St Kilda players across the board recently agreed to a seven per cent pay cut.
AFL Media’s Callum Twomey reported earlier in the week that the Saints, as well as West Coast, had their playing groups agree to the cuts following the AFL’s nine per cent salary cap reduction for 2021.
St Kilda has been quite active in recent trade periods, signing the likes of Brad Crouch, Jack Higgins, Brad Hill, Dan Hannebery, Dougal Howard and Paddy Ryder in the last few years.
Kane Cornes is worried about what this means for their salary cap going forward and whether they may end up in a similar boat to where Collingwood ended up at the end of 2020.
“This interested me and this is what I would be concerned about, ‘the Saints don’t expect it to impinge on their active approach in the trade and free agency period’, this is according to an article on the AFL website,” Cornes told SEN’s the Captain’s Run.
“But after recruiting Dan Hannebery, Brad Hill and recently Brad Crouch on multi-million-dollar long-term deals, I’m concerned their salary cap is already bulging, otherwise why are they asking players to take a pay cut? That is not the done thing.
“I understand COVID and all of that and there was an industry wide 3.5 per cent pay cut. It is common for individual players to back-end contracts. Clubs might say ‘look, we’re struggling with our salary cap now, let’s push $200,000 each back a couple of years to help ease the pressure now’.
“But this is a full list-wide pay cut. It’s not as if the Saints are Richmond where they’ve won three out of the last four and they need to pay all of these stars and they’re struggling to fit them all in.
“This is St Kilda. They finished sixth last year. This isn’t a powerhouse club. I do have my concerns. Why are they asking their players across the board to take a seven per cent pay cut? They must be struggling.
“I hope what happened at Collingwood in the trade period where they just had to kick players out because of their pressure doesn’t happen to the Saints on the back of some recruiting.
“Have the Saints maybe mismanaged their salary cap? Perhaps that was the first sign.”
The Magpies traded away Adam Treloar, Tom Phillips, Jaidyn Stephenson and Atu Bosenavulagi in the trade period to alleviate their salary cap squeeze.
While West Coast is in a similar predicament, Cornes said it’s more understandable given they recently won a premiership.
“West Coast won a flag. I can understand why West Coast’s salary cap would be bulging.”
“St Kilda has done nothing yet they’re feeling the pinch of a salary cap issue.
“I’m not having a crack, I’m just saying there’s alarm bells when I read stories that cross the board St Kilda, who finished sixth, are already being forced into salary cap pressure.”