The big-name NRL stars facing massive salary cuts in an unprecedented player clean out

There’s Anthony Milford, Ash Taylor, Josh Dugan and even Dylan Napa. And that’s just scratching the surface of players who face massive salary cuts in an unprecedented player clean out.

(Clockwise from top left) Anthony Milford, Aaron Woods, Corey Norman, Dylan Napa, Ash Taylor and Blake Ferguson.

It’s the NRL transfer market’s greatest ever reality check being played out before our eyes.

Never before at the halfway mark of the season have so many of the game’s highest paid stars been coming off contract and yet still don’t know where their future lies next season.

No matter where they end up, the safe bet is most will be taking a significant pay cut just to stay in the game.

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Where will Anthony Milford oend up in 2022?

Let’s have a quick stocktake on who is available.

Anthony Milford is the Brisbane Broncos highest paid player in history, on $1 million-a-season, but is unwanted by a team sitting 15th on the ladder, and with no apparent suitors for 2022.

Head an hour down the M1 and we have Ash Taylor on $1,025m, also a club record contract, and the Titans have shown no indication of definitely wanting him for next season.

Like Milford, Taylor has gone from being one of the game’s most celebrated young players a few years back to a man who, at 26, is struggling to find a lifeline.

Down at Cronulla, coach-in-waiting Craig Fitzgibbon has already made some tough calls, including telling Shaun Johnson ($800,000), Aaron Woods ($600,000) and Josh Dugan ($850,000) the club is “moving in a different direction”, while Matt Moylan ($850,000) will have to take a huge salary cup to stay.

Don’t forget Johnson is the club’s reigning player of the year and a former Golden Boot winner, while Dugan will go down as one of the modern game’s great enigmas no matter where he ends up.

Still only 31, much of his recent problems have related to his constant battles with injuries.

But even though he has starred at every level, if we are being completely truthful, he’s carried excess baggage ever since the day he sat on a rooftop in Canberra drinking Barcardi Breezers with Blake Ferguson when they should have been at a recovery session.

Which brings us to Fergo, currently on $500,000, who has also been told by Parramatta to look on.

Ash Taylor may struggle to find a lifeline in 2022.

For all his shortcomings, Fergo is still one of the game’s most loveable larrikins who has played some seriously outstanding football at all levels.

But even though he’s done it all and can be very proud of what he has achieved, I still picture that afternoon early in his career when the then young Raiders centre almost single-handedly destroyed the Melbourne Storm. And I wonder if Fergo every truly realised the upper limits of his phenomenal potential.

Which is a similar story for Corey Norman who is preparing for a massive salary cut if he manages to stay at the Dragons.

On $850,000 this season, Norman was another who not so long ago had the rugby league world at his feet.

But at age 30, he only ever played one Origin - and has rarely shown the consistent form to match his enormous natural talent, especially when his team needs him most.

At the Bulldogs you might say a similar thing about Dylan Napa, on $650,000.

Corey Norman has rarely shown the consistency demanded of him.

Not long ago, Napa and Dallin Watene-Zelezniak ($800,000) were hailed as players who were going to help turn the battling club around.

Yet the one performance in Napa’s career that still stands out above all others was when he was still at the Roosters and he tore apart Souths in a performance the great Gorden Tallis labelled “one of the most aggressive I have ever witnessed ... it was Adrian Morley-like, Sam Burgess-like”.

But consistency has never been Napa’s strong point, which I thought made him a dangerous buy in the first place.

Meanwhile, Watene-Zelezniak has a contract for next year, but the rumour mill is in overdrive that he’s being shopped around.

The one thing DWZ can never be questioned about is his willingness to put his body on the line, even though it was Canterbury’s call to sign him on fullback money when he was always an out-an-out winger.

Sometimes, you can only scratch your head and wonder what some of these clubs are thinking.

Injuries have dogged Josh Dugan in recent years.

Blake Ferguson is now playing reserve grade.

Which describes Wests Tigers decision to fork out $800,000-a-season on Moses Mbye for four years in 2018.

Along with fellow Canterbury ‘gun’ Josh Reynolds, it was a deal that was going to make the Tigers a genuine finals threat. Or so they thought.

While Reynolds hardly broke into a sweat because of injury before he headed off to Hull in England this season, Mybe seems to never have found his place among the instability that constantly surrounds this club.

But while it was a ridiculous offer in the first place, was it really Mbye’s fault that they never provided him with the necessary stability to grow as a player, given he was always left second-guessing which position he might be playing on any given week?

What’s consistent with all the tales above is that every one of them, except Ferguson at Parra, has been playing for a struggling club and signed by a previous coach on a merry-go-round that sees an average four coaching changes a season. That has certainly now put the pinch on some of the biggest earners in the NRL.

New coach with a new perspective and high pressure to get better results from his inherited roster, or make changes, has become a familiar story in the modern game.

Dylan Napa isn’t likely to get anywhere near his current salary in 2022.

Although that is not the case with Josh Hodgson, who appears to have fallen out of favour at Canberra.

Hodgson (on a reported $650,0000) is signed for next year, but speculation, and his own words, cast doubt on whether he will remain there, with a strong link to Brisbane who the Raiders play on Saturday.

If Hodgson does go, I reckon it will be Canberra’s loss because he is the one player on this list I wouldn’t be ushering out the door.

It only seems like yesterday (it was last year) when Peter Sterling argued the Englishman had “just about eclipsed Cameron Smith as the best No. 9 in the game” before he suffered his ACL season-ending knee injury.

But it just goes to show how quickly it can all change, even for the best of them, when the team isn’t winning.