NRL 2021: Penrith Panthers slam Bulldogs over Matt Burton signing

Penrith’s chairman has taken aim at lower-tier NRL clubs outlaying millions for young players following Matt Burton’s move to Belmore.

Panthers chairman Dave O’Neill has taken aim at lower-tier NRL clubs outlaying millions of dollars to sign rookie players, labelling the move “scary” and “unsustainable”

And O’Neill said young players signed to big money deals who fail to step-up into the NRL players could lead to club’s salary caps being “stuffed for three to four years”.

Penrith remain angry rising star Matt Burton was pinched by Canterbury on a two-year, $1m contract despite having played just six NRL games, three off the bench.

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And the Bulldogs also signed halfback Kyle Flanagan to a $1.5m deal over three years having played just 29 first grade games.

While not specifically naming Canterbury, O’Neill warned desperate clubs against outlaying big bucks to sign inexperienced players.

“The scary thing is when players are getting offered up to $1.5m over a three-year period and they have played three or four first grade games,” O’Neill said.

“That’s the scary part and that’s the scary part for the NRL going forward. The game can’t sustain that.

Matt Burton signed a big-money contract with Canterbury despite just starting three NRL games. Picture: AAP/Dan Himbrechts

“Whether it’s Penrith players or any players in general, you get half a dozen clubs who get two or three of them wrong and all of a sudden their salary caps are stuffed for three or four years.

“I’m not saying some of these players aren’t going to be brilliant but you’re backing your horse at a very early stage. You can’t blame the players for getting the offers. Good on them.

“If I was a 20-year-old halfback, five-eighth, getting that sort of money, you’d be over the moon.

“But at the end of the day, the game is results driven so the clubs at the bottom of the table have to try and buy some talent. Then the guys at the top of the table lose the talent because they can’t afford to keep them. It’s a vicious cycle, it’s a system.

Panthers general manager Dave O'Neill.

“And you can’t back-end deals these days. It just comes back to bite you. You’ve got to have a balanced roster where you’ve got your top seven or eight players on big money, then your middle section and then you have your journeymen and development players coming through.

“At Penrith, we’re a development club but a lot of clubs that don’t develop players are going to struggle with that bottom ten per cent.”

Rival clubs are circling Penrith stars after the Panthers reached this year’s NRL grand final.

Star players Jarome Luai and Stephen Crichton come off contract after next year and are certain to attract massive offers.

Kyle Flanagan also joined the Bulldogs on a big-money deal. Picture: Mark Kolbe/Getty

“The sides that are successful, clubs are obviously going to raid some of those players because you can’t keep them all due to the salary cap. That’s the problem,” O’Neill said. “Players that play in successful sides, their values go up and it’s a free world out there.

“If you said to me at the beginning of the year that (Penrith players) Charlie Staines, Matt Burton, Stephen Crichton, Liam Martin – the list goes on and on – are going to be where they are today and where they are in the market place, you would have been kidding yourself. But that is what happens.

“Where people say it (successful clubs being raided) is a bad look for the game, I’m actually proud of what our club has achieved over the last four, five, six years, to put us in this position.

“We’d like to try and keep all of them but we can only what we can do with a salary cap. We are doing our best to manage within the salary cap. Unfortunately it will be the nature of our success that we are going to lose some players. We have to try and keep the ones we can fit in our cap.”

Originally published as NRL 2021: Penrith Panthers slam Bulldogs over Matt Burton signing