Why country and suburban football clubs say salary cap rorts are rife

April 27, 2026 — 11:57am

You have reached your maximum number of saved items.

Remove items from your saved list to add more.

Save this article for later

Add articles to your saved list and come back to them anytime.

Envelopes of cash, TAB vouchers, shares in horses and tanks of diesel. Cheap blocks of land and tradesmen being overpaid for jobs.

These are just some of the ways that country and suburban football clubs are allegedly keeping payments off the books amid accusations that league salary caps are so poorly policed they are being systematically cheated.

Some star male players are paid more than $60,000 a season by clubs who are forced to pay up if they want to contend for a premiership.

Salary caps in major Victorian country leagues and suburban competitions hover around $130,000 a year, and combined with a total player points system are designed to ensure a level playing field.

Advertisement

But a detailed investigation by this masthead, involving calls to eight club officials from different leagues across the state, reveal the playing field is anything but even.

One senior coach said he offered a star player $15,000 for the season, more than $800 a game, only to be told that his offer fell $40,000 short.

Another football manager said his club offered a potential recruit more than $30,000 a season, or $1700 a game, and the player didn’t bother calling back. He later signed with another country club in a nearby league.

“I know of two players who have been offered in excess of $60,000 to play footy … you do the sums on a salary cap of $130,000 – it’s not hard to see what’s going on,” said the coach, speaking anonymously to protect the identity of the players.

Advertisement

“I’m sure there’s different sets of books. The girlfriend is playing netball, and she gets [cash in] an envelope. There’s other ways around it, such as [personal] sponsorships. I have even heard of TAB vouchers.

“You would have to have your head in the sand to think that there are clubs out there that aren’t pushing the salary cap beyond what it should be.

“I could name 10 clubs off top my head now – not that I will – that are blatantly cheating it.”

AFL Victoria sets and governs community football salary caps with the leagues. It is supported by the Community Club Sustainability Program (CCSP) Advisory Group, which consists of six metro and country football leaders.

Minor leagues are given a lower ceiling than major leagues because they traditionally attract a lower standard of player, but that doesn’t stop them offering up big bucks.

Advertisement

“We’re trying to keep our players who aren’t that good, but they are getting offers from minor leagues for $700 or $800 a game [$14,400 a year],” the footy manager said, speaking on the condition of anonymity so as not to identify his club.

“They are saying, ‘I need $500 to stay [$9000 a year]’. They were blokes that we were paying $100. So it’s just spiralling and spiralling. It has just become a vicious circle.

“Everyone is doing it [rorting the cap]. Occasionally, people get caught. If they self report, they minimise the damage, but really, it’s just rife.”

AFL Victoria audits the books of the two grand finalists from every competition. They also investigate any complaints or referrals from the leagues.

Advertisement

An AFL Victoria spokesperson said integrity in community football was taken seriously, and everyone involved had a responsibility to uphold it.

“When concerns are raised, AFL Victoria works with leagues to ensure they are properly investigated and dealt with through the appropriate processes,” the spokesperson said.

But the footy manager said no club was prepared to dob in a rival.

“I’m not going to do that,” he said. “Because we’re trying to improve, and the likelihood is that we’ll probably be breaching it [the cap] at some point.”

Burning out committees

Advertisement

Wangaratta self-reported a salary cap breach at the end of the 2022 season and were sensationally stripped of that year’s Ovens & Murray premiership, a game won by three points against Yarrawonga.

The Magpies, coached by former Collingwood star Ben Reid, claimed an innocent mistake had seen the club exceed the $125,000 cap by $28,000.

The club was found guilty of failing to lodge player declarations or non-declared player statements correctly.

“That was a really difficult process for us,” Ovens and Murray Football Netball League chair David Sinclair said.

Advertisement

“But if we don’t have those rules in place, if it is uncapped and clubs can spend what they want, clubs are just going to burn out their committees trying to raise money to put a side on the ground.”

Sinclair said the salary cap system had helped save clubs in his jurisdiction from themselves.

“The reason I say it’s a success is that previously, in pre-salary cap days, anecdotally we had clubs spending up to $400,000 to pay players, which was burning out committees trying to keep up,” he said.

