Look Good In Leather wrote:The whole concept is designed to save the AFL Reserves competition, although I note strong support from the Channel 9 league.
One area it does not address is players being employed through the club, ie being granted job opportunities due to playing at a particular club. I know of a number of players who have turned down good money in the country or at district clubs because they have been offered a role at a law firm, physiotherapy chain, etc if they play football at their old scholars club.
Surely for fairness the equivalent of a recruitment agency fee should be counted towards the cap for these circumstances.
Clearly the rules have been designed primarily, to try and save players leaving the SANFL reserves and the top divisions of the SAAFL. Perhaps the SANFL and SAAFL clubs should up their player payments, rather than trying to penalise the 20+ country leagues around the state. It just won't happen anyway, so no need to get too worried. As I said in a previous post, one league west of Adelaide has already said that they will walk away from the Fantasy Football League, if the draft plans of only spending $3,000 a game are implemented. It only sounds like it will take one league to pull the pin on the Fantasy FL and others will also walk away. The other country leagues won't allow one league to have all 0 points players coming into their league, with them missing out. Sure the country leagues who pull the pin will also have players worth 0 points going out, but that isn't an issue, as they hold the balance of power with recruiting and $$$.
A perfect solution would be to scrap the SANFL reserves and let the SAAFL clubs be feeder clubs to the SANFL league sides. That would be the best solution. Anyway, it just won't happen and the people who made the decision and draft paper on this topic, no longer hold the power or are relevant to what country leagues will do.