The NRL is set for an explosive expansion of the salary cap in the wake of the a massive windfall from the new media deal. With rumours suggesting the figure could be around 20 million dollars, the landscape of the code will be changed forever. Sixties and Forty20 tackle the mind-blowing numbers in a live edition of The Tip Sheet.
Meanwhile, in Parradise the Eels are reloading after a largely successful weekend against the Sea Eagles and Wests Tigers. Injury and suspension have struck both the NRL and NRLW as Jason Ryles and Steve Georgallis turn to young options to replace Sean Russell (Quadriceps, Rd 23) and Boss Kapua (Suspension, Rd 4). Lincoln Fletcher is set to make his NSW Cup debut this week in an exciting iteration of Team List Tuesday.
The big decider for State of Origin takes place tomorrow night – who will prevail? The boys give their finals thoughts on the game before going around the code to discuss the latest bits and bobs.
Interesting re: projected 20m cap. This projected cap figure suggests Parra were outsmarted by o Sullivan’s from knights when he negotiated the d brown deal. If the ratchet clause is capped at 1.4 then knights did well and we lost out as usual. Seems overs now but will be bargain soon and we don’t even use our full cap so we could of put 1.1 to brown and a limited ratchet clause…
Maybe the projections are not accurate so can’t be sure yet but food for thought
It won’t be $20m immediately, the broadcast deal itself is ratcheted, so the cap will increase over the course of the deal. I would hope that we are at least using up unused cap space by bringing future payroll forward.
The cap will be what it will be but as it goes higher so does the tax incentives that PNG have- which makes it even more a farce. I’ve stopped listening to PVL.
The higher the cap the more inflated some of the contracts will be – are we seeing a better game? Not for me. The messing around with officials and rules is completely ruining the spectacle and we’ve already seen some games revert back to less six agains.
It’s also funny how the Ashley Klein one has gone…..
The games been better when we’ve seen the refs step back and allow the game to flow. AKA Bill Harrigan type stuff
The game is very quickly becoming like the NFL, where dollars come before entertainment, before the game itself. Is that what we as fans want? I can see a lot of people becoming less passionate or switching off if it continues this way.
Except that aren’t. If they were, the game wouldn’t be making the money it is. I’ll take any favourable comparison to the NFL any day.
Surely it’s about more than making money with superficial “entertainment”. If that’s what we are heading towards, I’ll be slowly switching off. I watch the game for the sport itself, not all the other crap that goes on.
The increasing cap is bad timing for the Eels. At a time when we are looking to poach other teams players, those teams will now have a right of reply and room to move in the cap. At a time when we need fewer teams competing for the top players, more teams will be looking to spend big to get the stars who due to the greater numebr of teams in the comp, are being more and more diluted across the league..
There is never a good time to have the weakest roster in the league, but this could be the worst time.
Agreed. It’s poor planning by us but also a small window of opportunity to pay what seems like decent overs now (because market is not used to the changes to the cap that are looming) because new market rates become the norm (and teams like us have to bid even higher)
I don’t trust this recruitment team so that’s all a wish on a hope on nothing much more
James Hooper on Fanatics TV is saying that the Storm is willing to let go of Howarth and Chan in order to sign Bronson Cherri. The irony here is that the Storm could have released Howarth to the Eels at the start of this season and in return signed Lomax.
Are the Eels still interested in Howarth? Anybody’s guess?
Should the cap be what some are suggesting then to even up the competition the NRL should ban third party agreements. Otherwise the poorer clubs who don’t have that corporate support will never benefit. Third party agreements is a subtle way of cheating. Get rid of them.
Another, I privately thought the Eels would do Manly. This, for me, contributes to a good season. We beat the Broncos and Manly is always good.
I agree re 3rd party deals. Why have a salary cap at all, when clubs can use 3rd party agreements to get around it. It doesn’t make sense and only favours the stronger clubs.
Disagree. As the game generates more revenue, TPA’s become less relevant. There are no more rich clubs and poor clubs anymore. Some are richer, but every club now has the ability to compete on roughly equal footing.
Well if they are irrelevant why have them at all? They are definitely still relevant, every dollar spent over the cap is relevant. It can be the difference in signing marquee players.
Brett, your understanding is incorrect. Why do certain clubs have an abundance of top tier players and most clubs have one or two. It is the TPA that pulls them in. Get rid of the TPA’s and the salary cap does what it was designed to do – balance out the teams and therefore the competition.
There was a time no so long ago a different team won the GF each year. Now it is has been dominated by just a few teams. East – Storm – Penrith. We could include the Broncos because of their high quality depth although they are rather pathetic at the moment languishing behind the Eels.
And now we are expanding the competition. The big question – will this make a difference or will it still be dominated by the TPA kings?
Moses kicking in the first 30 minutes is the best kicking game I’ve seen from player at origin level since jason Smith. We were under assault and he continually turned them around so they couldn’t keep the foot on the throat.
Moses & Cleary had a clear division of labour, Moses handled all the long kicking while Cleary handled the tactical kicking. It seemed to work.
The thing that struck me most about Origin was that the fashion for small, fast props is over. The centre was dominated y big, mobile men, power runners.