The salary cap brings the motivation of players into sharper focus according to NATHAN BURKE.

THE salary cap has brought many things to the AFL.
Originally designed to even up the competition by stopping the bigger clubs poaching players with their bags of money, the cap in the main has been a very effective initiative.
Good for the game but a nightmare for football managers, agents and, quite often, players.
Despite a figure now pushing $10 million shared between 45-odd blokes, it is still an incredibly tight juggling act to fit everyone in.
The problem becomes even greater when you have a successful team full of star players. The questions then turns to how you keep all the high-priced players in the one place while rewarding them appropriately according to their standing in the game.
Quite simply something, or someone, has to give.
We saw it during the Brisbane Lions’ run of three flags in a row at the start of the century.
Each year we read about star players sacrificing part of their pay packets to “keep the team together”.
More recently the same story is emanating from Geelong as the Cats try to ride their wave for as long as possible.
But what price does a player put on a flag? Is it worth dropping $50K, $100K or even more to have a shot at winning a premiership?
I say have a shot because the one certainty in football is that no team is a certainty to win the flag.
So in effect what you are doing if you go down this path is sacrificing your salary for a chance of success. How close a player feels they are to that success may determine how much of a cut they are willing to take.

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Most AFL clubs have left behind humble beginnings and created mega facilities, but they do come at a cost...

IT’S changed a lot since my time at Fitzroy in the early to mid 1990s.
Offices in Carlton, training base at the Lakeside Oval in winter, a relocation to the Western Oval, and then headquarters in a pub in Northcote … summer training at Bulleen Park and Brunswick Oval … games at Princes Park …
The Lions were nomadic.
Did it diminish the core fabric of a great club? Did it extinguish the flame of its passionate supporter group? Did the historical significance of this great club die? Did it stop people believing? Did the players try any less?
No to all of the above.
Facility management at Fitzroy amounted to trying to stop the weights room flooding after every rain.
There were times we had to break into the Lakeside Oval just to steal back our own weights.
The council would lock the facility every time we could not make a rent payment.
We would break in, loads the weights in the property van – that was the van with one headlight, no reverse gear and unregistered for three years – and drive the van out to Brunswick Street Oval, unload and do our weights on the grass.
Load them back in the van, drive to Lakeside, break back into our rooms and store them again.
At times the Fitzroy players played great football; sometimes they didn’t play so well.

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