By Dan Walsh
“Happy days, baby, the big boys are finally getting paid.”
Aaron Woods isn’t getting paid. Not significantly, anyway. On an $80,000 supplementary NRL contract this season, along with $3000 match payments each time he runs out for Manly, the veteran front-rower will earn just 10 per cent of the salary he once pocketed.
But in a rugby league landscape dominated by a small number of elite props, market forces have lifted the next tier of front-rowers into a surprising earning bracket.
The same market, still feeling the impact of Covid-19 four years on from the pandemic’s outbreak, has kept Woods in the game when he was ready to retire.
Effectively, the best props are already locked down via lucrative long-term contracts. The next generation has yet to arrive, and the few front-rowers who come on to the market are in high demand from clubs in need of muscle and manpower up front.
The Roosters have offered rising 24-year-old Terrell May a two-year extension worth around $400,000 a season, which would double the salary he earned in his breakout 2023 campaign for the club.
Notable off-contract props in the NRL
2024
Terrell May, Jared Waerea-Hargreaves (Roosters), Braden Hamlin-Uele (Sharks), Josh Papalii (Raiders, player option) Jordan McLean (Cowboys), Aaron Woods, Matt Lodge (Sea Eagles), Martin Taupau (Broncos), Francis Molo (Dragons), Jesse Bromwich, Jarrod Wallace (Dolphins), Max King (Bulldogs), Shaquai Mitchell (Rabbitohs).
2025
Spencer Leniu (Roosters), Reagan Campbell-Gillard, Joe Ofahengaue (Eels), Reuben Cotter (Cowboys), Stefano Utoikamanu (Tigers), Royce Hunt, Oregon Kaufusi (Sharks), Tui Kamikamica (Storm), Bunty Afoa (Warriors), Josh Aloiai (Sea Eagles), Emre Guler (Raiders), Jack Hetherington (Knights), Josh Kerr (Dolphins), Davvy Moale (Rabbitohs), Ryan Sutton (Bulldogs), Xavier Willison (Broncos).
On the open market, though, talks with rival clubs have seen May’s price tag rise to over $500,000 a year. Canterbury had prepared a $1.5 million, three-year offer before growing frustrated with negotiations and opting out.
In a market short on front-rowers, Braden Hamlin-Uele’s choice between long-term offers from Cronulla and the Warriors – the latter clocking in at more than $650,000 per year – highlights the clamour for reliable power forwards in the six-again era.
Momentum is more critical than ever before under rules that can swing yardage battles and possession dramatically.
“Blocka [Balmain legend Steve Roach] used to always tell me, ‘We’ve got the easiest role in the game, and it’s the hardest to actually do’,” Woods says.
‘The big boys are getting paid’: Why a prop’s value has skyrocketed in the NRL.Credit: Marija Ercegovac
“Because you’re just doing the basics, running hard and tackling hard. But every few years, now, a new rule makes the game faster. And if your team isn’t going forward, you’ve basically lost the game and that running and tackling just gets harder and harder.”
When Woods debuted in first grade with Wests Tigers 13 years ago, he jokes that teammate Todd Payten – now coach of the Cowboys but then in the last season of a 259-game career – “didn’t talk to me for the first 18 months.”
“I had to earn his respect,” says Woods, who in his prime picked up $800,000 a season along with regular Kangaroos and NSW Origin honours.
The common rugby league consensus is that, like halfbacks, props take longer than most to mature and grow into their game.
Data analysis by The Rugby League Eye Test a few years ago pegged a middle forward’s statistical peak toward the age of 27, with less drop off in output between 27 and 30 than other positions.
The impact of Covid-19 is still being felt in that regard given reserve grade competitions in NSW and Queensland – where young props cut their teeth against seasoned opponents – were cancelled in 2020 and midway through 2021.
Consecutive seasons spent in biosecurity bubbles also limited critical time spent training alongside senior teammates.
Regular programming has since resumed in the NRL. But Bulldogs supremo Phil Gould has spoken for many when he says, “I’ve never seen the player market as difficult as what it is at the moment.”
A recalibration of those lost development seasons is still another year or two away, especially for front-rowers. Gould and Canterbury are feeling this more than any club through sheer rugby league economics.
Roster analysis, provided to this masthead by one of the game’s premiership heavyweights, estimates that roughly one third of a club’s salary cap is spent on middle forwards – amounting to almost $3.4 million of an $11.25 million base salary cap.
In 2022 this masthead obtained details of the NRL’s salary cap benchmarking, which provides clubs with average and median player salaries based on position.
The rise of an elite front-row cohort – led by Payne Haas, Addin Fonua-Blake, James Fisher-Harris and Joe Tapine – had already lifted props into the third most lucrative bracket of top-earners behind halfbacks and fullbacks.
An updated document has been delayed by last year’s protracted CBA dispute and uncertainty over the salary cap.
Lucrative, seven-figure extensions since 2022 for Haas, Tapine and Fonua-Blake among others would only push the big-earners further north. But further down the chain, a prop’s true value in the market emerges.
While the median salary of the top five highest-paid halfbacks in the game was $1,095,560, halfbacks ranked 16-20 pulled in $245,353.
It’s a stark, understandable drop of almost 78 per cent in earnings given halves ideally play 80 minutes each week and clubs typically have defined front-liners and back-ups.
For props though, the top five clocked an average wage of $841,316. Front-rowers ranked 16-20 came in at $472,606, a significantly smaller slide of 44 per cent.
NRL clubs need more front-rowers to function, and those front-rowers need more time to develop to the highest level. But right now, there’s a gap in the supply.
“Unless you’ve got a Payne Haas, who was just a freak from a young age, most front-rowers don’t hit their straps until 27-28,” Woods says.
“You look at someone like Moses Leota. No one really spoke about him for a long time. I think he’s one of our premier front-rowers and he bashed Parramatta to win the [2022] grand final. He’s battle-hardened and so tough. For me, he’s the best front-rower in the game.
“It’s what we’re trying to do at Manly and it’s why I’m still playing on. I might not play every week, but Seibs [coach Anthony Seibold] has got me and a lunatic like Nathan Brown in to try and show these young guys what it takes to play in the NRL.”
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