tajhay wrote:DaveO wrote:
We have had similar deals put in place for Hock and Mossop who are going to Paramatta but I am very sceptical any UK player who is a success in the NRL will want to come back after a couple of years for a much lower salary.
What is the Salary cap in ESL? It seems that up until this year ESL was a lucrative comp for some NRL players to goto who were heading into the twilight of their career. Has the glut of that stopped now? By our calculations Tomkins was on 300k pounds. If we are paying him 1m(NZD) (and even that figure has been heavily debated and shut down by our CEO that equates to roughtly 450k pounds.
The salary cap just changed slightly but hasn't really gone up. It was £1.6m but with additions for certain players such as a single long serving player which along with others put it up to £1.85m. If you had some home grown players, a certain number of senior and junior internationals and so on you got the full £1.85m. Wigan probably qualified for all that. Next year it will just be £1.85m I believe.
In 2014 the NRL cap will be AUD $6.3m, which is £3.8m and NZD $7.46 roughly.
Using the calculators on the web £300K is just shy of AUD $500k and NZD $568k
It used to be lucrative to come here because the exchange rate was so good for Aussies and Kiwi's. Now the pound has tanked and in particular the Aussie dollar has risen in value it works the other way.
DaveO wrote:
The money is not much use and with the stupid rules in our Under 19 competition any player older than that could only get a game in our 1st team and players younger than 19 won't figure that much anyway. It may be a good life experience for young players to spend some time in a different country but I don't see this as a big thing to shout about.
Kittwazzer explained us about your u19 eligibily issues. Shocking really. How exactly are first grade players returning from injury supposed to get match fitness under your current competition requirements?
Over the years since SL started the rules have progressively changed for the worse. At one time we used to run an open age 2nd team in an Alliance competition but that was killed off years ago. We eventually ended up with a junior competition that changed age qualification occasionally but allowed a small number of over age players to play.
When the U19 rules came in I think the idea was SL clubs would link up with clubs in lower leagues here and send players there in some way but it has not materialised. Understandably the lower league clubs have ambitions of their own and were not prepared to be feeder clubs for SL sides to all intents and purposes.
For some idiotic reason Wigan voted in favour of the U19 rules but our coach has moaned about them since in particular with reference to Gelling who can't get a game outside the 1st team due to these rules.
I think the experience in a different country would be a great carrot for young players. NZ Warriors has great up and coming juniors (we have dominated our U20s comp for a few years and won 2 in a row) and it would be great for these players to goto our sister club and experience life in a different country. I know i would have loved to have done that
It's a good experience. I have lived abroad for periods (visited NZ as well) and it's a good thing to do. How much of this will be seen as a benefit by fans who are primarily are concerned with 1st team football is hard to tell. Probably of little interest I would say.
DaveO wrote:
Depends if these contracts about coming back after two years have any substance to them.
Sam signed a deal to keep him here for three seasons and it seems he is off after two so it's things like that that make some of us sceptical about the idea he's contracted to come back in a couple of years.
If he can earn far more money and likes the lifestyle why would he want to give that up?
First of all Auckland weather is not that much 'nicer' than London
...with the negotiations its become obvious that we are not actually buying out his contract but rather getting him on a loan for a couple of years. I think after what the club has done for him, he owes them that. After that i wouldnt mind seeing him come back again to the NZ Warriors
With all the drama surrounding him, it seems that it was only a matter of time before he left, either to Union or NRL.
If it is a loan deal as you say and if that is how it is presented here we will just have to wait and see what happens at the end of it. In the meantime unless you send over Locke, Sam will leave a huge hole in our side and how that is addressed will be the immediate concern of most fans.
