Another wooden spoon for the NRLW. Should they just hand the licence back? The club aren’t taking it seriously and can’t imagine it’s bringing in revenue.
Not necessarily and not that easy, the NRLW has a very low salary cap, for 2026 the cap is just $1.386m ($1.284m in 2025) spread over a 24 player squad with a minimum $46,200 salary, that equates to $1.1088m used before you even pay any of the girls over the minimum, leaving just $277,200 to spread amongst your top tier players or just over $10,000 additional per squad member.
It means most have to play for less than the average wage which in turn means many require an outside job to supplement their income and support themselves, those with partners are in a better position as their partner can help with financial support but if they have a family it also becomes more difficult to relocate distances due to kids and school, partner and employment etc.
Most clubs can have the luxury of 3 or maybe 4 top tier players and then relying on your own junior system to produce talent or looking at other clubs to recruit, and thus as the minimum wage is low it would be harder to entice young talent to move regions and away from family and employment.
It's no coincidence that the 2 teams that have dominated this year are Rorters and Brisbane, two original clubs that had the luxury of getting early talent without a lot of competition, and with a low cap the security would way heavily as most clubs can't offer significantly more than they are probably already receiving to switch clubs.
The Dragons had that opportunity too but seemed to have wasted it, the Steelers are strong in their lower grades, however the St George lower grades have been very weak for years and as many Steelers players end up at the Sharks as the Dragons.
The Bulldogs looked like they bought up big for their debut season but after starting well with 2 wins to start they struggled with only 1 win and a draw from their remaining 9 games including some heavy defeats (conceding 170pts in their final 4 games).
Until the cap is more reasonable that a better portion of your squad can earn a reasonable living wage which would make it more attractive to switch clubs some clubs will continue to struggle unless they can produce their own talent.
