In vain did I search for Billy Moore as Captain/Coach.
Seriously, I think Cam McInnes will be too old (at 33), with too many games (about 250) under his belt. That’s walking-frame age for a forward.
What would the Bears expect to get out of him ? A couple of years at most. Good player, but he will have passed his “best-before” date, if not his “use-by” date.

“Fifita … has played limited minutes off the bench for the majority of this year, while also requiring pain-killing injections before games.” and:

“He was relegated to playing Queensland Cup for Ipswich last weekend, before being sent to see a specialist.”

Why ? That’s what a coach should do in the last third of the season with a place in the eight on the line, and a long off-season to patch up a bust player. No point in flogging him in the first half-dozen rounds and wrecking him for the rest of the season.

Danned, I haven’t given any real thought to how to handle this situation.

My first response is to treat it simply as “loan”.

– The club that holds the registration of the player retains his registration.
– The club that is borrowing the player is responsible for his salary and – if we are talking about him leaving one city to play in another – for providing him with accommodation and travelling expenses.

As for the salary cap, I suggest the simplest, least contentious approach is that the loaned player takes his chunk of the salary cap with him. That chunk of salary cap is added to the cap of the new club, for the length of the loan. That way the club that has borrowed him can pay him without breaching the cap.

It would leave the club that has loaned him out short of a bit of cap, but as they are not paying the kid they would not be in danger of a cap breach.

At the end of the season (or the loan period), if the new club wants to keep the player (and he is happy to stay at the new club), then the two clubs handle this as a regular transfer, with a transfer fee and part of the fee going to the player.

There may be a more elegant solution, but those are my current thoughts.

I would be happy if someone more knowledgeable than me could post a reply to this, and tell us what is the current NRL practice for handling loans, and how such player payments are managed under the cap.

Why thank you sir.
It all crystallised while I was watching the people’s team laying a lazy 56 points on some crowd of deadbeats – can’t remember which one :=)

dogs. I congratulate you on having a mind like a weasel ! Do you compile cryptic crosswords in your spare time ? Those are excellent questions.

In my model – to quote from the article -:

“If a player refuses to go, even if two clubs have agreed to a transfer, then the clubs cannot force him to go. He can stay and see out his contract if (for example) he does not want to go to PNG no matter how much they offer!”

If PNG is offering to pay twice the transfer fee that Perth Bears are offering, then the player can tell his club that either he will stay with them, or he will go to the Bears, but there is no way he will go to PNG.

The club can then elect to take the Perth offer, (or try and get them to raise it a bit) or it can tell the player that the transfer is off and he will have to stay and see out the contract.

If the club had initiated the transfer, then they may well take what they can get from the Perth Bears, just to move the kid along.

If the player had initiated the transfer then he will not be due any “transfer money”, and this raises a thorny problem. Should he get his manager to renegotiate the deal with Perth, whereby they pay him less, but offer his existing club a higher transfer fee ?

That sounds like an argument for a fixed rate transfer fee, doesn’t it ? Otherwise the system will encourage unethical behaviour from clubs.

My expectation is that the NRL and RLPA would make a rule that if a club has made a written offer to a player (for a contract amount) and a written offer to a club (for a transfer fee), then the parties will not be allowed to renegotiate the figures to increase the transfer fee at thee expense of the player’s new contract value.

Will it work ? Probably not. The “negotiations” will take place before anything is put on paper.
Is it worth trying ? Yes. As long as the NRL threatens retribution against clubs who are found to have behaved that way ?

Does it happen in soccer ? In Europe – where we are talking serious numbers for salaries and transfer fees – almost certainly.

BG, let me think out loud…
It’s 2028 and PNG Hunters (or whatever they will be called) offer Lachlan Lam $1.5M a year for three years to come back from the Leigh Leopards and be the first signing for the new club. “PNG boy makes good in the UK and comes home..” You know the sort of headlines.

Adrian Lam (Lachlan’s old man, and Coach of the Leopards), says “I’m not letting him go, unless you pay us half a million – pounds not dollars !

Under my model:
– NRL would say “that’s OK, but you’ve got to balance the books over three years. What you pay out must be balanced by what you get in”

(Perhaps PNG and Perth will be poor examples, because in the early years they will have no players to sell. Let’s assume just for now that the NRL gives them a free ride for the first three years and doesn’t insist on balancing the books Or is that the exact point of your question ?)

OK, Take #2. Sydney Roosters do a deal with Adrian Lam, and the headlines read: “Ex-Rooster makes good in the UK and comes home…”

Roosters get Lachie and pay the Leopards a million bucks as a transfer fee.
Their “transfer account” reads +$1M for spend and $0 for receipts (ignoring all other transfers)

Adrian Lam rings Trent Robinson and says, “You got Sam Walker spare now. How about we do a deal?”

