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How New Zealand Rugby keeps best players in country under salary cap
This time of year Super Rugby bases are near empty.
This time of year Super Rugby bases are near empty. There's no doof doof music emanating from gyms. No loud laugher from kitchens. Even liniment smells dwindle for a short period.
Players have scattered to the All Blacks, provincial teams or overseas stopovers, but now is when their respective Super Rugby destinations and salaries are determined for seasons to come.
This is when Super Rugby coaches and administrators do some of their most important work. Behind closed doors, they gather to nut out squads and find the missing pieces to their jigsaws - all the while keeping a calculator handy.
Salary cap isn't part of the New Zealand rugby vocabulary - "budget" is preferred - but the model is very much in place, only it differs drastically from anywhere else in the world.
During the three-year period 2013 to 2015, NZ Rugby spent $125 million on its players. Of that, $60 million was divided up between the five Super Rugby teams, equating to a "cap" of about $4 million per-team, per-year.
Under the new collective agreement between NZ Rugby and the Players' Association, details of which will be revealed in the coming weeks, that cap is expected to rise to around $4.65m next year.
On the face of it such a figure pales in comparison to the NBA's US$94.143m (NZ$128.60m) and NFL's $155.27 (NZ$212.09m) salary caps that benefit from mega broadcast deals.
Likewise, English rugby's £6.5m (NZ$11.84m) cap that excludes the two highest players from each team, and the French Top 14's 10m Euro (NZ$15.25m) limits dwarf their Kiwi counterparts.
Even the Warriors' NRL ceiling of A$7m (NZ$7.29m) from next year makes Auckland city neighbours the Blues look inferior.
In reality, the local comparison is not that simple. In fact, it's completely misleading.
That's because outside the $4m NZ Super Rugby salary caps, another $65m was spent on players across those three years.
Some of that covers insurance premiums - protecting players' income. Some of it is directed towards retirement funds. And things like the minimum women's sevens retainer increased from $10,000 to $45,000.
Incentive payments are another unique addition that encourages Super Rugby players to stay for provincial rugby. In the last collective those who served 1-4 years in Super Rugby received a one-off $5000 payment; those who served five or more years pocketed $15,000.
These incentives, which seek to protect the fabric of the domestic game as a development competition and will rise further under the new collective agreement, lift some provincial salaries above $60,000 for 10 regular season matches. Not bad for eight weeks work.
Then, of course, there's the cream of the crop. Every year New Zealand Rugby "tops up" anywhere between 35 to 40 players on individually-negotiated retainers.
All Blacks also receive $7500 for every week in camp - about $130,000 if they are involved for the full year.
All told, with the players' imminent pay rise accounted for, that sees the likes of All Blacks captain Kieran Read taking home close to $1 million each year, and only a dollop of that sitting under the Super Rugby cap.
Over the years the Crusaders have had 15 All Blacks on their books and still slid under the cap, as NZ Rugby footed most of the wage bill.
Those significant top ups allow the maximum NZ Super Rugby salary to be capped at $195,000, and not demonstrate the real value of squads.
Super Rugby salary caps are enforced, though. If any franchise flagrantly breaches the system they can be fined $3 for every $1 overspent. On the contrary, any remaining money is carried over to the following year, but in a hyper competitive recruitment market most teams hit their limits.
The 2013 Blues, when John Kirwan came on board late and filled his roster with inexperienced and therefore cheaper players, is the recent exception.
With a maximum player salary set, third party agreements allow franchises to offer a point of difference to attract stars. These deals sit outside the cap but players must be aligned with a brand to provide "additional services". They cannot simply be paid more to play.
That's why Jerome Kaino features on the back of Auckland buses endorsing public transport, and why Benji Marshall's nib insurance ads continued long after he left the Blues.
Even in the age of private investment third party arrangements are largely uncommon - typically two or three max per-team - as they have the potential to cause animosity within a group.
Compared with others, Super Rugby chiefs have an easier contracting ride.
What Warriors boss Jim Doyle would give for the NZRL to pay the lion's share of Shaun Johnson's salary - thought to be about $800,000 per-year. But with wealth firmly aligned to clubs, not the international game, that will never be a viable option for the Warriors.
This NZ rugby centralised contracting model has long been a strength; the envy of many top-tier competing nations. Not only does it allow the game to flow towards continually improving the national team but, in recent times, also creates a more even playing field.
Since the Super Rugby cap was equalised four years ago, the Chiefs, Hurricanes and Highlanders won their maiden Super Rugby titles, and depth continues to flourish.
New Zealand will never match the lucrative offers flooding out of Europe and Japan. But package it all together - even little things like having 11 accredited agents as opposed to more than 70 in Australia - and you see why the majority of players stay as long as possible.
"A lot of those guys who spend significant time here and understand our environments when they go overseas to Italy, France or England it can be quite a shock," Players' Association boss Rob Nichol said.
"We've always taken the view that we wanted to create the best rugby environment in the world because we knew we couldn't compete financially so we were going to rely on the sum of the parts beating the money."
In any profession the bottom line always matters. But in New Zealand rugby, there's a different way of getting there.
Rest assured the powers that be will fight long and hard to retain this successful and yet unconventional system.