found the article it was the heraldsun not the age.
Taking lid off salary cap
10 August 2007 AFL
Gerard Healy
IS THE salary cap in danger of becoming a mirage?
There is a view, increasingly supported by significant football personnel, that the cap is in danger of becoming merely a base payment structure for some clubs.
The true position, it is believed, is that major payment disparity is found between clubs, orchestrated through investment and promotional deals arranged by the stronger and more connected clubs for their star players.
These deals have one simple intention: to bolster the players' wages significantly outside the cap, so they stay at the club.
They are also sufficiently distant and justifiable to satisfy any AFL investigation under the current parameters.
This, it seems, is the new business of football management at the top end.
As one high-profile manager put it last week: "Some contracts take longer than others to orchestrate. The $700,000 that will go into the cap takes seven minutes. It's the rest that takes the time."
For $700,000 in the cap, the going rate is now closer to $1.1 million at some clubs.
Player managers and clubs are fully aware of their obligations under the cap. And Carlton's current plight is a weekly reminder of the ramifications of "illegally" transgressing.
So keeping deals "legal" is a must, but the managers are also aware that the market for some at the top end is not what money players make in the cap, but what opportunities and money can be made outside the cap in the business and investment world as an indirect part of their deals.
It is believed one Melbourne-based club has recently formed a committee to explore ways in which the club can better provide access to the business world for players so they can source profitable investments, which will then reduce monies in the cap.
One of the key issues is risk. If the player involves himself in commercial deals that can lose money as well as make money, the cap hasn't been compromised. But there is a strong view the deals are risk-free; that implied guarantees underpin many of these deals.
The changing nature of the marketplace has meant the level playing field intended by the cap has become distorted at best, with some clubs far better positioned to provide these benefits than others.
One man's investment advice, business opportunity, TV or promotional deal is another man's salary cap exploitation.
It would appear there is a major need for reassessment on their salary cap status.
In the current booming market, property, property trusts and share portfolios, where the entry price is generous and the exit price underwritten, promotional deals and endorsements with corporate friends of clubs are all now part of the "real" wages of an AFL footballer.
It is becoming such a significant and sophisticated part of the industry that in time the money gained off the ground will for some equal or dwarf that paid for services on it.
As such the cap is losing a significant amount of its power, the gap between clubs is widening and we are in danger of returning to the bad old days.
But how does an AFL inquiry determine if a wholesale block of land bought by a player is a cap item or a smart investment.
It's been investigated already by the AFL, as have house sales above "market" prices, but there has been no impropriety found, essentially because no guarantee was found, which is a long way short of it not existing.
One thing the AFL can do in the short term is address the antiquated restriction on clubs to pay at least 92.5 per cent of the cap.
The cap minimum has been shown to be flawed in the past five years. Carlton, which has won three wooden spoons in the period, has been forced to pay close enough to the same as the premier, West Coast.
This at a time when the Blues were going belly up financially, and might have gone under if not for the inspiration and financial clout of Dick Pratt.
Because of the 92.5 per cent mandate, the club was incapable of reducing its player wage bill significantly at a time when it was virtually bankrupt, and the player list at an all-time low.
Money that could have been shaved from wages should have been put into leadership programs, rehabilitation facilities, coaching and recruiting football department staff to get the club moving again.
In the early Denis Pagan years, costs were cut to the bone, the list dwindled, and the club became paralysed by a combination of its own mistakes, a parlous financial position and an overzealous AFL Commission.
But surprisingly Carlton, like every other club, is said to pay 100 per cent of the cap 100 per cent of the time.
Why would all clubs, top and bottom, be paying the same?
Something doesn't add up.
The 92.5 per cent rule was implemented in the days when Fitzroy was going to the wall and was designed to prevent the Lions from reducing salaries to an embarrassing level to survive, and possibly to help force the club to the financial wall.
Today in a very different AFL world, it has little relevance.
The AFL is now in the business of supporting clubs financially, not merging them, and that will long be the case given the TV and venue deals that require 16 teams.
There is also a powerful players' association to prevent exploitation that wasn't there in Fitzroy's final days.
Market forces should dictate the lower end of the cap to a greater degree so player payments more reflect performance, maturity and demand, not some arbitrary figure common to all.
Currently we have the best 10 players at Carlton and Richmond getting the same, if not more, than the best 10 at West Coast.
But the distortion is probably even greater in what is paid to the next 10 on the list, for it is depth as much as top-end talent that wins premierships.
It seems silly that when a club wins a flag, its biggest concern is keeping the list together because of an expectation of even greater reward for players.
Logic dictates this is the time you should be paying 100 per cent of the cap and not when you're on the bottom with a team of youngsters.
Room should always be left for the improvement of the list, but it never is. It doesn't make sense unless top-end players are earning big money outside the cap.
Fixing the bottom end may help diminish the demand for distortion at the top.
Open dialogue with the player managers is perhaps the first step in restoring the integrity of the cap.
According to one influential voice, the cap's imaginative loopholes are a difficult area that has become increasingly grey in recent years and "may be resolved only in the courts in time".
But if Carlton's pain of the past few years is to mean anything to the competition by way of deterrent, the AFL has a fight on its hands, a fight it must win.
But it's a fight the league is yet to acknowledge it is in.
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/footy/ ... 42,00.html
Not saying I agree with it Jeff but it is standard now days unfortunately I posted in anther thread earlier about it today. How can Carlton be paying nearly as much as West Coast in the salary cap. It's not really working it only stops big clubs grabbing everyone with talent rather than reducing the top clubs. How many players over the last 3 years have been forced to move on because of salary cap problems? the last I can remember is Caracella what 3 years ago now.
