Second-tier salary cap woes prevent..AXE..

[happy_tiger]

Look we aren't the only side that has had injury concerns this season

Look at the Warriors , Manly ,Raiders etc

They still manage to put on a side that looks on paper to be NRL standard and fires up most weeks

And to think yet again according to Pascoe 2017 is looking ugly , sorry I don't want to hear about our issues

I want to now what the solutions are and when will they finally get here (if they ever get here )

warriors fire up most weeks? theyve conceded more points than us and just got beaten 42-0

The point is that we act like we are the only club who has injuries The Warriors are missing Sheck ,Mannering ,Lolohea and here we are moaning and whinging

Sick of the garbage excuses , just man up like every other club does and just work harder and aim up on the park

No , but we are the WT's just take the easy way out , roll over like a dog and take the butt kicking like a whimpering school girl , woe is me :bawling :bawling :bawling :bawling :bawling

How about do a Manly , take a siege mentality , us against the world attitude and just play like our lives depend on it ?? :angry:

If they can live so successfully off it , why can't we ??

We are half Fibro /half Tiger and with our past we know all about getting down and dirty and bringing a game down to our level :smiling_imp:

 

[ricksen]

I dont know if you all want to wrap your head around the salary cap and how it works, but I can give it a go to explain a pretty basic version, and how it relates to the squad as pre TT's easter update, and why it is so alarming that our top 25 looks the way it does.

Everyone understands that the top 25 players are to be paid from a $6.1M salary cap, easy enough to understand, but how that Top 25 is determined is not so easy to explain.

I dont know how to say this any clearer, but the top 25 list you will see given throughout this season is actually calculated from last seasons player earnings, also taking into account newer signings base contracts before incentives. Our real top 25 wont be sorted until the last game is played. Its not as though the club nominates its top 25 pre-season, it is actually a fluid and changing group of 25 players. Clear as mud!

Now for a team like ours, who doesnt look to be finishing any better than last year, thus similar incentives triggered it gives us a fair look at who is signed to what base salaries as we should be barely cracking incentive clauses….

Drinkwater, Hunt and Littlejohn wouldnt have triggered many high paying incentives if any last yr, though from the list we are working from are on higher base salaries than Milone, JAC and JJ felise, players which are actually useful to our top squad.

I suppose its best here to use this info to evaluate our top squad once we have one last basic piece of info pertaining to second tier cap. Once a player plays 4 first grade games he is considered a FG player, which in turn triggers a $9k ish retirement contribution, and earns them a minimum wage FG salary (can be made up a few ways, either they have a low base but high incentives which pushes them above the minimum by acruing many games and wins ( can possibly bump well above minimum wage), or a low base and not enough incentives which earns the minimum wage the second he runs out on the pitch the 4th time).

Now onto why our 25 looks so scary. In another thread I mentioned that there is 9 hookers and halves in that squad, to which someone mentioned that Taylor signed a few of them, but if you were to take a good objective look at the TT's 25, and if all were healthy picked a game day 17...have a good look at what is left, we are skinny to cover injuries all over the park, why? Because JLJ, Drinkwater and Hunt arent actually intended to be on our FG books. They only made the list because of their Salary, which goes all the way back to the start of this post, the 25 is fluid.... but raises another question, why...

We all know why, over-paying. To play nice with figures, lets pretend Farah, Woods, Teddy, Moses, Brooks and Lawrence are all on $500k (it should even out on the low side) thats $3m, half of our cap in one foul swoop. that leaves less than $160k per player for the other 19... sounds easy, until you count in Sironen, Nofa and Simona, who would between them eat twice their share you would think another cool million. We are a conservative 2/3 of the cap down, 16 players to pay out of $2.1M, $131k each... The minimum salary is $83K, we dont have much room to move at this point.

Its late.... will get to second tier tomorrow some time

Good stuff, as I said elsewhere - dogs breakfast.
A couple of points to follow on from that:

1) It winds me up no end that the club is still reticent to make the hard decisions to fix the problems, and then cries poor to the fan base when the problems affect the on field product. Get rid of the bad contracts, scorch the earth and start again, otherwise we're just kicking the can down the line, which is exactly for what they've criticised the previous regime.
There are several members of the top 25 that were re-signed for 2016, so not helping there either. I'm led to believe that we even had to up our bid for Lovett due to outside interest.

