Examining the stress and dollars behind local footy’s salary cap crisis
One of local football’s most contentious issues — the salary cap — is under the microscope after Mick McGuane’s Keilor lost its 2023 premiership. As AFL Victoria reviews the cap, we delve into the strong arguments for and against it.
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At mention of the salary cap, the local football official bristles.
“Get rid of the bloody thing … worst thing they’ve ever done, bring that in,’’ the official, attached to an Eastern league club, says.
It’s a sentiment that will probably resonate with some supporters at Keilor Football Club, one of the powerhouses of the Victorian metropolitan game.
This week, the Blues, coached by former Collingwood star Mick McGuane, were stripped of their 2023 senior premiership after being found guilty of exceeding the salary cap.
The Essendon District league said Keilor was $45,000 over the payment ceiling of $110,000 in a breach it described as “not dishonest or wilful’’.
The league did not explain how it occurred; its statement raised more questions than produced answers.
The Blues were also $605 over their 2022 cap but they were given the all-clear for 2024, when they also won the premiership.
Aside from losing their flag, they were hit with a $50,000 fine ($20,000 of it suspended) and had their allowable player payments cut by 15 per cent for the next three seasons.
Keilor said it was “devastated’’ by the sanction for an “administrative error in timing of payments that led to this situation and breach’’.
“We want to assure our community, that the player payments for the 2024 season were well under the allowable player payment limit, and have been approved by AFL Integrity Auditor as part of this investigation,’’ president Shaun Morris said in a statement.
“We want to be clear that despite this outcome, we do not believe we benefited in any way above the competition and all other competing clubs.’’
The Keilor case has fixed a spotlight on one of local football’s most contentious issues, the salary cap introduced by AFL Victoria in 2016 to drive down spiralling player payments in suburban and country football.
It was brought in to go with the points cap, the first measure to create more level playing fields and big spending in community football.
Before Covid, some metropolitan leagues had their points cap at close to $250,000.
When local football resumed from the pandemic, all competitions were set at $100,000.
Is the salary cap effective?
Just about everyone in the local game has an opinion on it.
Its supporters say it keeps clubs from overspending, putting themselves in financial jeopardy and pressure on volunteers to raise money.
Its critics say it is does not work for the simple reason it cannot be properly policed by the governing body.
Stories proliferate in local football about clubs paying lucrative sign-on fees and under-the-table match payments to players.
Three years ago an Essendon District club allegedly paid a key forward from a neighbouring competition a $15,000 sign-on and $1600 a game. The player’s bemused former club didn’t need a calculator work out his new club would be doing well to stay within the salary cap, then set at $100,000.
In the past few months football in one country region has been abuzz with talk about the incentive given to a former AFL player to run pen over paper. Rumours have it at $50,000.
Late last season an AFL player resigned to being delisted put word around that he would be happy to take offers from local clubs, with a starting point of $60,000. One club in the north of the state was happy to give him a little more (as it was, the player joined a state league club).
And in one country competition, rivals tell stories of a club that puts recruits up in a nice hotel for the weekend and slips $5000 under the pillow.
Former long-serving Balwyn president Richard Wilson has his tent pitched in the scrap-the-cap camp.
He believes many clubs cheat it and officials are helpless to stop them.
“It’s rife,’’ Wilson says. “They should get rid of it because they can’t do anything to make sure everyone’s complying with it. It’s that simple. They should never have brought it in, in the first place. It was never going to be policed and it never can be.’’
Wilson believes Eastern clubs adhere to the salary cap, but at a cost.
He says some of the league’s best players have gone elsewhere in search of a better dollar since football resumed from Covid and the standard of the Premier Division has dropped away.
One Balwyn follower said last year that the team that won the grand final would not have kicked six goals against Balwyn premiership sides of the previous decade.
The Eastern league official says it’s virtually impossible to track off-the-books payments and inducements to players in what is essentially an honesty system.
An experienced suburban coach in the northern suburbs says there’s little doubt clubs pay more than they are permitted.
He calls the salary cap “murky business’’.
By contrast, he says, the points system is transparent, encourages clubs to feed their juniors into senior team as one-point players and rewards them for retaining players (earning point reductions).
“It actually makes you have a one, two, three-year plan. You just can’t go and buy one (a premiership),’’ the coach says.