“The continued churn to try and keep up was unsustainable.”

Advertisement

Closer to Melbourne, suburban powerhouse Keilor won back-to-back premierships in 2023-2024 under the coaching of Collingwood premiership player Mick McGuane only to be stripped of the 2023 flag.

The club was found to have exceeded its allowable player payment limit of $110,000 by $45,100 in 2023. It was found to be $605 above the limit in 2022.

At the time, Keilor president Shaun Morris said the club acknowledged an “administrative error in timing of payments”, while the Essendon District Football Netball League said the breaches were not “dishonest or wilful”.

But when a club is found to have breached the rules, criticism is rarely heard from rivals.

“You don’t throw rocks in glass houses,” one former club president said.

Advertisement

Player market has worsened

Suburban and country football clubs are run by volunteers and often turn over more than $500,000 a year.

To win a flag takes time, effort and dedicated fundraising. It can also take skilled accounting.

One former club administrator, granted anonymity to speak honestly, said clubs typically budgeted to spend marginally above the salary cap to factor in injuries and unavailability; otherwise they would be disadvantaged by paying well under the cap.

Another struggling country club said they paid more than $250,000 to assemble a premiership side more than a decade ago, before salary caps were introduced by AFL Victoria in 2016.

Advertisement

“The player market has not changed since then,” the club’s footy manager said. “In actual fact, it’s got worse. But we have never won a flag without having to spend a shitload of money.”

Many clubs have struggled to keep up in what is akin to an arms race.

Lara’s senior side has gone into recess, while Maryborough Football Club is on the verge of extinction.

But there are clubs that manage to swim against the tide.

Advertisement

“We have a lot of loyal players,” Sebastopol Football Netball Club president Chenay Wilkinson said of her Ballarat-based club.

But she said it was hard for players in the Ballarat Football Netball League to turn down “life-changing amounts of money” from clubs in rival competitions.

“I think that’s the biggest issue,” she said. “You’ve got some clubs offering such big money [to players] that we can’t match or even get anywhere near it.”

One former president, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he no longer represented his country club, said the salary caps placed too much pressure on volunteers.

“If salary cap cheating is rife, why would anyone volunteer their time on an activity where the only way to compete is to cheat?” he said.

Advertisement

He said the system was a “waste of time” because there were so many ways to do side deals with players.

“If they are a plumber, you pay them higher for a job they did for you,” he said.

‘Some stuff going on there’

AFL Victoria was accused of lacking the resources and the money to ensure everyone is playing by the rules.

Drouin Football Netball Club president Luke Gilbert said there was not “a great appetite to scratch the surface”.

Advertisement

“I think that creates more work for them and potentially bigger problems,” he said.

Gilbert said he scratched his head when Melbourne recruits bypassed his town to sign for country clubs in the further out regions of the state.

“There are things that are within our control like club culture and reputation and position on the ladder,” Gilbert said of his Gippsland League club, which is 50 minutes east of Dandenong.

“But you can’t really be jumping out of bed to go to some of these places further out of town because you really like the atmosphere. There’s got to be some stuff going on there.”

Advertisement

An AFL Victoria spokesperson said resourcing was an ongoing focus.

“We continue to invest in governance, education and support for leagues and clubs, including through the CCSP, which is designed to strengthen how the system operates,” the spokesperson said.

Goulburn Valley league club Mooroopna was fined $25,000, with $12,500 suspended, for breaching rules during the 2022 and 2023 seasons. They were dobbed in by a disgruntled player.

Another Goulburn Valley club, Euroa, self-reported a breach at the start of last year. They were fined $2500.

During an independent investigation, it was discovered that members of their social committee were raising money and giving cash envelopes to their coach Ryan Pendlebury in a bid to entice recruits.

Advertisement

Goulburn Valley Football Netball League chairman Peter Foott said clubs kept telling him they wanted the cap in place because “it still gives them an element of power over the players”.

He said he was often approached by strangers and asked about salary caps.

“They say, ‘What do you do about the guy who gets a truckload of diesel dumped into his farm diesel tank?’,” Foott said.

