Why the cheque book should not rule

By Graham Cooke

At risk of turning this blog into a sports column, I am again entering the debate over the Melbourne Storm rugby league saga, this time to reject the assertion, made in a British-based magazine dabbling in Australian Affairs, that the salary cap is a hindrance to the development of the sport and should be scrapped.

The view of the magazine is that the cap is anti-free market, anti-competitive and unfair to players whose careers are necessarily short. "No other industry operates according to a bizarre set of rules that punishes the successful in such a manner," it states.

To compare the National Rugby League with industries outside sport is equally bizarre. Rugby League exists on competition. If there were no competition there would be no sport and no source of income for the players, coaches, officials etc.

The public, apart from those who are shareholders, does not care whether PricewaterhouseCoopers is doing better than Minter Ellison, or if Woolworths is more successful than Coles. If a company finds its performance is declining, it reforms or goes out of business. There is no wooden spoon and a chance to do better next season.

The business of all rugby league clubs and indeed all sports teams is to do better than the other fellows and win a championship, but if those results and wins become too predictable the sport itself suffers. There are already signs that the early success of the English Premier Football League, which does not have a salary cap, is beginning to stall as fans tire of repetitive outcomes.

It's worth remembering that in the days when the English Football League ran the show, a significant proportion of the revenue generated by the top clubs was filtered down to those in the lower divisions. The elite thought they should keep all the money and with the connivance of the Football Association, resigned from the EFL and formed the Premier League.

Just a handful clubs have won the title in the 20 years since. Pick the winner in 2010-11? Any one from Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea? Got it.

Meanwhile dozens of smaller clubs have struggled to survive, going in and out of administration. Once quite successful teams like Luton Town and Oxford United have disappeared into non-league football.

The salary cap operates as a brake on the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. It's not the only possibility - a draft system where the bottom club in the just-completed season gets first pick on the new crop of young players coming into the game works well in other codes.

The aim, as it must always be, is to keep the competition reasonably even, ensuring that qualities other than fat cheque books are the criteria for success. A free-for-all, while it may have some initial attractions, would ultimately be to the detriment of the sport.