Weekly Times | SOME clubs in the AFL Central Victoria region will be saving $60,000-$70,000 when the statewide salary cap comes into effect in 2017.
That’s the estimate from region general manager Paul Hamilton, who is on the working party developing the statewide points system and salary cap to curb player payments.
Leagues may know by the end of the week what AFL Victoria’s final player points policy — which AFL Victoria last week announced would be effective statewide next year — will look like.
The final points system policy, part of the Club Sustainability Program, was sent to all the members of the working party this week and, assuming it gets the all-clear, it will be released to leagues.
Most regions are yet to confirm the points their clubs will work under next season, but some will be uniform across the entire league and others will be at a sliding scale.
The second element of the program designed to combat rising player payments, the statewide salary cap, will continue to be developed before it is expected to come into effect in most leagues in 2017. More regions are also looking at adopting some sort of a “soft cap” next year to prepare leagues for the impending salary cap introduction.
Hamilton said some clubs in his region — which covers the Bendigo, Loddon Valley, Heathcote District and North Central leagues — would be cutting between $20,000-$30,000 next year under its soft cap and about $60,000-$70,000 on their current spending by the time the cap came into full effect in 2017.
“All we’re doing is saying if there is any club in our region that clearly goes out and spends big, well, we’ll monitor you and we’ll investigate you and all that,” Hamilton said.
“All we want to see is a couple of the top clubs are on their way down, they’re moving towards the cap ... and no one else decides, right, we’re going to go out and spend this year.”
The 2017 figures released last week for the Central Victoria region — including a $160,000 for the Bendigo league clubs — are yet to be approved by AFL Victoria.
AFL Goldfields region general manager Rod Ward said his region would release its figures for 2016 — when they would not be policed — and 2017 next Thursday.
He believed there would be “fairly significant savings across the region” next year.