Depends on the deal I guess. As far as I know he's on a minimum wage contract till the end of this season. If AU just offered another 2 year contract for similar money. Why wouldn't a player who at the start of the season was a good chance to feature heavily, be of the belief he's worth more than that.really?- O'Doherty, offered a 2 year deal in pre-season, hasnt been revised looks like he'll end up in Brisbane.
Turning down a 2 year deal and wanting to piss off to Brisbane Roar?
What's the point of supporting our young players if they're always sniffing around for something different?
Kamau and Mauk all over again. Sick of it.
Obviously I don't know really what contract he was offered. I'm glad AU at least did offer him one.
This is probably another example of the salary cap making life far harder for the clubs. There isn't a lot of room to move on things so if a player has a break out season and (naturally) expects their wage to reflect their value to the club. The club may not have the room to offer the player that wage even if they wanted to. Then they are in the position of hoping a high paid player moves on to make room. Which them places the club's depth at risk.
I've said this before, but the HAL desperately needs to reward clubs who put time and resources into development. If a player comes thru that HAL club's development squads and hits a certain number of games with those squads, their wage should be exempt from the cap until they leave that club. Imagine the side AU could have if Elsey, Kamau, Mabil, Tongyik, McGree, Malik (if he didn't leave for NQF), O'Doherty, Konstandopoulos, Strain, Izzo (if he didn't join CCM) were all part of the squad but not included in the cap! The would leave the 2.7m (or whatever it is now) to spend on about 10 players.
But obviously that extra money needs to come from somewhere and that's where I believe locking these talented kids into longer deals will pay for it's self. If they stay and perform. You'll have more fans contacted with the club seeing their young stars become home town heroes. Or they stay till a decent offer from abroad comes and clubs get more significant transfer fees to the re-invest back into the next talented youth. Part of the Mabil transfer fee goes into keeping Kamau here longer. Then the Kamau fee partly goes towards keeping McGree here longer and so on.