“I say if you can give me evidence, we can do something about it. But if you have no evidence, I can’t.”

Goulburn Valley is in talks to introduce a salary cap for its netball competition, while AFL Barwon oversees salary caps for its Geelong and Bellarine netball leagues, which sit between $17,000 and $18,500.

Advertisement

There is no statewide salary cap for women’s football competitions.

Homegrown AFL stars are like gold

The player points system is designed to work hand in hand with the salary cap to ensure a level playing field.

Clubs are allocated a total number of points each week for their 22 players – ex-AFL players are worth six points, state league players five points, and the ratings work down to home-grown players and juniors who are valued at one point.

Major league clubs are typically allocated between 36 and 46 points, depending on their ongoing success. For every year a player spends at a club, they drop a point, but the key is to nurture good juniors.

Advertisement

“You want them to be good enough to play good country football, but not good enough to play VFL every week,” Drouin president Gilbert said.

“As much as you want them to be the best versions of themselves, the selfish person in you goes, ‘I’d love to have him full-time in our midfield’. It makes a difference to winning games of football.”

Sometimes clubs strike gold. An ex-AFL player returning to their junior club at the end of their career – such as Dyson Heppell and Leongatha Parrots last year – is worth one point. But you still have to fit them under the cap.

In smaller country towns, the point system is seen as disadvantage. They have to import players because they don’t have secondary schools or a young population to feed their underage teams.

Advertisement

AFL Barwon chairman Ashley West said the player points system was the “biggest lever that we’ve got to be able to manage sustainability”.

“It’s really transparent,” he said. “There’s not really any way you can get around the point system.”

Big names, good business

Ex-AFL players are big drawcards and great marketing tools. Major leagues want to be the best.

Ex-Melbourne and Bulldog star James Harmes has lifted Moe’s profile in the Gippsland League, Lin Jong is a headliner for Deer Park in the Essendon District Football League, and Goulburn Valley outfit Mansfield were buoyed by the signing of ex-Magpie Will Kelly to join Callum Brown on their list this year.

Advertisement

Former Saint Seb Ross imparts valuable knowledge as coach of Colac in the Geelong league, and the rumour mill was abuzz in February this year with talk that Richmond great Dustin Martin would make a six-game appearance with Yarrawonga in the Ovens and Murray League.

There are still talks that the Dusty signing will happen - salary cap willing, of course.

“We’ve got to be careful that we don’t pull the points down so much that the top clubs can’t then go and recruit good players, whether they’re VFL-AFL players,” said West, whose AFL Barwon overseas the Geelong and Bellarine leagues.

“We want to make sure that we are maintaining the quality whilst we’re actually lifting the clubs from the bottom. So it’s not about pulling the top clubs down, it’s about lifting the bottom clubs.”

Advertisement

‘These are complex issues’

One thing is for certain, according to clubs: the salary cap and points systems needs to be reviewed.

There is a widespread lack of confidence in their application. Moreover, grassroots football is a community sport, not a primary source of income.

Some clubs have called for an auditor to be assigned to every league to go through the books; others have called for a fairer points system in which stronger clubs are penalised for poaching juniors from weaker rivals.

One suggestion is for salary caps to be raised to a “more realistic” $200,000 in major leagues so that fewer clubs are tempted to rort the system.

Advertisement

Another administrator called for a restructure of leagues across Victoria so that there is a more even balance.

AFL Victoria said they were consistently hearing feedback.

“These are complex issues, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution,” an AFL spokesperson said.

“We are actively engaging with leagues and stakeholders to improve competition structures and promote greater balance, with a clear focus on long-term sustainability.

“AFL Victoria’s focus remains on working closely with leagues and clubs to ensure the game stays strong, fair and sustainable into the future.”

Keep up to date with the best AFL coverage in the country. Sign up for the Real Footy newsletter.

You have reached your maximum number of saved items.

Remove items from your saved list to add more.

More:

AFL 2026

For subscribers

Danny Russell is a racing writer for The Age.

Andrew Wu writes on cricket and AFL for The AgeConnect via X or email.

Click here to read article