The National Rugby League announced on Wednesday that beginning Jan. 1, CEO Dave Smith "will have the unprecedented power to go head-to-head with rival codes to recruit or retain the biggest superstars," according to Paul Crawley of the Sydney DAILY TELEGRAPH. While the new changes will not come in time to stop Sonny Bill Williams and Sam Burgess from going to rugby union at the end of the season, players like Israel Folau and Karmichael Hunt "will be headhunted to return." With the cash-strapped Australian Rugby Union struggling to stay afloat financially, "it will now face an uphill battle to keep its biggest star, with Folau off contract at the end of next season." The new salary cap rule "will allow clubs and the governing body to join forces to bring him back." While NRL COO Jim Doyle "did not want to mention individuals, he made the game’s strategy perfectly clear." Doyle: "To me it is not an option for us as a game not to be able to attract and retain those athletes that are probably once in every 10 years. It is crazy to not have those type of athletes not playing for us" (DAILY TELEGRAPH, 5/8). In Sydney, Brent Read wrote the NRL "also announced a slew of other salary cap changes, including an increase in the long-serving player allowance" by A$100,000 ($93,300) over the next two seasons, taking the figure to $300,000 by the end of '16. Clubs "will also be allowed to place long-serving players into careers with the clubs at the back-end of their contracts." The game "will also provide salary cap relief for clubs forced to stand down players due to concussion and exclude termination payments from the salary cap when the player has been sacked on behavioural grounds." The NRL "will also exclude termination payments where the club has prior approval to sack the player by the game’s integrity unit" (THE AUSTRALIAN, 5/8).
