Anger growing among AFL clubs and player agents over pay impasse

AFL clubs and player agents are growing increasingly frustrated by the protracted pay negotiations with the players’ association certain to reject the league’s latest offer.

Sydney’s Lance Franklin is among the best-paid players in the AFL. Pictures: Phil Hillyard

THE average AFL player wage will rise by just $18,000 across the final five years of the league’s latest pay offer.

A heavily front-ended pitch from AFL bosses to the game’s 817 players would result in the average salary climbing from $309,000 last year to $371,000 this season.

But the single-year 20 per cent pay hike — boosting the club salary cap from $10.37 million to $12.4 million — would be followed by ­increases of just 1 per cent a ­season until 2022.

It means the salary cap would total just $13.09 million by the end of the six-year deal, with the average wage $389,000.

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The AFL Players’ Association is awaiting the formal ­delivery of the proposal but is certain to reject it.

Hope of a early-season ­resolution to the salaries stand-off is waning and clubs and player agents are growing increasingly frustrated by the protracted negotiations.

“It’s about time both parties started behaving like adults and pulled their fingers out,” one agent said last night.

“It’s holding everything up.”

The AFL’s proposed offer.

Another manager, former Essendon forward Scott Lucas, said the AFL offer “was not ­acceptable at this stage”.

Asked if the dispute could extend deep into the season, he said on SEN radio: “No doubt.”

In addition to the salary cap, clubs are permitted to pay their players a promotional and marketing allowance.

The Additional Service Agreement is valued at $1.022 million.

In the latest AFL pay proposal, the ASAs will be frozen at that figure for the duration of the six-year collective bargaining agreement.

AFLPA board member Patrick Dangerfield, president Matthew Pavlich and chief executive Paul Marsh. Picture: Alison Wynd

Clubs will also lose the ability to pay older players a portion of their salaries outside the cap using a veterans allowance.

Veterans allowance payments topped $6.6 million last year, money that will now be counted under the cap, eroding the real value of the 20 per cent first-year pay rise.

The player union and AFL have reached an agreement on a “mechanism” for players to receive a slice of any unbudgeted league revenues but remain apart on what club cash should be counted.