Quote ="Red John"Indeed. Salford would have to offer substantially more money to [iany[/i player to get them to accept a flaky contract that could see them binned after one season over a guaranteed two or three year deal at another club. Can the club afford this? Even if we could, your idea causes problems. Let's imagine Salford are taken over by Sheik Yarbouti, and he pumps billions of pounds into the club. The salary cap means we can only spend a certain amount. Because of your 'potentially binned after one season' idea, the club has to offer players more money. So the number of players they can afford drops, the squad gets thinner, the chances of finishing outside the top 8 increases, so the chances of a player getting, effectively, sacked increases. It would take a special player (one who couldn't get a place anywhere else) to accept those terms.
Agreed, but I don't think putting a termination clause in the contract is a viable solution. Let's look at another example. Suppose, by some miracle, we have a squad of superstars under your play well or get sacked regime, but get a run of serious injuries and end up with a massively depleted team for most of the season. We finish outside the top 8. So we then release all our best players because there's a clause in their contract that terminates the contract if they finish lower than 8th. Is this a good idea?
Other clubs get by with guaranteed deals. The solution lies elsewhere. Not sure where, but elsewhere.'"
What we need to deal with is the here and now not some fantasy island suggestion that a rich individual takes over who will pump billions in. In your unrealistice scenario, we would presumably be competing on a level footing with all other clubs paying the full cap and consequently able to go after well motivated players at the top end of the market as opposed to what we are left with now. In such a case a modified approach could be adopted to performance management but that is not where we are.
Your second scenario flies off at an even wilder tangent. If you have a clause that allows you the
[size=150OPTION[/size to terminate a contract why would you use it terminate the contracts of the best players? Surely you would release the worst players! Even then in the circumstances you outline, you may not wish to release any because you have clearly articulated the mitigation for the poor performance i.e the run of serious injuries and hence the massively depleted squad.
Perhaps we could ask the Newcastle Knights how they offload players who still a year to go on their contract.
