AFL Rd 23 2024 Pre Game Prognostications Carlton vs West Coast in Perth

[Thryleon]

Salary caps are not that tight and don't work that way.

Any club worth their salt will aim for match payments for 23 players over 24 rounds (or whatever we actually play) and put that aside for every season. Whats left is what you play players from as in their base and above base payments.

You go a step further and allocate a certain part to any of the following you implement as a club (each club does it differently)
- Top (3, 5 or) 10 B+F finishers bonus
- Matches played threshold bonuses (kids get 10 - 15 - 20 bonuses IIRC, same for others potentially if you wish)
- individual KPI targets (eg # goals or goal assists etc)
- AFL award bonuses (AA, brownlow, coleman, 22U22 teams etc)

You set aside whatever 'bonuses' you want to pay. You add that to what you set aside with your match payments.
Then you pay players from whats left.

If you make finals, the AFL allows gives you the extra $'s required to pay players for their time.
If you win the GF there is an extra million to allocate IIRC as well.

In short, there is no financial incentive to NOT play the kids.

You need to fact check.

I've read the eba.  Players on base contracts usually qualify for match payments.

This is included in the cap, and depending on factors can see match payments worth as much as 5000 a match which can vary based on where a player was taken in the draft.

Now we play Ollie hollands a first rounder and lachie cowan a second rounder.

Between them in 2024 they have played 34 matches.  Hypotheticals state if they are on base contracts we pay 5000 per match, we have blown out our payments by a conservative 150k.  Not much as you stated, but depending on whom else is on base contracts you might have jack Carroll, jaxon binns, and jesse motlop earning match payments over and above their base contract.  Jordan boyd might be another and this can escalate quickly and cost a total of over 200k over a season.  Not earth shattering in a 14 million dollar cap, but it could cause some headaches in a situation where you are paying above the cap after banking in previous years if you've cooked your salary structure and were banking on making finals to get your extra million.