Salary Caps !

All is fair in love and war - and football !   Once again a leading Rugby League club is being punished for shenanigans to circumvent the salary cap under which the entire team of players must contain their accumulated salaries.  The Parramatta Eels have been fined a million dollars and have had the twelve competition points they have won in this year cancelled.   They will gain no new points until they restore the correct balance under this salary cap and that means it is inevitable that some players face the sack.

This is not the first time that a club has been caught "fiddling the books " !   Both the Canterbury/Bankstown " Bulldogs " and the Melbourne " Storm "  were similarly disciplined in past years and it seems a vast temptation to arrange for commercial sporting supporters to supplement official salaries with " under the table " goodies - such as providing a free car or picking up an accommodation tab.

It does raise the question of why we have a salary cap in this sport ?   That goes back a very long way - to the days when Manly on Sydney's north shore was deemed to be a " rich club " that could use its wealth to snare the absolute cream of the talent pool.   Poorer clubs from the less affluent suburbs were at a disadvantage and the salary cap was seen as the measure needed to " level the playing field ".

Of course, Newtons law applies.  To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  All clubs have at least one star player and to keep that talent requires a disproportionate level of reimbursement to the weakest player on the team.  Accordingly, lesser players are not paid what they are worth but restricted to what the club can manage and still keep under the salary cap.   The star grabs the lion's share of the money and the battlers get the crumbs.

Consequently there is a huge gap between Australian Rugby league rewards and the fabulous money that players receive in the world Soccer competition.   The stars are household names and they are bartered between clubs for sums that approach the national budgets of many small countries.  It really is a pay grade without limits.   If you have the talent, the world is at your feet and you live a life that outshines even the movie stars of Hollywood.

Not that many decades ago, playing Rugby League - and that also applied to Australian Rules - was a past time where players also held down a job in the workforce to earn their living expenses.   Today, this has morphed into teams of " professional sportsmen " who are the darlings of both the media and the sporting fans.   They are " celebrities " - and they act accordingly.

Some may think that the days of salary caps impede the rewards that should apply in Australian sports.   Once again, Soccer is the example that is often quoted when this subject comes under discussion.   In every Soccer division there are a few clubs at the top of the table and their players are household names - and these players receive the richest rewards.  But there are lesser clubs in that same competition, striving to break into the top echelon and their players are paid less - until they attract attention and get recruited by a famed team.

The big question is whether " salary caps " have outlived their application to sports that have outgrown the days when suburban clubs played what were really " social " games in state competitions.   These are now " national " sports - and perhaps the pay issue should be open ended !