MARTIN SITS ATOP $1M CLUB
RICHMOND champion Dustin Martin sits atop the AFL’s pay mountain in 2022, which says a lot about the seismic contract he signed five years ago, as well as the changing landscape of the game’s top-end pay brackets.
Martin has only played eight matches this season because of injury and a leave of absence for personal reasons, but he has still scaled footy’s financial summit.
His $1.2m to $1.3m remuneration in 2022 remains almost the same as it has been during the previous four seasons – and will still be for the next two years.
The previous two Herald Sun Rich List No.1s – Jeremy Cameron (around $1.5m in 2020) and Lance Franklin ($1.5m last year) – had been scheduled to earn more than Martin in those years, albeit Cameron’s backended Greater Western Sydney deal was sliced by around $400,000 as part of the AFL players’ Covid sacrifices.
Martin famously waved away more than $2 million when he rejected a “Godfather” offer to join North Melbourne, a decision he made on the eve of the 2017 finals series.
Instead, the midfielder-forward chose loyalty over extra dollars. He ended up signing a seven-year $8 million-plus deal to stay with the Tigers.
Regardless of what might unfold across the final two years of that deal – whether Martin stays at Punt Rd, plays elsewhere, or retires – it has been one of the best value-for-money deals in modern football.
What sort of price can you put on three premierships, a record three Norm Smith Medals and a Brownlow Medal that followed the contract’s inking, even if his 2017 reward was on his old deal.
Tellingly, the financial commitment of the final two years – which adds up to around $2.5m across 2023 and 2024 – might play a role in keeping Martin in yellow and black.
While there has been speculation the media-shy Martin could benefit from playing outside the Melbourne footy goldfish bowl, the anchor of such a huge financial obligation for a player who turns 32 next June could yet prove a bridge too far for rival clubs, if he decides to move.
The Tigers acknowledge Martin owes the club nothing, given what he has provided across 13 seasons and 268 games. But they also want to do everything possible to keep him, with coach Damien Hardwick saying recently the club is confident he will see out his contract.
The fact that Martin’s deal – brokered in 2017 – sees him on the biggest 2022 contract also points to a change in philosophy by some of the game’s biggest names – and by the clubs.
We’ve long speculated on which young star might one day become the first $2 million per season player, but if anything, the landscape at the top end of the pay bracket has moved.
Some players at the top end of the scale, including West Coast’s Jeremy McGovern and Fremantle’s Nat Fyfe, have accepted adjustments to their bumper contracts in recent seasons in order to help balance the salary-cap scales of their respective clubs.
Other superstars such as Melbourne midfielders Christian Petracca and Clayton Oliver have gone for a long length of tenure instead of the ultimate top dollars in recent negotiations. They inked deals of up to seven years on $1 million a season rather than shorter-term commitments on figures up to $1.5 million.
Clubs know they can ill-afford to be lumbered with their salary cap tilting too far in the wrong direction.
Savvy and successful clubs such as Geelong have found a way to still bring in key personnel by a collective sharing of the financial load. It has been a key to the Cats remaining in the flag window year after year.
Despite what many would have you believe, the pursuit of team success and club loyalty still drives the vast majority of AFL players as much as their personal pay packets.
When Martin signed on for the Tigers back in 2017, he said: “I kind of felt like I was cheating on a girlfriend or something (when dealing with North Melbourne).”
Tigers fans hope Dusty has those same thoughts when he looks ahead to 2023.