While some fans may have forgotten the dreaded round 13 rule and the havoc it caused amongst NRL club’s up until 2015, the repercussions of this questionable rule are still being felt in the NRL to this day.
To put it briefly, what the round 13 rule allowed players to do was allow any player that had signed a contract with another club for the following season to renege on their commitment and instead re-sign with their current club prior to the round 13 deadline.
First implemented in 2008, the controversial ruling was scrapped in mid-2015 following the now infamous Daly Cherry-Evans saga, after Cherry-Evans backed out of his four-year contract with the Gold Coast Titans to instead re-sign on a lifetime deal with the Sea Eagles worth roughly $1.3 million annually.
Here are the top five contract backflips in the NRL era.
2. Daly Cherry-Evans
When the notion of backflipping on contracts is discussed, the name Daly Cherry-Evans almost always follows suit. While he may not have performed the most significant backflip in the NRL, DCE can stake the dishonourable claim to be the reason behind the scrapping of the round 13 rule.
After making a name for himself as one of the NRL’s premier halfbacks over the first four years of his career, Cherry-Evans signed the biggest contract in the game’s history in March of 2015, a four-year, $4 million deal with perennial battlers the Gold Coast Titans.
Facing the prospect of losing both Cherry-Evans and his halves partner Kieran Foran after committing to a deal with the Parramatta Eels, the Sea Eagles came to the table with the biggest contract in NRL history.
Two months after committing his future to the struggling Titans, DCE and the Sea Eagles announced on the 3rd of June that he would be “at Manly for the rest of his career” signing an eight-year, $1.3 million per year deal with the silvertails.
Having admitted at his re-signing press conference with the Sea Eagles that he was never fully intent on joining the Titans, saying that he “definitely left the door open for this speculation to continue because, to be honest, I was always curious to know what offer was going to be on the table from Manly”, Cherry-Evans comments put the nail in the coffin of the controversial round 13 rule.
Inglis also promised to return to Melbourne at the earliest possible moment but he never did.
Might have been a blessing in disguise.
What about “salary cap cameron”? Loudly claimed at a press conference that he was staying with the Storm to be loyal, only to sign a highly secretive contract to stay. Could have been the greatest player ever but just like Dimitri and that goat, will only be remembered for being the biggest salary cap cheat in the games history.
Smith will go down as 1 of the greatest players of all time and will definitely become an immortal. He is still the best hooker in the game and he is 36 years old, nobody controls a game like him.
Are you a Queenslander?
Smith will never be an immortal, you need credibility for that and Smith has none. He will only be known as the biggest salary cap cheat the game has ever seen.
I thought Tim Moltzen welshing on Saints might have got a mention.