Parachute Payments? : Thu Jan 25, 2018 2:38 pm  

Just for devilment, it seems over on the 'Fax board, there's been recent consternation about the SL Chairmen organising a 'parachute payment' which ended up being paid to Leigh on relegation giving them an unfair advantage...

Apparently SL Chairmen should not be able to dictate who gets money (see where I am going?!??!).

So purely for sport...

a) Why didn't the tight 4rsed Champs directors organise one for us and
b) Why is it perfectly acceptable, and indeed proper, for SL Chairmen to withhold money from a new owner (to gain an unfair advantage) but not give it to give others an unfair advantage?

*puts on tin helmet and ruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuns*

Re: Parachute Payments? : Thu Jan 25, 2018 6:15 pm  

Scarey71 wrote:

Just for devilment, it seems over on the 'Fax board, there's been recent consternation about the SL Chairmen organising a 'parachute payment' which ended up being paid to Leigh on relegation giving them an unfair advantage...

Apparently SL Chairmen should not be able to dictate who gets money (see where I am going?!??!).

So purely for sport...

a) Why didn't the tight 4rsed Champs directors organise one for us and
b) Why is it perfectly acceptable, and indeed proper, for SL Chairmen to withhold money from a new owner (to gain an unfair advantage) but not give it to give others an unfair advantage?

*puts on tin helmet and ruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuns*

It's all come about from Hull KR going down the previous year. All the talk about contracts being cancelled and livelihoods etc so this season all SL clubs including Leigh voted to give 45k to the team that went down. Leigh didn't know at the time that they were going down.

Personally I think there should be a complete change in the system. Scrap the £1 Million game. Bottom of league gets relegated like in pretty much every other UK sport. Scrap the rule about automatic null and void contracts although add a clause in every single contract that should their team be relegated they are free to leave if they wish. A set parachute payment very much like Premier League to Champ have (obviously not the amount ) and then it gives the newly relegated team the chance to come back up with the same squad or gives them a year for people to see out their contract.

If they go a different route. Make SL a closed shop like the NRL. Only have clubs in there with potential or already big clubs like Wigan, Leeds etc. Franchise based but done properly, not like the way they did it last time. All teams must run reserves/academy. All other clubs in a revamped Championship/League 1 with promotion and relegation between the two and SL takes applications every 2-3 years. A lot of clubs will be unhappy with this, but at the end of the day there are a ton of clubs out there who are pointless in terms of SL. No offence but the likes of Hunslet, Swinton, Donny, Hemel, Coventry won't get into SL. Teams like Dewsbury, Batley, Fev and Fax aren't forced to overspend to achieve SL status and can focus on a 2-3 period of bringing youth in and developing a good fanbase in a competitive league which they all have a good chance of winning!

On another note I think it's a disgrace that SL chairmen can dictate what is going on. The RFL should be an independent governing body who controls and tells the SL chairmen what to do. Not the other way around. Needs a complete overhaul from top to bottom.

[Bulliac]

Re: Parachute Payments? : Fri Jan 26, 2018 10:14 am  

Bulls Boy 2011 wrote:

It's all come about from Hull KR going down the previous year. All the talk about contracts being cancelled and livelihoods etc so this season all SL clubs including Leigh voted to give 45k to the team that went down. Leigh didn't know at the time that they were going down.

Personally I think there should be a complete change in the system. Scrap the £1 Million game. Bottom of league gets relegated like in pretty much every other UK sport. Scrap the rule about automatic null and void contracts although add a clause in every single contract that should their team be relegated they are free to leave if they wish. A set parachute payment very much like Premier League to Champ have (obviously not the amount ) and then it gives the newly relegated team the chance to come back up with the same squad or gives them a year for people to see out their contract.

There is also the problem that a relegated club, on a much reduced income, would be unable to service the original contracts. If, as you suggest, only the players themselves were allowed to cancel contracts, then I can see lots of, basically insolvent, clubs being sued by players for money owed, which their clubs simply won't have.

The only way to avoid this is to set the parachute payment to a level which allows the relegated club to continue paying the contracts. Of course, I can only imagine the screams of anguish coming from the Shay if this were to happen!

Re: Parachute Payments? : Fri Jan 26, 2018 10:40 am  

Bulliac wrote:

There is also the problem that a relegated club, on a much reduced income, would be unable to service the original contracts. If, as you suggest, only the players themselves were allowed to cancel contracts, then I can see lots of, basically insolvent, clubs being sued by players for money owed, which their clubs simply won't have.

Yeah I do understand this. It's a tough subject to get an answer to. But it's either that or a closed shop SL with no relegation. But then there would be anguish coming from the Shay and other places!

Bulliac wrote:

The only way to avoid this is to set the parachute payment to a level which allows the relegated club to continue paying the contracts. Of course, I can only imagine the screams of anguish coming from the Shay if this were to happen!

Aye I agree, that why my next line is important to the previous statement about having a parachute payment to the relegated clubs to allow the players to see out their contract (should they choose to stay and not go) or allow the team relegated to keep the squad to try get back up. If they don't, most players would be out of contract after that first year anyway (most would be on 2 Year Deals, last season of SL and 1st season in Champ) so then it allows the club to adjust their playing staff to match their budget.

