Corey Parker: Winning an NRL premiership is No.1 but then priorities often switch to money

Premierships teams in particular find it hard to stay together in the salary cap era. Every other club puts a signing target on the best team’s players. Even though Penrith have developed most of this side from their huge junior nursery, it’s going to be picked apart.

That’s how the NRL salary cap was designed. Melbourne have been constantly pulled apart over a long, successful period. Jesse Bromwich, Kenny Bromwich, Felise Kaufusi and perhaps Cameron Munster are headed to the Dolphins.

Now it’s Penrith’s turn. Last year it was Matt Burton to Canterbury. Now it’s Viliame Kikau and Apisai Koroisau to the Bulldogs and Wests Tigers respectively. They are huge losses.

It’s a predictable life cycle in the NRL. Players come through the system at a successful club and rise to first grade on a lower salary. They become the best in the NRL in their position and their market value soars. They win premierships and the price tag goes even higher. Other teams want them, offering more money and a fresh opportunity. At some point, most players take the money and move on.

While premierships are the No.1 currency for NRL players, once earned, they can also be a trigger to switch clubs. All of a sudden, with the premiership box ticked, money is the prime currency.

Yes, the salary cap bites successful clubs. But having achieved success, the players are often content to leave for a bigger contract.

No one can ever take a premiership away from you. And there’s only so many years to earn as much money as possible from playing in the NRL, where injury can end a career in an instant.

The only way to keep a premiership-winning team somewhat intact is for players to take unders on their contracts. And in the past five years or so, I’ve seen fewer and fewer players putting their hands up to do that. It just doesn’t happen much anymore.

Players are more money-focused than ever, so even if they win a premiership early in their careers, they often switch focus straight to money. It’s their career. You can’t blame them.

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Matt Burton won Dally M Centre of the Year at Penrith last season, on a premiership-winning team. He was pounced on by the Bulldogs, where he’s performed pretty strongly in his preferred position of five-eighth and earned a NSW State of Origin debut.

Burton gave up the opportunity to win back-to-back premierships. That’s the downside. But winning again is not guaranteed. Getting a huge contract bump to $500,000 per season, with an extension looming that’s reportedly worth closer to $900,000 as a key-position player, is a surer thing.

Maybe he’ll return to Penrith one day. But in that time and place, moving on made sense.

As I discussed in a previous column, the No.1 currency for NRL players is premierships. Rep honours are also prized, so players seek clubs who can help them get there. But when they’ve won premierships and rep jerseys, the next-best currency – money – can quickly become No.1.

I’ve got no doubt that Matt Burton would not have left Penrith for Canterbury after last year if it didn’t win that premiership. Having won it, that box was ticked. No regrets in moving on. Once you’ve won a premiership, no one can ever take it away from you. It’s currency that lasts a lifetime.

Then there’s Cameron Munster. He wouldn’t have considered leaving Melbourne until he’d won premierships. He has, in 2017 and 2020, so that currency is in the bank. He is now able to weigh-up whether to go to the Dolphins for top dollar, which the new club will pay because they badly need a marquee player.

Kikau and Koroisau will leave a huge hole at the Panthers, but they’re also heading to clubs that have paid overs to lure winners. The Bulldogs have struggled for years. Wests Tigers are a basket case. That all means more money for big-name recruits to leave a successful club like Penrith.

Kikau is a phenomenal player in the best form of his career. I’ve been really impressed with his effort areas, like kick pressure, in defence this season. He has elevated his game beyond the elite ball-running that made him a star, building himself into a complete player.

Koroisau is right up there with Nathan Cleary as far as how Penrith dictate terms to the opposition during a game. He’s an elite, Origin-calibre hooker. You have to cash in while those players are on your roster because you can’t win competitions without a big crop of elite players.

Every year, there is generally a five or six-player turnover on any given NRL roster. The better the roster, the higher the turnover and the more high-profile the player losses.

Our game doesn’t reward loyalty. It never has and I don’t think it ever will. It’s designed not to.

Everyone wants to increase their wage from when they started out in footy to when they finish. The reality is that it’s very difficult to do that at the one club, unless you’re a superstar player signing a seven or 10-year deal. It’s easy to be a loyal one-club player if you’re Daly Cherry-Evans or Jason Taumalolo, on $1 million a season for most of your career. I’d sign up for that! Guys like Nathan Cleary will likely be the same but he’s another special player who is an exception to the rule.

