You’d think a club would be mad to let go of a player the calibre Petero Civoniceva. Well meet the Broncos who have signed Penrith’s Joel Clinton and let Petero go.
Petero is one of the best props in league and has loyally served the Broncos for 13 years. The Broncos cite the salary cap as being the reason but Gordon Tallis (via League Unlimited) argues that Petero has been hard done by. Note to Denis Fitzgerald: He’d look good in the blue and gold. Imagine Petero, Cayless and them Moimoi coming at ya…Sorry, I digress.
The salary cap is an imperfect necessity badly in need of tweaking. The NRL tends to resist changes to the salary cap basically out of a misguided notion that they must stick to their guns. Of the many tweaks that could be made to the cap, one is badly needed for long serving players.
It would break my blue and gold hear to see Hindy have to play out his career with another club. Imagine Danny Buderus having to leave the Knights because of cap constraints or Lockyer playing anywhere else but the Broncos? In an age where players change clubs mid-season, such allegiance to a club appears to be a relic of a bygone era. But there are many league fans that recall the 60s, 70 and 80s when such loyalty was common place. And players such as Hindy, Buderus, Lockyer are examples that the spirit still is alive and well. The NRL may approach the game as a business but the fans aren’t stupid. The intangibles still very much matter. The stuff that can’t be reduced to a marketing plan.
And this is where the salary cap becomes a burden on the NRL. A player who stays at a club for a decade or more should have their salary exempt from cap considerations. A player stays for that long at a club not because they are not wanted elsewhere but because they are great players. Such loyalty and service to game, their club and subsequently their fans deserves to be rewarded, not punished by the dogmatic stance of the NRL towards salary cap concessions.
