In a league where free agency, the trade period and national draft are followed just as closely as the season itself, players’ contracts are becoming more and more confusing.
Back-ended, front-ended and ASA’s (Additional Services Agreement) are just some of the terms that are common-place these days, and Drew Petrie did his best to explain how the process works.
“There’s basically three components of a contract,” Petrie said on the AFL Exchange podcast.
“There’s the standard playing contract. Every single cent of that falls under your salary cap.
“Then there’s a second level of a contract which is called an ‘additional service agreement.’ ASA’s can tip in a little bit more money for a player, but it all has to be justified.
“An example at our club is Harvey’s Heroes’ day. Boomer (Brent Harvey) will receive extra money for the football club to use his name as a brand and image to use across that. This falls outside the salary cap, but it also has a limit.
“The third level of a contract is called a third party agreement.
“For example I had one with City Mazda, and a couple of weeks ago I had to submit to the AFL what appearances and work I had done with City Mazda. So it’s not a case of just receiving a car and doing nothing, you have to justify why they’re able to give you it.”
Petrie said the contract process is not a straight-forward process.
“When you’re negotiating a contract, it can be seen as simple,” he said.
“But when you’ve got the club trying to manage the salary cap, they’ve got to be smart enough to leave room for free agents, and spread a player’s salary across two or three levels that the league allows.”
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Over his 15 years at Arden Street, Petrie has been in the position of receiving numerous senior contracts. He kept one of his first to share with the listeners.
“A base payment $47,500 with $2,500 per senior match (in 2002). In that year I played nine games,” Petrie said.
“So it wasn’t too bad for a 19 year old freckly redhead from Ballarat.”
