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#Post#: 56577--------------------------------------------------
Should there be a London weighting to the salary cap?
DIR By: Kermitpower
Date: January 12, 2021, 6:12 am
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My view is that the salary cap - which is supposed to provide a
level playing field in the Premiership - does anything but. I'd
be interested to see what others think?
Some might think it silly of me to suggest it when we've got
players on £250k+, but that's only the exalted few at the top.
The large majority of the squad are lucky if they're on a
quarter of that, so if you're a young, talented but maybe not
absolute top of the crop player - exactly the sort of players we
need to give us a bit more strength in depth in certain
positions - and you're looking at maybe £400k to buy a small
flat in London vs a 3-bed house for around half that (or
40-roomed castle with a moat and a dragon in Newcastle) near
pretty much any club other than Bath, what are you going to do?
My vote would be to allow the London clubs and Bath to top up
the mortgage payments of players on under £100k by a set
percentage so that they can afford similar homes regardless of
which club they play for. I'd also allow them to keep receiving
the payment once their salary goes over £100k so long as they've
played for their club for at least two seasons on under £100k.
Then we'd have much more of a level playing field.
#Post#: 56579--------------------------------------------------
Re: Should there be a London weighting to the salary cap?
DIR By: Brown Bottle
Date: January 12, 2021, 6:26 am
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Why would Quins players need to live in London? They train in
Guildford and only need to turn up at the Stoop once very couple
of weeks.
#Post#: 56580--------------------------------------------------
Re: Should there be a London weighting to the salary cap?
DIR By: T-Bone
Date: January 12, 2021, 6:29 am
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--- Quote from: Brown Bottle link ---
>
> Why would Quins players need to live in London? They train in
Guildford and only need to turn up at the Stoop once very couple
of weeks.
>
--- End Quote ---
Guildford isn't cheap either. I'm not saying I necessarily agree
with the suggestion, but living in the south east / home
counties is obviously considerably more expensive than living in
some of the other locations
#Post#: 56588--------------------------------------------------
Re: Should there be a London weighting to the salary cap?
DIR By: MadMax
Date: January 12, 2021, 6:45 am
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--- Quote from: T-Bone link ---
>
> Guildford isn't cheap either. I'm not saying I necessarily
agree with the suggestion, but living in the south east / home
counties is obviously considerably more expensive than living in
some of the other locations
>
--- End Quote ---
Yes but it's quite cheap in Barnet as rugby players get free
houses there.
#Post#: 56616--------------------------------------------------
Re: Should there be a London weighting to the salary cap?
DIR By: Monte
Date: January 12, 2021, 9:17 am
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Bath is expensive if you live in the city. EDI for Lang and
Young is more expensive in the city centre than Guildford ... I
could go on ....
#Post#: 56618--------------------------------------------------
Re: Should there be a London weighting to the salary cap?
DIR By: DazzaS
Date: January 12, 2021, 9:48 am
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Interesting question. If players were on every day salaries up
to £60k maybe, but some of the players are on over £100k+
sponsorship so overides extra cost of living in expensive
places. Plus London is not the only expensive place to live.
When looking at where the other clubs are - Exeter, Bath,
Bristol, Northampton for example, they are not cheap to live in
either.
#Post#: 56625--------------------------------------------------
Re: Should there be a London weighting to the salary cap?
DIR By: Vernon74
Date: January 12, 2021, 10:40 am
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I earn less than £100k a year and wish someone would help out
with my mortgage. I like the idea that £60k per year is an
'every day' salary. If you get to train all day and occasionally
play a game of rugby why do you need help with paying your
mortgage? Maybe a minimum and maximum salary for a Premiership
rugby player would be a more sustainable way to go and create a
level playing field?
#Post#: 56646--------------------------------------------------
Re: Should there be a London weighting to the salary cap?
DIR By: Mayor West
Date: January 12, 2021, 12:21 pm
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The problem is that if you are offered £250k at Quins but will
spend £30k of what you have left after Tax on rent/ mortgage but
get the same offer from Wasps where you might only spend £10k it
could influence your decision. Or you might ask Quins for
another £20k a year to compensate. Times this over half your
squad and you’re going to use up a lot more of your cap to keep
players. London and the South East is generally a far more
expensive place to live ( somewhere half decent) than the rest
of the country. You only have to look at Salarycens to see what
happens.
#Post#: 56647--------------------------------------------------
Re: Should there be a London weighting to the salary cap?
DIR By: Kermitpower
Date: January 12, 2021, 12:25 pm
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So, to add a little more for the people doubting the
difference...
Average house prices paid at club training locations for sales
in the past 12 months according to Zoopla
Bath - £456k
Bristol - £338k
Carrington (Sale) - £226k
Coventry (Wasps) - £218k
Exeter - £301k
Gloucester - £241k
Guildford (Quins) - £588k
Leicester - £240k
Newcastle - £215k
Northampton - £255k
St Albans (Sarries) - £569k
Sunbury (London Irish) - £457k
Worcester - £269k
So off the back of that, the average for clubs outside the South
East & Bath is £228k, just 44% of the average £518k for the
others. With housing being by a long way most people's biggest
cost, that's a huge difference.
The salary cap for this season if £6.4m. Taking a look at the
squad pages on the Prem website, that has to pay for on average
about 50 players once you take out the two marquee players, so
that's £128k on average per player, so once you take out the
non-marquee players still on well over that, you get down to the
bulk of the playing squad being on well under £100k.
Like many people, I live down here because I had to come here
looking for work. I earn significantly more living inside the
M25 doing the job I do than I would living in the Midlands or
the North. Likewise, if you look at public sector pay scales
you'll see that there is a significant increase even for people
like head teachers on very good salaries as you go from London
fringes to outer London then again to inner London.
The vast majority of people who live and work in the South East
- especially those with skills that can easily be transferred to
other areas of the country such as teachers, doctors, plumbers,
accountants, etc - get paid a premium to compensate for the
increased cost of living here. How does it make sense for
professional rugby clubs to have an artificial constraint placed
on them that prevents them from making a similar accommodation?
If you look at Sarries' salary cap breach, whilst there was a
hoofing great big excess in one year, if you average it out over
the three years they got pinged for, it worked out iirc at
something like 15% over. That's unfair to us, Bath and Irish,
but even so you can make a case that the other Prem clubs all
still had an unfair advantage over Sarries, and an even bigger
one over us.
Lots of people complain about some of the signings we make
compared to some other clubs, but when they can negotiate
packages with their players based around living costs, is it any
surprise?
According to the Money Advisory Service mortgage calculator, a
no deposit mortgage over 25 years at 3% interest would cost
£1,081 per month for the average house outside Bath and the
South East vs £2,456 in it. For a higher rate taxpayer, hat's
an annual pre-tax difference of £27,500.
I realise I'm maybe getting quite anal about the detail now, but
in what world can you possibly acquire the same quality of squad
for the same money when the difference in mortgage payments
alone for an average squad size takes out £1.375m of the £6.4m?
#Post#: 56649--------------------------------------------------
Re: Should there be a London weighting to the salary cap?
DIR By: Mayor West
Date: January 12, 2021, 12:45 pm
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An awful lot of players will be renting as there is no point
buying if you only have a 2/3 year contract somewhere only to
move elsewhere at the other end of the country. I believe that a
lot of players will buy a property where they would like to
permanently live and then rent something near where they play.
Obviously not such a problem for one club players like DC, MB,
CR etc but it amounts to the same problem of paying higher rates
(as helpfully shown by Kermitpower) in the South East.
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