PopTart wrote:
You may be right but I don't recall it that way.
The Bosman ruling is about transfer fees.
The rule being that you can't charge a transfer fee for a player who's contract has ended.
What I'm saying is a player on a win bonus scheme would find it hard to get a mortgage. Just as someone who is self employed does. Your accountant has to make a case and it's hard if your income fluctuates. Someone salaried can just say the have a permanent job.
So the players union pushed for this change.
No one would take a contract at Wakefield based on win bonuses.
Paid a basic and then have add ons for winning I guess is like a sales commission. That might work but would cist us more.
The Bosman ruling was about player registration or player freedom!
Prior to the ruling a player’s registration in Rugby League was owned by the club in perpetuity.
It allowed clubs to hold a player forever or demand a transfer for a player, prior to the ruling there were no contracts just registrations and match terms such as winning money, losing money & an agreed value for a draw.
Many players found themselves out of favour or unhappy with the club who owned their registration but they were owned by the club and couldn’t move whether they wanted to or not. In effect, and I know of numerous cases of this, a club or coach could completely freeze a player out of the game by not playing a player but also refusing him a transfer thus meaning the player couldn’t play anywhere.
In other cases the club would ask for a transfer fee that was ridiculously high in order to stop a player from moving. You have to remember that most players of the time were signed to a club for nothing so held no value on the clubs books.
The RFL brought in a rule that meant the Club could not ask for a preventative fee by linking the value of that fee with the value of payments made or offered to the player.
e.g. you couldn’t offer a player 20% of his worth in wages but then ask for 10X his worth in transfer value.
This system prevailed even after the advent of the Contracts system and still exists today.
Agree that no player would or should take a bonus only payment system, obviously a basic salary topped up by performance related bonuses would be what I think is preferable. I’d also have a percentage of player payments set aside and only payable upon the successful completion of the contracts term. That would disincentivise players from being poached mid contract by bigger clubs. Of course if all parties agreed to a release under amicable terms then the ‘loyalty bonus’ would be paid.
