West Reserves 0.1??

[Sojourner]

I remember one Saturday afternoon walking out to the middle of Elizabeth Oval at 1/4 time, the Panthers had scored bugger all, Centrals 8 goals. John Reid had plenty to say at the time! One of the things that he did chastise the players for was for not running enough with the ball and kicking too early. Central have a major home ground advantage at Elizabeth because they play the ground perfectly. Various reserves sides may well only get one crack at it per year, whatever your best game was you have to go one better to win at Elizabeth.

When an SANFL side is really struggling one problem can be retaining your players for the full year rather than having them be picked off by various amatuer clubs. The match payment for the reserves is something along the lines of $50, amatuer clubs although called amatuer do pay their best players and often significantly so. I feel that one of they key things the SANFL needs to do to raise the standard of the SANFL reserves is to increase the minimum match payment fee to help clubs retain and encourage players to play SANFL reserves.

[Grahaml]

My plan is this. When all 9 clubs are independantly secure financially we increase the salary cap. By increase I mean at least double it. All 9 clubs should be able to shortly be able to afford much more than 500k in player payments a season. We have a lot of money coming into the SANFL through the AFL's activities in the state now and any club that needs a hand should be able to get it if for some reason they desperately need it. I think this will result in the standard of the SANFL increasing significantly with basically all the best recruits coming here. We would be able to retain players better and I think with this improved standard will come more interest from the average punter and the corporate dollar will follow the crowds. If we take advantage of the position we are compared to the other leagues in the country we can get a jump ahead of them permanently like the VFL did when they had an advantage over the rest of us. We'll never be the number 1 league, but we can be a clear number 2.

[Hondo]

Good post Sojourner .... do reserves player payments count towards the salary cap?

The SANFL might look at raising the salary cap or somehow increasing the capacity of league clubs to maintain a decent reserves list through decent match-payments

Apart from greater $, there's also the issue of some fringe players choosing to star in a lower league rather than play reserves, play with their mates and/or get away with less training commitments. So it's not all about the $ for them.

[Sojourner]

I think that a reserves players salary should be included in the cap, however I dont think that the reserves match payment should be included in the cap. Clearly when a player makes the jump to the league side the payment then is counted.

In the 1980's we had the SANFL player retention scheme, I think that the minimum payment in the reserves could be run in a similar type of scheme.

As for the base minimum payment, $250 - $300 sounds fair enough.

[Grahaml]

We're never going to stop the guys who are happy with $100 if he can star in an Amateur team with his mates. But we can slow down the loss a bit and try to make the reserves comp better than A1 amateur like it should be.

[smac]

$300 per game, 21 players is $6,300 per game.

Over a season, that's in excess of $120,000 on reserves football.

Every GM in the SANFL just spat their morning coffee across the room.

I reckon the player retention idea has merit, that way players can be rewarded for loyalty to their club and help sustain depth without the impact of increasing the minimum payment for every player.

I agree with the tone of the thread, there has to be a greater reward to keep coming back and working as hard as a league player and being not quite good enough if we want a strong reserves comp.

[Sojourner]

Admittingly it is a lot of money and clearly the final figure needs to be crunched out by the players themselves who are in a good position to know what is fair.

Yet if we are genuinley serious that we want the SANFL to hold the mantle as the second best competition in Oz, then this is an area that we have to lift our game on. $50 has been the payment for a long time and is not CPI indexed, $250 - $300 is probably not unrealistic, I am sure that the final $120 000 would be taken in many SANFL pokies rooms over a weekend!

[silent hour]

be interesting to know how many in Westies reserve team last friday were on base payment?

[oldfella]

I would think most are on base payments.

Just of interest - most numbers I hear for reserves players into various other country clubs etc is $600 to $900 a game -- hard to compete with thAT + MINIMAL HOURS OF TRAINING COMPARED TO A sanfl CLUB

[Grahaml]

I don't think reserves can ever be paid enough to match some of the big money they could get, but the money to play league should be unsurpassed I would have thought if the clubs can afford it, which I think they're close to being able to. Players in the reserves could do with a bit more, but most importantly the prospect of playing league should be a huge incentive.