“After three years they’ve played 50 games and that’s where your next flag comes from.’’
Another senior coach whose team played in a Premier grand final three years ago says his club is “squeaky club’’ and proud of it.
He believes some clubs “do it completely by the book, others marginally outside the book and others completely take the piss’’.
“Nobody says anything positive about the salary cap. It’s just negative talk like, ‘They’re cheating, they’d be cheating’,’’ he says.
Respected Morwell official Michael Henderson has another take on the issue.
He believes the cap is necessary, saying there are too many clubs and not enough players “and basics economics will tell you that the price of putting out any football team at any level is just going to go up and up and up’’.
Henderson says there are clubs in Gippsland “spending a fortune’’ just to survive.
Asked if it can be regulated, he says: “I think it can be. You can’t wipe it out completely but you can curtail the extreme overspending, I think.
“If they put an effective system in place, I think it can be done. And an effective system is quality investigation over quantity and severe penalties as a deterrent, which is exactly what the Tax Office does.
“This is how simple it is for me: the only reason you would get rid of it is because it can’t be policed. But you can only determine that when they actually start to police it properly. The system to date has basically been useless. Until they actually take it seriously, do it properly, resource it properly, AFL Victoria would be negligent in their duties to scrap it. To date, they’ve been a massive part of the problem.’’
At the end of last season, AFL Victoria started a review of the salary cap and player points system.
The governing body met with suburban and country clubs put forward by their leagues or regions.
A total of 35 clubs, a mix of suburban and country and minor and major leagues, had the one-on-one sessions with AFL Victoria before a follow-up survey was made available to all clubs with its deadline for submission ending yesterday (Friday).
“We want to make it more user-friendly and more suitable for the purpose,” AFL Victoria community football manager John O’Donohue says.
“We’re also doing an analysis of points utilisation and cap utilisation.
“In metro they’re all on 46 points, but we’re finding in some cases that is way too high for what they’re using.
“When you continually win premierships and retain your players, points don’t come into it.’’
The presidents of most premier country leagues met in Bendigo last weekend, with a strong take-out being retention of the salary cap.
But the leagues in attendance were supportive of the idea of all premier leagues having the same salary caps and all moving to a tiered player points system based on ladder results from the previous season.
Southern league CEO Lee Hartman, one of the most respected and experienced local-football administrators in the state, says the salary cap and the points cap “go hand-in-hand’’.
He says the salary cap is “imperative’’ to local football.
“It’s allowed clubs to remain sustainable and pay their other debuts, whether they be league fees, council fees, supplier fees,’’ Hartman says.
“At the end of the day, I think the majority of clubs are doing the right thing. They can come up with ideas to get around it but if they get caught, they will be whacked.
“I think the (investigative) processes are pretty good at the moment. There were 120 audits at the end of the year (in 2024). Clubs can be audited if they win premierships or finish mid-table. The league can choose who want to be audited.’’
Eight Southern clubs were investigated at the end of last season. All checks have not been completed.
Indeed, a number of the 120 audits are ongoing and Keilor has not been the only club punished.
Murray league club Rumbalara was fined $32,9000 for exceeding the salary cap by $54,650 last year. And two days after the Keilor case was concluded, the Essendon District league confirmed Burnside Heights was also being investigated.
Hartman would like to see the cap stay, and maintained close to present levels.
“I think it’s got to be capped at some stage, over time something like an extra 10 or 20 per cent from where we are now,’’ he says. “But we can’t let it get back to where it was in the old days.’’
Southern’s 2024 Division 1 premier Cheltenham was audited and ticked off.
Its president, Adam King, says the salary cap is a good thing for community football.
He says it is not perfect but the local game needs it and it’s effective even if only 90 per cent of clubs are complying.
“You do need to have some sort of guideline there, otherwise it does get out of hand very quickly,’’ he says.
“If clubs wants to roll the dice and break it, that’s their call.
“Most people running the clubs are good people and I don’t think they would want to be tarnished with having their reputations hurt. Myself and our treasurer are very strong on the fact that we won’t be doing it and we’re strong with the players that we pay only what we can afford. We don’t want to risk the future or the reputation of our club. It goes back to 1891. Why would you want to jeopardise that?”
Originally published as Examining the stress and dollars behind local footy’s salary cap crisis
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