#46 Mason Cox

[Deja Vu]

I think I know why we have a squeeze at the moment. Stop me if I’m wrong.

Cox was signed as a category B rookie initially. That category is for players who come from other codes, and the money doesn’t count in the cap.

There were a few clubs chasing Cox before he signed with us, so we probably paid overs to get him. His subsequent contract came into the cap because he came on the list proper, and again other clubs were chasing him and market forces came into play.

So we had to find cap room for a player we hadn’t initially budgeted into our long term planning.

[Pies4shaw]

I think we should know more than we do about the salaries at our club. That would avoid all of the stupid speculation. Do we have enough room to pay to keep our 4 stars next year? No one actually knows.

[Doug44]

I’m actually not sure why we even have such an obsession with players wages, particularly when we really don’t have a clue as to what’s going on.
It’s now a managers job to work just as hard as setting these guys up with income streams after footy. Stuff that’s obviously outside the cap and it’s really pointless to attempt to guess ( future ) football contracts when so much more is involved in the overall package these days.
Dylan Shiel is a classic recent example. Offered less money at Essendon but set up for life in property development with Andrew Welsh ( former player ) after his playing days are over.
There’s plenty of ways to skin a cat, most of which we will never hear about, nor have a need to hear about either.

Exactly, can't understand the fascination. It's not like we're paying these guys.

And on that, Grundy is with Nike. I wonder if they'd pay him more money to be the face of their new campaign if it meant he could be wearing a nike Collingwood jumper. Just saying.

[K]

...
unless you were a mid season recruit who was on a rookie salary.....

No mid-season recruits in 2018.

[K]

... No one actually knows.

Not even Ned.

[K]

Averages? What averages?

Yes averages. You're giving figures that are of the AFL, not Collingwood, so you're assuming that Collingwood's numbers will be those / 18.

That's not how it works. That assumes the distribution of talent and salary is the same for every club, which it obviously isn't.
...

There's no "works" or "doesn't work". Of course every club can make the distribution of their payments as socialist or capitalist as they want. There is no assumption. It's just a question: is player X, who is in the top 20% of salaries in the league, in the top 20% of players (in the league if you want), and does he deserve to have that salary? That's all.

I don't like focusing on specific players. It's hardly their fault if a reckless club throws too much money at them, and some of them come from cultures where AFL is just as meaningless as drilling for oil, so it's all just business.

It's not crazy to think that if we'd had more money we might have been able to recruit one of those free agents who helped their new club to a flag.

...
It's not like we're paying these ...

It's not about who's paying what. It's about winning premierships, which our club struggles to do. If salaries did not matter for winning premierships, there would be no salary cap in the first place. Maybe the salary cap should be higher, but it's not the players who are the most screwed over in the AFL. There a lots of people working in the AFL industry who are expected to work on slave wages.

[Doug44]

It's just a question: is player X, who is in the top 20% of salaries in the league, in the top 20% of players (in the league if you want), and does he deserve to have that salary? That's all.

(it has nothing to with socialist capitalist you misunderstood the point I was making there)

But my point is that it's irrelevant whether he is in the top 20% of the AFL. That was his market value at the time of re-signing him (before he went on to be #2 for contested marks in 2018 and #1 for any ruck and/or forward, so you could argue it's more than that now), we could afford it, so we signed him at that rate.

If our wage bill is far lower at the lower end of the list, which it is, we can afford to spend more at the top end of the list.

That is the system working. If we had more De Goeys and Stephensons (top 10 draft picks) than we do, we really would have a squeeze and we would have to trade players to make room. We'd be more of an "average" club in the make up of our list.

But the make up of our list being what it is means we can afford to pay Cox and Elliott the market rate, even if it means say 30% of our list are in the top 20% of wage earners in the AFL, because the bottom end are taking up less of our salary cap than say the Gold Coast, who have heaps of top 20 picks but fewer players at the top end, which is why they can afford to throw money at someone like Ellis.

Not interested in going back and forth, so this is the last post I'll make on the matter.