Sam agrees to go to the Leopards on $500K a year for three years. (Yeah, it’s just fiction!)

Leopards agree to pay a transfer fee. It could be the 10% of contract value that we have talked about or it could be different. Let’s say it is 5%. I see the NRL stepping in and saying “Sam didn’t ask to go, so you have to pay him a chunk of the transfer fee that you received. You may have sold him cheap, but you can’t use that as a mechanism to avoid compensating him. You MUST pay him the amount he would have received if the Leopards had paid the Roosters the usual 10%.”

If Leopards paid 15%, not 10% or 5% then Sam would have got the benefit of Adrian Lam’s generosity.

So, the key takeaway is that NRL Central would be responsible for ensuring that clubs off-loading a player to a Super League club compensate the player to whatever is the AGREED percentage of the NOMINAL transfer fee. The easiest way to do that would be to come to an agreement with Super League that it would not register the contract of an ex-NRL player, unless it is clear that the player had received the same “transfer” money that he would have received in a straight NRL to NRL club transfer.

(Don’t ask about GST and VAT – I’ll let Jimmmy give us the good oil on that ! )

Jim. I’m quite prepared to stand corrected on the GST. Thank you.

As for setting the transfer fees. I could have written a bit more, but I thought the article was already long enough (some will say it was too long). I would like to see NRL Central keep out of this if possible, however I accept that – certainly in early years, while transfer values are still being established, it will be difficult to keep them out.

One way to give the player and club some certainty, would be to start off with a fixed rate, based on contract value. Let’s say, 10% of the value of the full contract. (Don’t base it on first year value, or the purchasing clubs will simply back end the contract to minimise the transfer fee)

Worked example, In the middle of his contract with the Broncos, Payne Haas demands a release, and signs for the Perth Bears on a three year deal at $1.5M per year. Contract value is $4.5M Transfer fee would be 10% of the contract value. The Bears pay the Broncs $450K

I could go on and talk about accounting for Player, Club and Mutual Options, but this reply to your comment is already a small article in itself !

Key point. If the transfer fee can be calculated in advance, that will give clubs and players certainty in the early years. If they are happy with that arrangement they can keep it. If not, they can change it to a proper free-market down the track.

Most kind, sir. Once the Federal Election is over and I hang up my AEC bib, I shall be available for consultation. If Mr Abdo wants me before then, he’ll have to negotiate a release.

There is an old saying: “Consistency is the hallmark of the unimaginative.”

Based on that, I declare one of those referees was JK Rowling in disguise.

Brad Arthur for coach ?

I don’t think Brad Arthur is a particularly good coach.
I think his bench rotation at Parra was quite poor in the last few years before he was moved on.

However, if you want an ex-Eels coach to get the gig in Perth, surely you can’t go past ex-Bears captain Jason Taylor ?

Favourite Bears player ? Jason Taylor, or Darryl Halligan (now he could kick a conversion…)

“It is a tough balancing act for the coach – he doesn’t want to drive his two pack leaders into the ground by overplaying them but he can’t afford to have them off the field too long, particularly at the same time.”

Sounds just like Parramatta with Junior Paulo and RCG.
Didn’t work long-term for Brad Arthur and I can’t see it working for Madge.

Frankly:

“The lopsided nature of the standings this season highlights a growing gap between the top and bottom clubs. ”

I have to disagree with you, sir. This season has seen the team that won the last four GFs lose a fistful of games, and other teams well placed from last year (thinking Storm, Chooks and Sharks) have been underwhelming.

The competition seems to be more open this season than at any time in the last decade.
I think that there are sufficient resources to staff a WA club (and – dare I say it – many more players who would prefer to play in Perth than PNG – if playing for one of those teams is going to be their gateway into NRL first grade).

“Brown, who is managed by Chris Orr, has struck it rich but the damage to his reputation has been immense.”

Key differences between Brown and Galvin are:
– Brown’s shortcomings as a stand-in 7 have been exposed while Mitch Moses has been out.
– Brown’s manager has “looked after his career” by securing him a ten year deal on big money.
– Brown hasn’t criticised club and coach.

The damage to Brown’s reputation has been primarily to his technical ability, less to his personal image.
The damage to Galvin’s reputation has been wholly to his personal image, not to his technical ability.

Parra fans have given Brown grief because “if he is worth that much money, why hasn’t he been showing it for us ?” If he becomes more effective at 6 now Moses is back at 7, such criticism will rapidly die down. Galvin will have a harder job to do. I can see him becoming the new Daley Cherry-Evans: respected for his technical ability, but not liked because of his previous behaviour over money.