2) There are still top 25 options that haven't been used, so the excuse in the smh article doesn't wash - especially if we pulled Milone from outside the top 25.

3) We really need to get our TPA situation sorted, as we'll never be properly competitive unless we can legitimately attract decent free agents. Looking at the estimates in the above post, and compare that to the top rosters and make some estimates there. One of these things is not like the other.

 

[Gary_Bakerloo]

Haha…WT have Salary cap pressures(again)...yet the "star" clubs like Roosters (who has also been hit hard with injuries)...magically avoid this issue.....hmmmm

….they haven't avoided the issue. They are running last and their coach blames referees and the bunker.

 

[Cosimo_Zaretti]

Haha…WT have Salary cap pressures(again)...yet the "star" clubs like Roosters (who has also been hit hard with injuries)...magically avoid this issue.....hmmmm

….they haven't avoided the issue. They are running last and their coach blames referees and the bunker.

Not to mention running Aiden Guerra at 5/8\. That was a Sheenius selection with salary cap issues written all over it.

 

[diedpretty]

I think something that people need to understand is clubs quite regularly have salary cap breaches (whether it be from your Top 25 or your 2nd tier cap ) but their are fines involved

I would say on average 4-6 clubs have breaches every season , we have been done a fair bit , but the fines are rather minor (maybe 10 k )

You might remember how the WT's were looking at a major fine (around 168 k) with the Robbie Farah issue with his Junior club etc a few seasons ago

Which again brings up the whole "rich get richer , poor don't get the picture " scenario

Clubs like Parra who Leagues clubs are quite financial purposely blow the cap in minor ways and just pay the fines

I'm not even sure how the NRL works out the clubs fines if they breach , maybe B&W can explain that to us

Minor breaches are usually $ for $…

Major breaches or intentional RORTING can be anything ...loss of points stripped of premierships playing for no points .On top of fines.ie see Melbourne Storm Canterbury Bulldogs **and soon to be Parramatta Eels...**they have already been fined $500K...

As you pointed out Parra don't care about fines - we keep hearing they will lose points - it aint happened yet and I fear it wont happen at all.

 

[balmain boy]

Look its nothing but a fluff article full of crap.

We may well have second tier cap issues later in the season, but not yet. It's just not possible. How many players outside our top 25 have we actually used so far? A few maybe. We have 25 players to work with before our 2nd tier cap gets affected. Ballin is a scratch for now, and Woodsy and Edwards have been out injured too. But there's still 22-23 players there in the nrl squad who could get a run. It's just plain wrong to say JT can't change the team.

Maybe Milone was in the 25 and that's why he was preferred over others from NSW Cup.

The article even said that releasing players from our nsw cup team was having a negative impact on the cap?? Granting a release to a player because they ask to leave means we're not paying them a cent more, freeing up cash to spend on other players.

Sometimes for lazy journos 1+1 = 987235404.45

 

[Cosimo_Zaretti]

As you pointed out Parra don't care about fines - we keep hearing they will lose points - it aint happened yet and I fear it wont happen at all.

It's worth noting that Parra are the only Sydney based team that's been consistently good this year, and they're obviously cheating to do it.

 

[happy_tiger]

I think something that people need to understand is clubs quite regularly have salary cap breaches (whether it be from your Top 25 or your 2nd tier cap ) but their are fines involved

I would say on average 4-6 clubs have breaches every season , we have been done a fair bit , but the fines are rather minor (maybe 10 k )

You might remember how the WT's were looking at a major fine (around 168 k) with the Robbie Farah issue with his Junior club etc a few seasons ago

Which again brings up the whole "rich get richer , poor don't get the picture " scenario

Clubs like Parra who Leagues clubs are quite financial purposely blow the cap in minor ways and just pay the fines

I'm not even sure how the NRL works out the clubs fines if they breach , maybe B&W can explain that to us

Minor breaches are usually $ for $…

Major breaches or intentional RORTING can be anything ...loss of points stripped of premierships playing for no points .On top of fines.ie see Melbourne Storm Canterbury Bulldogs and soon to be Parramatta Eels...they have already been fined $500K...