I played at Brisbane for 16 years and my final contract with the Broncos was for $300,000. I was playing for Australia and Queensland at the time.

I had opportunities to go elsewhere but I didn’t want to do that. I’m a pretty loyal person.

Loyalty was important to me at that time. Loyalty to a club that, since I met Alfie Langer at Brisbane Airport after a grand final win when I was 10, all I ever wanted to do was play for the Broncos and only the Broncos.

Sitting back and thinking about it now, given the opportunity to defect from the Broncos to another club for more money, would I go? Probably, yes. To provide for your family moving forward, money has to play a part when weighing up your options for the future. Returning to a wage that falls far below market price … it’s a tough call when you really need to set yourself up for the long-term.

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The defending premiers have lost four games all season despite being severely depleted at times. Penrith are the competition’s best defensive team on top of being brilliant in attack.

As I said, I reckon they’re morals for back-to-back premierships.

Their key players have had rest and recovery. Nathan Cleary had five weeks off then played arguably the game of his life against Parramatta in week one of the finals, completely shooting down concerns over how he’d return.

Barring Taylan May’s suspension, they have their full team. They sat back and watched preliminary final opponent South Sydney put in a pretty ordinary performance to beat Cronulla, notwithstanding the 38 points they scored. If Penrith turn up and manage to play their style of football, they’ll march straight through to the grand final for a shot at back-to-back titles.

The Rabbitohs have been there are done this before. They struggled at the start of the season with Wayne Bennett and Adam Reynolds having left, then they’ve come through to the back end of the year with a bit of confidence.

But the way they performed against Cronulla was pretty ordinary. They had 14 errors and completed at 65 per cent. Yes, they found 38 points, but it was a highly unconvincing performance.

If Souths are fair dinkum, they need to be a lot better against the Panthers. Even if they are, I don’t believe it will be enough to win. Latrell Mitchell, who missed last year’s Penrith-Souths grand final through suspension, will need to have a massive game to give his side a chance.

I’m a stubborn guy, so I’m sticking with my prediction from the start of the year: that the Panthers will play the Eels in the grand final.

North Queensland have had a wonderful season but having reached this stage, I’m not sure how they’ll fare against Parramatta in their preliminary final.

How will the Cowboys approach it? Do they have what it takes to seize this opportunity and reach a grand final? I don’t know.

The Cowboys play a style of football that is very much risk and reward. How will that hold up in a prelim final? How will their young guys go in such a big game? Again, I don’t know. Maybe they approach it like any other game, or maybe it gets to them.

If you’d said to the Cowboys at the start of the season, after running 15th last year, ‘OK boys, you’re going to finish third and play in a prelim final at home, would you take that?’ … how many guys would have put their hand up and said, ‘Yes please!’

That’s now where they’re at. Will they feel content? Or will it all work in their favour and they’ll just ride a surge of momentum into the decider? We’ll see who stands up in the crucial moments on Friday night.

I reckon Penrith would rather play the Cowboys in the grand final rather than the Eels. Yet I don’t think they’ll get their wish.

A GF appearance has escaped Parramatta in recent years despite regular finals football. Now they’re one game away. If they’re going to play in another grand final, this is their chance.

The Eels copped plenty of flak after losing in week one to Penrith but hit back strongly against a disappointing Raiders side. And look at their season as a whole.

You don’t beat both Penrith and Melbourne twice in one season by fluke. You just can’t.

The knock on Parra has been that while they win those hard games, they lose games they should win. Guess what? That’s irrelevant now. There are no easy games in the finals and they only have to win two more. They lost their one match against the Cowboys this year but that was way back in round eight, in Darwin when a number of Eels players were crook. The next weekend, off a short turnaround, they beat the Panthers by two points at Penrith.

So the Eels won’t have any concerns at all about that defeat to the Cowboys. I reckon Parramatta are in the box seat for this game, I really do. Mitchell Moses and Dylan Brown … are there two better halves, on form, remaining in the competition?

Yet at the end of the day, I just can’t see Penrith being beaten come the grand final.

They just have that arrogance about them; a good arrogance that champion teams earn. I’ve played in sides where, no matter where you’re playing or how many points behind you are, you still believe. You always think you can win, and that’s this Panthers side.