There "would be only a 'single' cap on football department spending, but no limit on the share that could be spent on player payments" under a radical proposal made by the Australian Football League players, according to Jake Niall of THE AGE.
With clubs anticipating that there "will be a cap on football budgets introduced for next year, the AFL Players Association has called for it to be 'a single cap' that would allow the clubs to choose how they spend it -- meaning they could spend whatever proportion they wished on player payments."
This proposal for a single cap "is understood to have been raised by the AFLPA in talks with the AFL and was also floated as a future possibility" by Sydney CEO Andrew Ireland. The AFLPA "was also keen to emphasise that players did not want a single cap to be introduced immediately in a way that would see football departments radically reshaped overnight -- with the inference that any single cap might require gradual phasing in to protect coaches and other support staff." AFLPA CEO Matt Finnis said that the players "had been witnessing a huge increase in non-player spending driven by the larger clubs." The percentage of spending on players "was declining each year." Finnis said,
''What we've seen over the last several years is massive growth in other football expenditure, at double the level the increase in player payments" (THE AGE, 2/19).
