bends their cap out of shape and causes problems.

The problem for the league is that the cap is so poorly understood by such a great majority that it causes an annual irritation in the game.

Fans will complain about a club losing a player and signing another with little idea they might have just saved themselves significant cap space.

In no other sport around the world is the cap the source of such derision and suspicion, to say nothing of ridicule, as it is in the NRL.

And it damages the game.

The great wins are treated with suspicion. The Roosters win because they play under the salary sombrero.

The Sydney Roosters are arguably the best in the competition at managing the salary cap. Picture: Getty

The efforts of the honest battlers are often under-appreciated.

Revealing salaries would fix this. It would be a balm for the game.

Particularly given no draft exists and teams have to endure the long haul out of premiership misery than the quicker route a draft would ensure.

Generally, if there is a fast turn around in today’s game, there is often trickery afoot.

Which would again support the public revelation of players salaries.

In a sport where integrity is increasingly important, where the salary cap is an annual irritation for fans, public salaries are the only way to go.

It is time the game grew up.

The simple rebuttal from players and their union is salaries are a personal business, and how would you like your salary made public?

Prime Minister – and Cronulla Sharks fan – Scott Morrison’s salary is public. Why can’t the same be said of NRL players? Picture: NCA Newswire

It is a nonsense argument.

Salaries across European soccer and the big four American sports are all made public because the sports realise there is integrity at stake.

Here, where he remains answerable to the people, a quick Google search reveals Prime Minister Scott Morrison is worth about as much to the country as a middle forward on the fringe of rep football.

Several years back Steve Mascord, the old league reporter, took their challenge and put his salary in the paper and all it did was reveal how poorly league reporters are paid.

In most cases, exact figures will be quickly forgotten.

Where integrity is vital — whether it be the Prime Minister looking to cart one up, the Police Commissioner, or clubs working under a salary cap — it is absurd that salaries are not public.

For the game’s sake it works.

Originally published as NRL 2022: Player salaries need to be made public in the simplest fix for the salary cap