[K]

You are ignoring the possibility or impossibility of recruiting free agents, while also assuming we won't lose any players because of salary squeeze (we hope that's true, but who knows?).

The club does not have to overpay players, unless they demand to be overpaid. There is a minimum and maximum, so it's really a salary band. If you are closer to the minimum, it allows you more room to move, to retain or recruit stars.

[Doug44]

Okay this IS my last post on this, we've hijacked the Mason Cox discussion and made it a broader discussion on list management.

Yes you're right, if we had more room in the cap we could go after more players. But that is classic bird in the hand.

Player movements are higher than what they used to be, but still not very high. There aren't many players out there on the market, which is why Cox got what he got, that was his market rate.

If we didn't re-sign Cox when we did, we'd have been a much poorer side in 2018, the very year after we re-signed him. Let's face it, we should have won the flag, thanks in part to Cox. Would that have been worth it?

If you get too caught up with what players are "worth" and let them go too easily, you shoot yourself in the foot.

For the first time in a long time we have a stable list. We're not losing players we want to keep. The last thing we want now is to be having needless player movement.

Over and out.

[stui magpie]

There's no objective means to measure what a player is "worth" in terms of money.

Each list manager would have to balance a complex algorithm of the players value to the club and team, what the club can afford to pay, what we'd like to pay, what the player is asking for and what the market is willing to pay.

When we first signed Cox, he had just finished College in the US and had a job lined up on (I believe) a 6 figure salary in US$ and other clubs were after his signature. He wasn't going to leave that job and move to the other side of the world to play a sport he didn't know for a standard rookie contract.

So from a high base, once he started to develop and was out of contract with other clubs offering contracts, the algorithm referred to above kicks in and we either pay what we need to pay to keep him or let him go. I'm glad we kept him because he certainly wasn't disgraced in last years GF and if he was playing for us in the finals in 2019 it very well could have been a different result.

[Pies2016]

Cox is a fairly unique player in so many ways. He’s not particularly good at anything in particular but he can do a number of things that not many can.
He reminds me a bit of Shane Watson and about as polarising.
Think of how many players can genuinely go into the ruck and be competitive and also play as a KPF for most of the game.
There’s not many who can do it, so that’s got to be worth something.
We get caught up because in the negatives because he’s not consistent and he doesn’t dominate games and yet we have a bloke who can play both as a key forward and ruck.
We would be silly to let him go, if for no other reason than it’s two new positions we would then have to fill.

[PyreneesPie]

^ Agree fully with you Pies2016, for the reasons you give.

Plus, imagine Mason stationed in the forward line with all of Billy, Stevo, Mihocek, Sidey and JDG moving around him. Mason only has to move and he attracts two defenders. What a luxury to have, plus he is a better tap ruck at the centre bounces than Brodie IMHO.

(Of course, the above is all contingent on overcoming our poor injury rate).

[Mr Miyagi]

plus he is a better tap ruck at the centre bounces than Brodie IMHO.

I loved seeing Cox smack the ball to our half forward line for our mids to run onto when it was clear tapping to them in the centre would only cause a stoppage. Grundy started to do this late in the season (finals) a few times. And guess what? On a couple of occasions Pendles got a free kick for being held because the umps could clearly see it.

[Doug44]

^
Agree with previous two posts. I think Cox is slightly underutlised as a ruck, and Grundy might even be underutlised as a resting forward.

Rather than playing 90% game time and resting off the ground the other 10%, why not he and Cox go 70/30, with Grundy spending some time up forward.

He then wouldn't need as much time off the ground (Cox would need more), and the area of his game that improved this year IMO is his contested marking. He'd be a very dangerous option forward.

And if that did happen next year and he hit the scoreboard a little more often, he may just get his 7 years, as we could see him longer term becoming more of a Brad Ottens type which would prolong his career.

[BazBoy]

There ain’t too many 205+ cm talls in AFL and certainly not 211 cm

Although he can frustrate the bejezus out of me where are we going to find same for same

I’d keep him and tell Bummers go build ya own