Whilst i agree with the younger kids getting their game bonus and it increases i also made room for that in my estimations when i posted 25 players on $300k to easily cover that which if you look at 1-3 year salariesLike I said last night who knows who we're paying but what I do know is that in 2026 we need to pay a minimum of $17,240,957, which means we bank $907,419. In 2027 we must pay $17,376,689 and can bank $914,563, which gives us an extra $1,821,982 in cap space heading into 2028 on top of the 5% we may have already budgeted for, which would bring the total cap space to closer to $3m.
Now if we are pre-paying some of the guys on longer term contracts to help us reach the minimum threshold for 2026 & 2027 we would create a bit more space but I don't see how it would be around $6m.
Another thing you may not have considered is that all our 2023 & 2024 draftees get a significant boost to their base salary in 2025 due to the games they played last 1-2 years. All of McAuliffe Fawcett Trezise Lalor Smillie Hotton Faull Trainor Armstrong Sims Alger & Gray get between $10,000 to $60,000 added to their base salary + $4000 in match payments for each senior game. That all adds up.
We also need to consider that between now and 2028 we're also could be re-signing the likes of Miller Ralphsmith Ross Alger Gibcus Clarke Mansell Fawcett Rioli Green Nankervis Gray Armstrong Faull Smillie McAuliffe Trainor Banks Lalor Hotton Sims Brown Peucker & NRT. That's 24 players and just allowing $100k for each chews up $2.4m in space and I'd suggest it would be closer to $3-3.5m as some of those top end draftees are going to get more than $100k increase.
So after all that and even allowing for the departure of Lynch Prestia (won't be on much now) Broad & Vlastuin in that time I still can't see how we create the $6m of cap space you're suggesting. IMO I'd say we're going to comfortably have around $2.5-3.5m in cap space come 2028 if we're going to be paying the minimum amount of cap over the next 2 years. Still plenty of coin to be able to go and aggressively attack the trade/free agency market just as our window is hopefully opening.
Anyhow I think we've taken up enough thread space dedicated to the 2026 draft with cap chat and I'm going to leave it where it sits as neither of our opinions are right or wrong, they're just our opinions. I think we can both agree that Blair will be right on top of things as list manager and will make the moves necessary to ensure that we're ready to hit the market when the time comes
1st year top 10 players $130k , 11-20 $120k etc
Players that are resigning will get increases but are easily off set by the retirements and reductions of other in 2025 , 2026 Clarke , Gibcus , Mc Auliffe ,Fawcett ( injuries wont be big increases for obvious reasons)
Green , smith , Gray ,Rioli , Smith - They are just barely holding on to list spots so again very little if any
2024 draftee's are not eligible until 2027 and 2028.
You just need to look at clubs like NorF's & St Kilda at the $$$ they have been throwing around and its not only the banking of $900k a year for 2 years that enables that its that they had front ended their existing player to max whilst also banking the 5% after 2 years and 2026 being the year where they had the famous "War Chest" they just had to use.
But when you compare the Brisbane list to the Richmond list in what players would be getting paid just on the estimation its simple to see the difference is massive and how that $6 mil gets save ( and thats being conservative)



