A senior A-League club insider has told SBS that he believes deals made to bring high profile Socceroos Tom Rogic and James Troisi back to the A-League during the 2013-2104 season resulted in a breach of the salary cap.
Rogic joined Victory on loan from Celtic in January 2014 for the remainder of the campaign and it’s believed he was paid a minimum salary in the vicinity of $50,000.
Troisi joined Victory from Juventus in September 2013 on a one-year loan with reports that he was not paid by the A-League club.
Instead both players were paid the bulk of their wages while at Victory by their parent clubs from the loan fee paid for them – believed to be in the region of half a million dollars and not included in the salary cap payments.
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It’s alleged that despite concerns, raised by high ranking FFA officials and several A-League chief executives at a CEO’s Conference with FFA in late May/early June 2014, the payments were not included in the Club’s Player Payments (ie. the Salary Cap).
"It appears that the Salary Cap was breached in a such a significant way resulting in the loan/transfer fees not being included in the Club’s Player Payments or categorised as such by the FFA and this could well have been in excess of $500,000," the A-League club insider said.
Concerns over the practice were so significant that at season’s end FFA, through a memo from the Head of the A-League Damien De Bohun, amended the rules to ensure it could not happen again.
The memo also proposed that for any loan deals The amount included in the salary cap would be the higher of:
a) the actual amount paid by the Club in relation to that Player (including amounts paid to the parent club and amounts paid directly to that Player); and
b) 50% of that Player's Salary with the parent club.
b) 50% of that Player's Salary with the parent club.
Despite the allegations of salary cap irregularities with regards to the loan arrangements, De Bohun denied any wrongdoing on the part of the clubs and said those involved acted within the rules as they stood at the time.
"FFA rejects any suggestion that clubs with loan players in the 2013/14 season were in breach of the A-League player payment guidelines," De Bohun told News Corp.
"FFA was fully aware of all such payments at the time. The guidelines for that season very clearly stated that loan fees paid to the parent club are not included in the club’s salary cap.
"The normal post-season review identified that FFA needed to clarify the interpretation of a ‘loan fee’, and that was done and communicated to all the clubs."
To further complicate matters, the players union - the Professional Footballers Australia - contends that the change to the regulations is illegal under the A-League’s collective bargaining agreement but PFA did declare that in the case of Rogic and Troisi: "FFA continued (correctly) to exclude player loan fees made by A-League clubs from the salary cap."
Deals similar to those of Rogic and Troisi are understood to have been made by other clubs, including Nathan Burns’s move to Newcastle Jets last season - with Socceroos coach Ange Postecoglou eager to have national team squad members playing regular first-team football ahead of the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil.
Glory was kicked out of this season’s finals series for systematic salary cap transgressions of some $400,000 but will be left wondering if other clubs have received a free pass of sorts after FFA ultimately changed the loan arrangement regulations concerning the salary cap just last year.