Chris Orr has acted well to look after his player’s career.
Isaac Moes has not.

The last I have heard (Brent Read in The Australian this morning) is that Manager Moses is hanging his hat on the following excerpt from the standard NRL contract, to force the Tigers to move Galvin back into training with the first team squad:

“subject to fitness, playing form and mental attitude, the club must give the player the opportunity to train and play to the level reasonably required of a professional rugby league player with the player’s level of skill and experience”

I would suggest that has not much more chance of success than the “bullying” ploy. The club can rightly question the player’s mental attitude if he runs the line that Benjie (one of the best-ever 6’s) is unable to coach him.

For Lachlan Galvin to transfer from Wests to Parramatta makes little sense if he really hopes to improve the quality of the coaching that he is receiving.
I suspect that “find a better coach” might have been one of the original aspirations, but after having burned his bridges at Wests – alienating coach, club, team-mates, fans and most social media commentators – all he wants to do now is to get out and go anywhere, no matter how bad they are.
Personally, I suspect that all this is simply down to impatience. He wants to play in a winning team. He wants to play there now, and he isn’t prepared to undertake the heavy lifting at Wests to make them that winning team.
At this point, he’ll simply go wherever Manager Moses tells him to go.

Hmmm 17 teams, with 30 players in the squad, at a million each.
That is over half a BILLION dollars per year.

(Yeah, I know that is only half of what the federal government squanders every year on the ABC, but that is a lot more than channel 9 and Fox pay the NRL)

I agree with your analysis of the failings in the bunker, and the ref calling 6 again with no indication of why, but not with your contention that NRL-Central wants/tries to determine the outcome of games.

Why would they ?

“Is he even a half-back, capable of guiding a team around the park, or just a very promising running five eighth?”
For a moment, I thought you were talking about Nicho Hynes !
That’s not a snide remark. It’s an observation that his primary roles before Cronulla had been at 1 and 6 Yes, he was really good at first, but teams figured him out and he still seems like he would be better at 6 than 7.
Maybe the same will apply to Mr Galvin if he signs for Dogs (or any other club) to play 7.

Cadfael. The “average” player-manager take is 6.5%, so:
– $65K on a million dollar contract.
– $85K on Dylan Brown’s $1.3M contract with the Knights.
– $98K on a $1.5M contract.
We don’t _know_ what the deal is between Galvin and Moses, but you can be sure that it won’t be less than 6.5%

Don,
“The player manager who gets $37.5K this year and $52.5K from Galvin’s 2026 deal at the Tigers is trying to change that to $150K+ – $200K at a different club. And if he gets a 10 year deal then he’s looking at $2M+ in earnings over the decade term managing Galvin”
I agree with the assessment that this is player-manager driven, but I question the figures.
Galvin is reputedly on $300K this year and $350K for 2026
$37.5K is 12.5% of $300K, and $52.5K is 15% of $350K.
The “normal” agent take – I have read – is 6.5%
Maybe you know something specific about Galvin’s contract.
Maybe your calculator is playing up.
At 6.5%, the agent would earn $65K on a million dollar contract or $85K on a Dylan Brown sized $1.3M contract

“Rugby league is … a workplace for our players. That means employment decisions are respected and that they are psychologically safe environments for all players.”

I think Clint Newton is confusing the way the world is with the way he would like it to be.

Respect has to be earned. A player telling the coach he is not good enough, and that the player will not even contemplate a contract renewal is an “employment decision”, but is it one which is worthy of respect ?

Does the act of criticising the coach and bad-mouthing the club adversely affect the “psychologically safe environment” for the other players in the squad?

If his team-mates criticise him, does that remove him from a “psychologically safe environment” or is it going to be a bucket of water over the head, which will make him realise how he needs to behave in a workplace ? If he has realised that it’s not “all about me”, then that will be a valuable life lesson which should stand him in good stead for the rest of his working life.

As for Clint Newton, I feel he’d be more at home working with the sanctimonious types usually found in Human Resources departments. They all speak the same language.

Geoff, out of interest (and because I’m too lazy to do the research) let me ask you: do you have the win percentage at home for Canberra during that period ?

More generally, the salary cap for 2025 is $11.65 million. Over seventeen clubs, that is a touch under $200 million.

Most players employ an agent.
Player agents take, on average, $6.5% of a player’s earnings.

6.5% of $200 million is close to $13 million
There is a lot of money floating around, just waiting to be extracted from not-so-financially-astute young men.