- Apr 5, 2016
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Completely understand the view and honestly I've gone a bit back and forth with where I stand. Ultimately, I just think the clubs are paying the players to play - if they've been ruled out due to circumstances out of their control, then that goes beyond what I think is a reasonable risk.I think there needs to be some factor of the risk with signing any contract built into it. A contract, particularly a multi-year deal, carries uncertainty including form, player behaviour and injury risk.
A player can be badly injured, to the extent that their playing career is impacted significantly, without being formally medically retired - meaning the line between a medical retirement and a player driven retirement or substantially drop in output is too large when it comes to salary cap if you remove it all for a medical retirement.
I'm not sure what the perfect split would be, but in my mind there needs to be some % of the remaining contract carried by the club themselves within the cap.
Especially when you look at young O'Driscoll, it was one hit, one collision and one contest.