Problem with the Eels investigation is they already know what questions are coming , like with the local council thing , no players were signed but the fact that they were breaching the TPA's with the added involvement should make them guilty whether or not players did or didn't sign

 

[NT_Tiger]

…I'm not even sure how the NRL works out the clubs fines if they breach , maybe B&W can explain that to us

Minor breaches are usually $ for $….... Parramatta Eels...they have already been fined $500K...

So unless I completely misunderstand; the Eels are effectively using the NRL fines policy to raise their cap by at least $500.000, and that's if they get caught.

Forget hiring forwards or centres, we should be hiring accountants and lawyers.

 

[Newtown]

I think something that people need to understand is clubs quite regularly have salary cap breaches (whether it be from your Top 25 or your 2nd tier cap ) but their are fines involved

I would say on average 4-6 clubs have breaches every season , we have been done a fair bit , but the fines are rather minor (maybe 10 k )

You might remember how the WT's were looking at a major fine (around 168 k) with the Robbie Farah issue with his Junior club etc a few seasons ago

Which again brings up the whole "rich get richer , poor don't get the picture " scenario

Clubs like Parra who Leagues clubs are quite financial purposely blow the cap in minor ways and just pay the fines

I'm not even sure how the NRL works out the clubs fines if they breach , maybe B&W can explain that to us

Minor breaches are usually $ for $…

Major breaches or intentional RORTING can be anything ...loss of points stripped of premierships playing for no points .On top of fines.ie see Melbourne Storm Canterbury Bulldogs and soon to be Parramatta Eels...they have already been fined $500K...

A $500K fine for clubs like Parramatta is chicken feed for these clubs when you consider the external financial pool they have access to in order to prop up the players' take home pay without utilsing the club's CAP money. The only thing which really hurts these clubs is heavy deductions of competition points.

The sad part for Wests Tigers is that they don't have the sponsors to provide anywhere near the external financial pool needed to compete with these clubs. Unless something is done very soon to change that situation the fans can only sadly look to an imminent demise of the club in the near future. Newtown deja vu.

 

[Love_the_WestsTigers]

Oh my, the news just gets worse doesnt it.

Been hearing of a "clean Up" from Sheens Era
Im over this garbage, signing players for more than they are worth and for most part doing long contracts.

Just do a Massive Clean up !!!

 

[happy_tiger]

Thanks for that "Black 'n White" - it clears up some of my problems. Basically how it roughly all works.

Should clear up a fair bit for some others shooting their mouth off - without having understood how the cap works.

That is alright though - just blame good ol' JT - it is his fault, there is no trans gender toilet at Leichhardt as well.lol

The transgender toilet is Hobbo's fault , like Ken he just has a plastic mound :laughing:

 

[jirskyr]

I like how people read there are some second-tier or top-tier cap issues and say "Impossible! How can this be possible? This point in the season, these estimated wages, these players I have named."

Truth of it is pretty much nobody except a handful of Tigers staff know the actual salary situation, and everything else is pure speculation.

If reporters are saying Tigers have issues with 2nd-tier cap, someone from the club must have told them, even if no direct quotes. So it's either true, or it's an excuse for constantly selecting the same players.

So you either keep going mad about repeated selections, regardless of the excuses, or you cop that repeated selections are sometimes forced upon us. Either / or, take your pick.

 

[ricksen]

If reporters are saying Tigers have issues with 2nd-tier cap, someone from the club must have told them, even if no direct quotes. So it's either true, or it's an excuse for constantly selecting the same players.

I tend to agree with this. We've used Adrian Proszenko as a conduit for stories in the past, so makes sense that they'd use him again now. The club has obviously been copping lots of flak re: the lack of changes, so I don't think it's a coincidence that this story appears this week in particular.

That said, nothing is being 'forced' on us - everything is of our own doing.
e.g. Milone - why on earth is he on a top 25 salary? If he's come from outside the top 25, why is he being picked ahead of others?
Why are we paying out Parahi months after signing him?

I appreciate that there are several terrible contracts that pre-date this management, but we are seemingly still mismanaging the cap at an almighty rate.

