Trade talk - from October 2025 (Part 10)

[noobermensch]

@Strewth

Just had a quick look at what a breach of the cap floor would cost and it’s interesting to note that according to Wikipedia no club has ever been penalised for breaching the floor. From Wikipedia “As of 2025, no club has been penalised for breaches of the salary floor regulations, and no punishment has included the deduction of premiership points”.

As I understand it, its impossible to breach the salary cap floor. If your total player payments are lower than the cap floor each player on the roster automatically gets a % bonus increase to lift you up.

[All-Star_Bomber_18]

@Strewth

Just had a quick look at what a breach of the cap floor would cost and it’s interesting to note that according to Wikipedia no club has ever been penalised for breaching the floor. From Wikipedia “As of 2025, no club has been penalised for breaches of the salary floor regulations, and no punishment has included the deduction of premiership points”.

Club will have to submit the player payments are the start of the year, the league would see that the club is under the threshold and be told to increase to the required amount

[Aceman]

Correct

[Go_Team_2.0]

You know what will make us a destination club again - intentionally underpaying our players!

[Strewth]

Right. Thanks for that.

[Go_Team_2.0]

What if we get them to return parts of their salary in brown paper bags? Or perhaps Pando can become a sponsor of the club and illegally take back some of McGrath’s wage? Let’s get creative.

[Dunnybrush]

@millagurnzie1

I really think he is played out of position. He’s looked confused down back his entire career. Get him midfield or forward.

He looked pretty bloody good down back in his first year when he won the Rising Star.

[bomberbojangles]

Im not too sure about Matt Flynn but that is more to my own poor knowledge of his form and West Coast’s list.

Skinny Sean is contracted until 2030, so a trade would have to be done there and Witts would be a cheaper option. I think O’Brien is contracted until 2028 as well.

[millagurnzie1]

Has he progressed much since that rising star year though? I’d argue that he marginally has. It’s not a good bar to be measuring against.

[Dunnybrush]

Agreed, after his very promising start you’d have hoped that he’d have developed into a better player. The point I was making though is that he did look good in the backline the first few years, rather than confused.

[Kingston_Town]

Fair call.

Thanks mate

[Ants]

@Strewth

@Ants

I mean that we’ve front loaded the contracts so that the remaining contracts are (say) $400k p.a. I’m also assuming we’re currently running below the 95% threshold for the cap and have “banked” two years of 5%. So, if in 2027 we went to 110% that would be at least $2.7m. At $500k p.a. left on the front-loaded contracts, we could offload 5-6 years of “additional” contract years beyond 2027 next year. Which would let us to say several or all of Parish, McKay, Langford.

Is there not a fine involved for being below the 95% figure for more than two years? And this is part of the logic for front loading the contracts?

I guess what I’m getting at is, what happens if we didn’t give these players long, front loaded contracts and instead just paid them closer to what they’re worth (accepting that they may have left) over a shorter term, even if that meant not hitting the minimum spend on the cap and therefore being fined?

You’re not fined. You’re forced to pay the difference to 95% spread across all the players. So, you still pay the money, but you’ve gained no strategic advantage.

The problem if we do it your way is if they don’t lose form/get injured, they ask for much bigger contracts and we’d be paying more to them now.

[jamesm]

we have a couple of really good ones as well

[SplitRound]

Sorry, what does next year’s cap have to do with it? I thought we were talking about paying them out this year? If you’re talking about doing it next year, then yes there’s much more time and room for manoeuvre.

[Clone_Hirdy]

@Go_Team_2.0

You know what will make us a destination club again - intentionally underpaying our players!

I don’t see how that would make us a destination club!

[Ants]

@SplitRound

Sorry, what does next year’s cap have to do with it? I thought we were talking about paying them out this year? If you’re talking about doing it next year, then yes there’s much more time and room for manoeuvre.

Well, I was saying this year if we’d planned for it. So, whenever you make the decision, it would be in the next season, before you move money forward and triggering the use of the “stored” cap space.

See bolded bit below in the original post. It definitely needs some planning, you can’t just do it on a whim. We’ve probably “overpaid” Durham this year to extend and use up cap space, and maybe brought other salary forward, so this year’s cap below 95% is probably gone.

@Ants

@Strewth

Or you can just not put forward indefensibly long contracts to players. Which is in itself a byproduct of overrating the list and its prospects, which is the result of the wrong people in key positions, which is the result of an ineffective administration.

I think this is rubbish. From the sounds of it if we’d wanted to and arranged this years cap right we could pay out 3-4 of the long term contracts. We mostly did them for salary cap reasons.

[Houli_Dooli]

@Dunnybrush

He looked pretty bloody good down back in his first year when he won the Rising Star.

We were a experienced side in 2017.
And he was surrounded by decent defenders

2017 defence

b: McGrath Hurley Baguley
hb: Goddard Hooker Kelly
int: McKenna

when Hooker switched forward - Hartley / Ambrose to defence

Most of these guys were trained under Bomber/Hird

[Ants]

Always thought losing Ambrose really hurt our list position. We’d got him cheap, he was looking really strong as a KPD and a lock for our best 22. Virtually never played again after the 20 games in 2019 due to injuries. He’s still only 34 right now. He and Walla (33 right now).

[SplitRound]

Oh, right. Fair enough. If you’re planning on payouts of that magnitude a full season ahead, you’d probably also be very loudly and publicly shouting “free to a good home” the same off season you started planning.

[bomberbojangles]

Collingwood has a one-year offer for Jeremey Howe to stay