New salary cap rules

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DaveO
Posts: 15880
Joined: Mon Sep 30, 2002 5:32 pm

New salary cap rules

Post by DaveO »

Announced on the 21st June 2007

My comments about what this will mean in reality in italics,
New “Home Grown” player rule to be brought in
New NRL style Salary Cap to be introduced in 2008

Next year’s engage Super League will boast more home grown talent than ever before and will operate a new Salary Cap system following a meeting between the RFL and the chief executives of all 12 league clubs this week.

At a two day summit held in Perpignan, France, the 12 club chief executives agreed to introduce a new “Home Grown Player” rule that will encourage clubs to actively promote the production of talented players.

From next year at least 20% of a team’s first team squad of 25 players must contain players who have graduated from a club’s Academy system or are aged under 21 years. By 2010 this number will have to increase to 24%.
So next year that means five players out of 25 must be from the academy and by 2010 six. At the moment we have Hock, Lockers, McIllorum, Goulding, Colbon and Tomkins so we already meet both assuming they all stay. There is now another incentive to keep them. Don’t know how this affects other clubs but I doubt they would have agreed to it if they could not meet it already. Clubs never vote themselves a bad deal.
During same period of time the number of overseas trained players must drop from 40% to 20%, with the remaining players in a 25 man squad to be made up of players who are Federation Trained or Academy Juniors.
I am not sure if that means as of 2008 you can only have 40% overseas players in your 25. 40% of 25 is 10 so that means next season Wigan could still have ten overseas players (as could any side). But by 2010 then we have to be down to five.
A Federation Trained player is defined as someone who for any three full seasons before his 21st birthday has been registered to a club of the same rugby league federation.
This is interesting because by my reading that means Harrison Hansen would not count as an overseas player. That means next season we could actually add another overseas player to our ranks and have 11 or by 2010 have five overseas players plus Hansen. I can’t think of any other club other than Wigan who have such a player. If so then this looks like a rule specially for Hansen and would prove once an for all we own the RFL :lol:
At the same meeting it was also agreed that from the start of the 2008 season a new Salary Cap system, similar to the one currently used in Australia, will be implemented.

The new Salary Cap system will be more proactive than the one currently in place and will calculate a club’s Salary Cap position at the start of and throughout the season, remaining ‘live’ at all times. This means that if a club wishes to sign a new player, the impact of that new salary will be assessed before the player is allowed to register.
This as I see it is just a formalising of the way the RFL handled the signing of Fielden and the bleating of several clubs who said we must be over the cap.
Nigel Wood added: “The current Salary Cap has served the game well but it has a number of drawbacks which we aim to put right under these changes. At the moment it is retrospective and a club breaching the salary cap cannot be dealt with until the following season.


“The new system, which is similar to the proven system in the NRL in Australia is ‘live’ and means a club can no longer breach the Salary Cap by miscalculation or mismanagement.”
I must admit I don’t know how this will work because at any point in time I am pretty certain a club could be over the cap one week and not the next as income fluctuates. I can see lots of disputes where the RFL claim a club is over, the club says they aren’t and byt the time the issue is resolved the goalposts have moved once more.

If people want to discuss this please do so in general rl forum - I will post this there as well.

Dave
DaveO
Posts: 15880
Joined: Mon Sep 30, 2002 5:32 pm

Re: New salary cap rules

Post by DaveO »

No sooner do they publicise the rules but they amend them. Check the changed bit below.

"From next year at least five members of a club’s first team squad of 25 players must contain players who have graduated from a club’s Academy system or are aged under 21 years. This will increase by one player each year and by 2011 a squad must have 8 'Home Grown' players."

So instead of six "home grown" players by 2010 (24% of the squad as originally published) it is eight "home grown" players by 2011 (which is 32% of the squad).

Dave
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Nine
Posts: 821
Joined: Wed Sep 21, 2005 12:42 pm

Re: New salary cap rules

Post by Nine »

The devil will be in the detail, so we'll have to wait for the RFL to post its full new salary cap regulations on its website, I suppose.

In theory, this looks like fairly good stuff, and I suppose the "Hansen rule" as you have more or less deemed it, Dave, will also cover players who played junior rugby over here and then went overseas, from where a club signs them.

E.g. should the Farrell family fancy a life in Oz after Faz retires, Owen Farrell could well come back as an adult to a British club, and would count as a local player because he has played more than three seasons in British RL as a junior.

Or are junior players not registered in the way they mean here? :doz: Either way, I think there are likely to be so few players affected by it that it's not worth worrying about.

Add to your list of locally produced youngster we alreday have in our first team squad Harrison Hansen, Eamon O'Carroll, Paul Prescott and Thomas Coyle as well. All are products of our Academy.

Squad number 18!
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