The strange wage structure in Super League which is causing stars to head to NRL

Last night Lewis Murphy’s move to Sydney Roosters was finally confirmed.

It has been raised time and again that the sport is losing too many of its young stars to the NRL.

The reasons why have now been explained by Murphy’s agent Craig Harrison on Show Me The Money TV.

He explained that many young kids are on less than £20K a year and that at most Super League clubs the wage structure gives the older players, past 30, the chunk of the wage bill which makes earning was was recently described by Sam Tomkins as a minimum of £70K for young players in the NRL.

Harrison explained how these factors are why we lose players like Murphy to the NRL: “I think if people understood how much money players like you are on, and if clubs would make the right offers for you at certain times, this certainly wouldn’t be happening this early.

“I think sometimes we’ve got to be honest, someone asked me and I said ‘clubs should offer more money’ and clubs should look at it and say ‘if we secure them for four years on that type of money, because we’re confident that this kid is the real deal’, I think that needs to happen.

“Rugby league has a tier, your earning potential in our country doesn’t really peak till 30. You look at other sports like the NBA it’s the young ones who get the money.

“We’ve got to start that. We shouldn’t have to wait till you’re 30 to earn good money. It’s absolutely barbaric. If people knew on a wage structure of 38 players, I guarantee anybody that the top 20 players are the older ones.

“The young ones can be on less than 15 or 20 grand playing. Fans make comments and sometimes I think ‘how dare you’ because they don’t realise what they’re on.

“I don’t think people realise that a lot of young players parents have to fund them, they won’t accept board and they’ll have to look after you.”