AFL to met club chief executives to discuss financial concerns

THE AFL is preparing to host club chief executives at a two-day conference this week but will do so without having made a response to players’ longstanding pay claims.

AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan. Picture: AAP

THE AFL is preparing to host club chief executives at a two-day conference this week but will do so without having made a response to players’ longstanding pay claims.

Players are seeking to be paid a set percentage of the games’ revenues as part of the next collective bargaining agreement to be struck with the AFL.

AFL Players’ Association boss Paul Marsh put the proposal to league chiefs at a meeting on May 17.

Although considered likely to maintain a long-held opposition to the percentage model, the AFL is yet to make a public statement on it, or give the AFLPA and answer.

Negotiations have been stalled for the past two months.

The meeting of club bosses will be primarily about financial matters — and they are anxious to see details of AFL financial boss Ray Gunston’s long-mooted investment funding model.

In flux are how the AFL’s record $2.5 billion broadcast deal will be broadly divvied up; what help clubs with women’s team licences will receive and whether indigenous and multicultural academies will receive more funding than the seed amount the AFL provided this year.

Chief Gillon McLachlan said after a meeting of the AFL Commission in Brisbane last Friday the league would ensure all clubs have the financial means to spend up to the limit of both the salary cap and the football department spending ceiling.

But much of the AFL’s planning will be contingent on what form its deal with players takes.

There is urgency because the AFL financial year ends on October 31.

Clubs dealing with retaining and attracting out of contract players say they must soon know where the salary cap will be set for next year.

At this week’s meetings, the league will also take more feedback from clubs on whether a football department spending cap — a key equalisation measure — should be hard or soft.

An experimental soft cap, where a tax is imposed on clubs who spend above a threshold, has been in place for the past two seasons, but all competitive balance policies are up for review.

Some clubs — such as the Gold Coast and Sydney — are on record as favouring a hard cap.

But other smaller clubs have told the Herald Sun a soft cap coupled with a dollar-for-dollar tax for big spenders is the way to go.