Bulldogs spread the load for cuts

WESTERN Bulldogs president Peter Gordon has suggested the club’s players will probably face a set percentage pay cut next season to accommodate the reduced salary cap.

Addressing the decrease in the total player payments next year, Gordon said he hoped the AFLPA and the players would “appreciate” where the salary cap had “landed” after fearing much deeper cuts.

The AFL recently detailed TPP for the clubs in 2021 would be $12.1m — 9 per cent down from this year — due to the financial pressures associated with the pandemic.

Asked how the Bulldogs would be approaching the salary cuts — whether on an individual basis or as a set percentage across the board — Gordon said he recommended to club chief executive Ameet Bains the latter was the “fairest” outcome.

“I think the best approach to it is the latter one that you just described and that has certainly been my recommendation to Ameet that seems to be the fairest way of going about it,” he said on SEN.

“For me, and in particular sitting on that war cabinet in the first half of the year, to have effectively got to the stage where the sort of cuts that we are thinking about are as low as they are, I just have to pay an incredible tribute to Gillon McLachlan and his team, and their ability to salvage something out of this season and rescue the revenues.

“Because we were looking at much more deep cuts to both the TPP and all aspects of the business really, the soft cap, more assistant coaches going, all of that sort of thing.

“Where it has all landed, in terms of the limitations to that cut in the first place, is an astounding result really.

“I guess I’m trying to say in as nice a way as possible that I hope the PA and the players will appreciate that.”