Does anyone know the status of our salary cap, im a bit worried we ain't got a whole lot to play with as we don't seem to be in the market for any big name recruits and we are once again only linked to fringe players .

We had the coin to give Houston a nice pay rise 12 months ago...suspect we're doing okay

Probably depends on the nature of our stars contracts. But I reckon we are doing ok and could land one star

like every club, we have a minimum that we have to pay - i think it's 95% as a minimum over 3 years then a max of 110% over two, so it works out as 100% of total cap spend over a six year period?

the rules are...opaque

from my understanding there's never as much cap 'space' either positively or negatively as the medja make out that there is

We haven't used up the salary cap relief from Grundy leaving or Angus Brayshaw's retirement

I think we are fine salary cap wise.

We have many very young players on our list now, as well as several mature age recruits and budget recycled players. It didn't get us the depth of AFL quality we were hoping for but it also would have been pretty light for salary cap.

I think that scenario pretty quickly balances the impact of our set of very highly paid players, which is really just Petracca, Oliver and Pickett. An upside of their very long contracts is that we can also plan ahead a bit; quite possible we did some front loading already by 2021 as that would have been before many of our players became 'premium'.

I'm comfortable with our overall list strategy of trying to target/hold crucial players and roles at whatever it costs, and then look to fill out that best 25 with optimistic transfers and picks.

Just a shame we lost our touch after the run of players like Hibberd and Langdon who contributed so much at very modest trade and salary costs.

11 hours ago, adonski said:

We had the coin to give Houston a nice pay rise 12 months ago...suspect we're doing okay

A fair chunk of that probably went to Kozzie

9 hours ago, wheaters31 said:

We haven't used up the salary cap relief from Grundy leaving or Angus Brayshaw's retirement

I think we are fine salary cap wise.

I didnt think we had to pay much for Grundy as the filth were picking up the bill?

Completely forgot about Gus, good point.

The salary cap for 2025 was $17.8M. If you believe the figures in the Herald Sun rich list, we have spent roughly $7.3M of this on 8 players, plus 25% of Brayshaw's wage is still counted in the cap.

Oliver - $1.2M - $1.3M

Petracca - $1.2M - $1.3M

Gawn - $900K - $1.0M

Pickett - $800K - $900K

Viney - $750K - $850K

May - $700K - $800K

Lever - $700K - $800K

Petty - $650K - $750K

That would leave around $10M across the remaining 37 players on the list, including Fritsch, Langdon, Salem and Van Rooyen who would all be on decent money.

Maybe we could afford to bring in one more decent player, but I suspect we're getting pretty close to the cap.

Trying to analyze/dissect our salary cap without the real data is like watching drunks play darts

10 hours ago, wheaters31 said:

We haven't used up the salary cap relief from Grundy leaving or Angus Brayshaw's retirement

I think we are fine salary cap wise

We have to pay 50% of Gus's salary in '26 from the salary cap. It jumps to 100% in '27 and '28 in what was reported to be a heavily back-ended contract.

It will definitely hinder our ability to attract big names from other clubs.

I would love for the salary cap to be transparent and public, just like in the US sports. One can dream 🤣

24 minutes ago, roy11 said:

Trying to analyze/dissect our salary cap without the real data is like watching drunks play darts

Yep, this discussion is purely based on vibes

1 hour ago, poita said:

The salary cap for 2025 was $17.8M. If you believe the figures in the Herald Sun rich list, we have spent roughly $7.3M of this on 8 players, plus 25% of Brayshaw's wage is still counted in the cap.

Oliver - $1.2M - $1.3M

Petracca - $1.2M - $1.3M

Gawn - $900K - $1.0M

Pickett - $800K - $900K

Viney - $750K - $850K

May - $700K - $800K

Lever - $700K - $800K

Petty - $650K - $750K

That would leave around $10M across the remaining 37 players on the list, including Fritsch, Langdon, Salem and Van Rooyen who would all be on decent money.

Maybe we could afford to bring in one more decent player, but I suspect we're getting pretty close to the cap.

This is why I think we are probably losing one of Lever or May. To have money to make considerable moves one would have to make way.

1 hour ago, poita said:

The salary cap for 2025 was $17.8M. If you believe the figures in the Herald Sun rich list, we have spent roughly $7.3M of this on 8 players, plus 25% of Brayshaw's wage is still counted in the cap.

Oliver - $1.2M - $1.3M

Petracca - $1.2M - $1.3M

Gawn - $900K - $1.0M

Pickett - $800K - $900K

Viney - $750K - $850K

May - $700K - $800K

Lever - $700K - $800K

Petty - $650K - $750K

That would leave around $10M across the remaining 37 players on the list, including Fritsch, Langdon, Salem and Van Rooyen who would all be on decent money.

Maybe we could afford to bring in one more decent player, but I suspect we're getting pretty close to the cap.

Probably close to the mark with these estimates, but with 50% of Gus's salary, maybe something left from Grundy...then with Kossy's $12M nine year deal, it is probably understated.

Average AFL salaries are now close to $1/2M per player! And while that includes rookies and 1st years, the numbers indicate, even very conservatively, that we are right up against the cap. Small wonder we are not being touted as being in the market for anyone substantial.

We may well be "fine" but we aren't getting anyone decent without losing some of those top salary earners that we currently have.

We Have been linked to both Windhager and Flanders. Neither will be cheap, so there must be a bit there.

Over the last few years May, Viney, Gawn, T-Mac have all signed contracts that I suspect wouldn't be a pay cut (besides T-Mac) but haven't had a pay raise. Which is sort of a pay cut with increases etc.

I did some calculations and we have around $150 to $357 left.

1 hour ago, Ethan Tremblay said:

I did some calculations and we have around $150 to $357 left.

Even I'm not getting out of bed for that