Rich 100: Biggest, craziest deals in rugby league history revealed
While much has been made about the big dollar deals for child prodigy Joseph Suaalii, a year 11 student dominated headlines when he inked a $300,000 deal with Manly. READ MORE HERE.
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Player payments were capped at $2000, plus $200 for a win.
That was in the 1970s where even the most average-paid player’s salary today would all but cover the weekly wage for the whole team.
Parramatta doyen Denis Fitzgerald said payments gradually increased in the 1980s.
“In the 80s things stepped up a bit,” Fitzgerald said.
“Sponsorship came into it. Players were still part-time and we had a side filled with internationals.”
Fitzgerald estimated his best salary would have been about $50,000 during the club’s golden era.
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Illawarra Steelers boss Bob Millward said the most his club paid was $25,000 to two players when the Steelers entered the competition in 1982.
The Raiders blew Eastern Suburbs out of the water to land Mal Meninga from Souths Magpies on a two-year deal worth $80,000 plus $500 a match from a local building company in 1986. When that contract expired, Meninga became one of the highest paid players in the game when he re-signed for $500,000 over five years.
The star-studded Balmain international forward pack led by Steve Roach, Paul Sironen and Wayne Pearce were on about $100,000 each. Teammate Ben Elias opted to receive a Rozelle terrace as a form of payment.
By 1990 a scaling cap was introduced from $800,000 to $1.5 million depending on clubs’ circumstances. That figure rose to $1.8 million in 1994.
Wally Lewis left the Broncos to captain/coach the struggling Gold Coast Seagulls for $500,000 in 1991-92.
Canberra superstars Brad Clyde and Laurie Daley were offered $500,000 each a season to defect to Wigan in the early 1990s but remained with the Raiders.
Before Super League, the game’s best were on between $160,000 to $200,000 with some Origin players on about $100,000.
Super League brought about a contract frenzy.
Millward said salaries “quadrupled overnight”.
“I’m not sure we have ever got over that massive jump,” he said.
Brad Fittler’s $4.25 million five-year deal with Sydney City was considered the richest at the time. Some of the crazy deals included $300,000 plus a $600,000 sign-on fee for Paul Harragon, and $800,000 for Rod Wishart and Andrew Johns. Super League-aligned players including Daley, Clyde, Alan Langer and Ricky Stuart were paid $700,000.
Anthony Mundine’s $630,000-a-season deal to re-join St George set a new benchmark for the post-Super League era in 1998.
A cap of $3.25 million was put in for 1998 with Super League/ARL legacy contracts given notional value.
Long-term player agent Steve Gillis said everyone was aware player payments needed to be scaled back.
“It was more a transitional type thing,” Gillis said.
“The bigger players still fetched the bigger money. There were players that knew they were never going to see that same amount of money again.”
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The next genuine landmark contract was Kiwi prop Roy Asotasi who signed a $2.2 million five-year deal to defect from Canterbury to South Sydney in 2007.
While much has been made recently about the potential $1 million deal being tossed around for child prodigy Joseph Suaalii, it was Will Hopoate in 2008 who dominated headlines when he inked a three-year $300,000 deal with Manly while in Year 11. The cap reached $4 million in 2008.
Greg Inglis and Johnathan Thurston can lay claim to being the first $1 million-a-season players with their respective contract extensions around the 2013 seasons.
Others to quickly become million-dollar players included Cameron Smith, Jarryd Hayne, Daly Cherry-Evans, Ben Hunt, Kieran Foran, Anthony Milford and Jason Taumalolo. The cap rose from $6.1 million in 2016 to $9.5 million this year.