 

[Black_n_White]

exactly Jirskyr…. man that was hard to type correctly, fix your name, lol

When you look at TT's 25, the Hunt, Drinkwater and JLJ throws a few curve balls at the possibilities seeing as we start guessing without all the information. For example, are they just on high NSW cup salaries, and a few not on the list actually signed up to minimum NRL wage, yet not making the list. That alone hurts our second tier because if thats the case for JLJ he played a game of FG, his wage is then moved to the Second tier cap from where it was in say NSW cup, yet he is possibly on a larger salary than the minimum FG salary and thus ate up a chunk of 2nd tier cap for a single game.

 

[balmain boy]

If reporters are saying Tigers have issues with 2nd-tier cap, someone from the club must have told them, even if no direct quotes. So it's either true, or it's an excuse for constantly selecting the same players.

I tend to agree with this. We've used Adrian Proszenko as a conduit for stories in the past, so makes sense that they'd use him again now. The club has obviously been copping lots of flak re: the lack of changes, so I don't think it's a coincidence that this story appears this week in particular.

I'd tend to absolutely disagree with this. The amount of utter crap written by the vast majority of all sports journalists means you have to take almost everything they write with a grain of salt. Any article void of quotes is likely no more reliable than anything the Lurker spews out.

ie, sports journo: "surely after that performance the Tigers must have needed a few changes, they didn't make any changes, therefore i can deduce the reason they didn't is because they can't due to second tier salary cap. I'll write an article about that…. Those Tigers fans will give me enough click-throughs to pay my kids uni tuition!!"

The claims the players we released further choked up our cap only enhanced the likelihood of this all being crap. You don't grant players who explicitly ask for a release to seek employment elsewhere a pay out. They want to leave, they want to be employed by someone else, you don't turn around and say "you may want to leave but we'll only release you if you let us keep paying you for the next 4 months!" Releasing those players would only have helped, not hindered our cap situation, and even then probably not by much...

 

[goldcoast_tiger]

Are we still praising JT for his great work with his staff' on the injury front ?
Or , as we now are finding out that we were just lucky for a few rounds, are we no further ahead in that area than we have been in the past.
At least it's provided some more excuses for JT to use to the media.
Nothing really changes in this club.

 

[ricksen]

If reporters are saying Tigers have issues with 2nd-tier cap, someone from the club must have told them, even if no direct quotes. So it's either true, or it's an excuse for constantly selecting the same players.

I tend to agree with this. We've used Adrian Proszenko as a conduit for stories in the past, so makes sense that they'd use him again now. The club has obviously been copping lots of flak re: the lack of changes, so I don't think it's a coincidence that this story appears this week in particular.

I'd tend to absolutely disagree with this. The amount of utter crap written by the vast majority of all sports journalists means you have to take almost everything they write with a grain of salt. Any article void of quotes is likely no more reliable than anything the Lurker spews out.

ie, sports journo: "surely after that performance the Tigers must have needed a few changes, they didn't make any changes, therefore i can deduce the reason they didn't is because they can't due to second tier salary cap. I'll write an article about that…. Those Tigers fans will give me enough click-throughs to pay my kids uni tuition!!"

The claims the players we released further choked up our cap only enhanced the likelihood of this all being crap. You don't grant players who explicitly ask for a release to seek employment elsewhere a pay out. They want to leave, they want to be employed by someone else, you don't turn around and say "you may want to leave but we'll only release you if you let us keep paying you for the next 4 months!" Releasing those players would only have helped, not hindered our cap situation, and even then probably not by much...

Fair point re: journos, but they're not all muckrakers, and they are definitely used by clubs/agents to get a story across for whatever reason. Think back to last year when WT went on the PR offensive re: the salary cap situation, it was through Proszenko at the SMH and Brent Read at the Australian. Proszenko also was the first to reveal the Broses option from memory.
It's too much of a coincidence that one of the club's 'trusted' journos releases a story like this in the middle of a crisis IMO.

re: the payouts, I'd have agreed, but then again we apparently paid out Gareth Ellis despite him wanting to break contract, Parramatta were still paying Jarryd Hayne last season and so on. It doesn't make sense, but it wouldn't surprise me.