[Bulliac]

Re: Parachute Payments? : Fri Jan 26, 2018 10:56 am  

But if the club is unable to cancel contracts, then the parachute payments, would surely have to reflect the full contract values (sorry, Shaymen..), and it would have to cover whatever number of years were left on the deal, otherwise we'd have the players (with mortgages and families to support) who are unable to get equal value contracts elsewhere, trying to get blood out of a stone. It would certainly be an unholy mess and that is a fact!

Whatever mess the RFL come up with I definitely don't think the players should bear the brunt of it. It's not as though they are on Premier division soccer wages.

Re: Parachute Payments? : Fri Jan 26, 2018 11:24 am  

Bulliac wrote:

But if the club is unable to cancel contracts, then the parachute payments, would surely have to reflect the full contract values (sorry, Shaymen..), and it would have to cover whatever number of years were left on the deal, otherwise we'd have the players (with mortgages and families to support) who are unable to get equal value contracts elsewhere, trying to get blood out of a stone. It would certainly be an unholy mess and that is a fact!

Whatever mess the RFL come up with I definitely don't think the players should bear the brunt of it. It's not as though they are on Premier division soccer wages.

It should just cover the first season in the Championship. It gives the club enough time then to organise and sort themselves for the second season. Look it's a tough one to solve it really is. I am a fan of promotion and relegation and yet I am also a fan of a franchise system done right. The way we do relegation is so wrong. It should be whoever finishes bottom. Not a fan of a league where 9th place can be relegated. That way everyone knows at the start of the season that there is a possibility to being relegated.

But the thing is, every British sport has relegation if there are enough teams for two or more leagues. Some of the lower league footballers who are on roughly the same as SL players get relegated and are released too. That's life unfortunately. In an ideal world we'd have one league of 16 like the NRL with no promotion or relegation and with the other clubs in a revamped Championship. Yes it would stop some teams in the short term from having access to the top flight but it gives them a chance to build and apply in future years. If we then managed to get another 4 worthy teams over time. Two leagues of 10, fully professional with the re-introduction of promotion and relegation between the two. But that's all just imagination talking.

Or another solution is to get the players to sign two contracts. One which is an active SL contract and one which is a Championship contract. If the club is relegated then the player knows that their contract will automatically switch to the Championship one. At least the players know a year in advance that (should they be relegated) they know exactly what they will be on.

[Bulliac]

Re: Parachute Payments? : Fri Jan 26, 2018 3:18 pm  

I've never really been a fan of promotion and relegation, and despite, as you say, P&R being a staple of British sport in general (well, soccer anyway), it has no great history in rugby, either league or union. As you rightly point out, they don't use it in Australia and that is the type of league I'd aim for personally, given the choice.

We don't have enough full-time teams to create two pro leagues anyway and asking teams to do what Leigh did last year is simply asking for the same result to be repeated. The yo-yoing between clubs is both pointless and damaging and, imo, this is what we'll get unless we give promoted clubs the chance to 'acclimatise' , as we did under licensing, with Widnes for example.

Also, far too many of our clubs are little more than village teams anyway and will never attract the kind of support needed to sustain a pro side without a large input of cash from outside. Whatever you do, don't copy any of this onto the Fax machine... or I might not live beyond the night. Lol.

Re: Parachute Payments? : Fri Jan 26, 2018 3:32 pm  

Bulliac wrote:

I've never really been a fan of promotion and relegation, and despite, as you say, P&R being a staple of British sport in general (well, soccer anyway), it has no great history in rugby, either league or union. As you rightly point out, they don't use it in Australia and that is the type of league I'd aim for personally, given the choice.

Exactly. Same here too. Once that league is up and running with 14/16 teams then it pretty much runs itself, as there is no fear of dropping down. That way the governing body can do their best to create a league under in with a view to building more franchises if those clubs have the ambition to.

Bulliac wrote:

We don't have enough full-time teams to create two pro leagues anyway and asking teams to do what Leigh did last year is simply asking for the same result to be repeated. The yo-yoing between clubs is both pointless and damaging and, imo, this is what we'll get unless we give promoted clubs the chance to 'acclimatise' , as we did under licensing, with Widnes for example.

Agreed. The yo-yoing is not good for the clubs. And that's what I liked about Catalan and Widnes. No fear of relegation and it allowed them to build a little. Imagine an NRL like SL where every club could do this.

Bulliac wrote:

Also, far too many of our clubs are little more than village teams anyway and will never attract the kind of support needed to sustain a pro side without a large input of cash from outside. Whatever you do, don't copy any of this onto the Fax machine... or I might not live beyond the night. Lol.

Again agreed. I tried to get this point across in a more diplomatic way but it's right. Those are the types of clubs that would not make it into the SL under the NRL type system.

Re: Parachute Payments? : Fri Jan 26, 2018 5:15 pm  

Bulls Boy 2011 wrote:

If they go a different route. Make SL a closed shop like the NRL. Only have clubs in there with potential or already big clubs like Wigan, Leeds etc. Franchise based but done properly, not like the way they did it last time. All teams must run reserves/academy.

Or instead of having them run reserves etc they could make them have a feeder club e.g They could have Toronto in SL and say Bradford Bulls as their feeder club. Oh wait a minute......

Re: Parachute Payments? : Sat Jan 27, 2018 12:52 pm  

Phil Caplan stated on RL on Radio Yorkshire show (very entertaining programme on a Monday night a month ago that the parachute payment Leigh received was near to £500k which is a very unfair advantage to them.