Third-party deals included
The AFL says any third-party deals Melbourne could offer midfielder Tom Scully must be included in the salary cap
ANY POTENTIAL third-party deals in Melbourne midfielder Tom Scully's next contract have to be included in the salary cap, says AFL general manager of football operations Adrian Anderson.
As reports emerged on Wednesday that the Demons would offer a third-party deal as part of the package to keep Scully from the clutches of GWS, Anderson said all money paid to Scully would have to be included as part of the Demons' total player payments.
"Any third-party deal that relates to him staying or going to a club would be included in football payments. That would go into the salary cap," Anderson told melbournefc.com.au.
The package had been compared to the contract that saw Carlton join Chris Judd from West Coast at the end of 2007.
Judd's arrival with the Blues coincided with a contract outside the salary cap with Visy, the company owned by former Carlton president Richard Pratt but Anderson said the Demons would not be able to keep Scully on a similar arrangement.
"The rules have been tightened up since then so any arrangement entered into with the purpose of keeping someone at a club or getting them to move a club would go into the salary cap," he said.
Anderson said the Demons would be well compensated if Scully left to join the Giants after his first two years in the AFL.
"The compensation would depend largely on what he would be paid at the new club. Also how much of his career he's got left," he said.
"In both cases it looks like he'd be paid a fair bit and he is a young fella. You would expect he would get the top echelon of compensation based on the sort of figures I'm hearing."
Anderson also responded to a claim from former Carlton president Ian Collins that the penalties given to Carlton in 2002 for salary cap breaches were excessive.
"The AFL makes no apologies for sanctions for rorting of the salary cap. Any club that wants to go down that path needs to know that they will face similar sanctions," he said.
"There's no doubt it has been tough for the club but it is so important we protect the integrity of the competition and the salary cap and the draft. Where there is systematic cheating, that will go heavily punished."
