Amatuer Contracts in the WOSL

[parsforlife]

BTW, I find it a bit incredible that many clubs are willing to take such a risk when at any moment a player, former player or HMRC can decide they’re expecting NMW payed, with back pay and a 200% fine.  And if one player kicks off, the entire wages will be investigated.  How many clubs have cash aside to pay that?

Its a hell of a chance just to try convince a mediocre player to sign for you over a rival.

[Arthurlie1981]

5 hours ago, ibenji said:

A professional contract has to meet minimum wage in this league too. Most players I’d assume are on amateur or non-contract registrations 

If you are a non contract professional you have no contract. You are signing that contract to play under amateur terms but as a professional player. 

[Arthurlie1981]

1 hour ago, parsforlife said:

BTW, I find it a bit incredible that many clubs are willing to take such a risk when at any moment a player, former player or HMRC can decide they’re expecting NMW payed, with back pay and a 200% fine.  And if one player kicks off, the entire wages will be investigated.  How many clubs have cash aside to pay that?

Its a hell of a chance just to try convince a mediocre player to sign for you over a rival.

But what we are discussing above, If I am reading it right, is referring to non contract professionals meaning they have no contract. That is there for players who are professional and don't want to gain the amateur status which you will do if you sign an amateur registration. 

[parsforlife]

5 minutes ago, Arthurlie1981 said:

But what we are discussing above, If I am reading it right, is referring to non contract professionals meaning they have no contract. That is there for players who are professional and don't want to gain the amateur status which you will do if you sign an amateur registration. 

Maybe coming at things from a different prospective,  looks to me we are talking about pro contracts, and not the utterly weird non-contract pro category that the sfa has made up. Said it a thousand times but we really need to get rid of this archaic nonsense, every club should register players with the sfa and submit relevant contract info(wether that be we pay f**k all or he’s or £60k a week) .  Our registration system is an outdated joke, a player is a player. 

Posts such as below made me think we were thinking of contracted pros.  Non-contract pros(a ridiculous term) can’t be paid a single penny above expenses.

On 07/07/2022 at 00:12, cmontheloknow said:

Minimum £1 a week for a full professional contract - players of professional status but effectively signing on amateur terms sign as 'non contract' professionals.

 

11 hours ago, cmontheloknow said:

I think players will accept £20 a week + expenses from club A in the WOSFL than demand minimum wage, the result of which would be playing as an amateur outwith all bar a handful of clubs. It's not like these guys are doing it for anything other than beer money.

 

[Lord Elron 44]

I think from my point of view . It's hard to protect your players on an amatuer status. But you can't necessarily sign a pro contract for players because you don't have cash. How do you protect yourself as a club

[Bestsinceslicebread]

41 minutes ago, parsforlife said:

Maybe coming at things from a different prospective,  looks to me we are talking about pro contracts, and not the utterly weird non-contract pro category that the sfa has made up. Said it a thousand times but we really need to get rid of this archaic nonsense, every club should register players with the sfa and submit relevant contract info(wether that be we pay f**k all or he’s or £60k a week) .  Our registration system is an outdated joke, a player is a player. 

Posts such as below made me think we were thinking of contracted pros.  Non-contract pros(a ridiculous term) can’t be paid a single penny above expenses.

 

 

Couple of things, I get totally what you are stating but if this was to happen, proffessional contract and all clubs paying the minimum wages then I'd say approx 60% of WOSFL clubs alone would cease being semi proffessional as they cant afford to pay the minimum wage for 16 to 20 odd players per week.

So what possible could happen to those clubs, either they would have to leave the senior league, or stay in the senior leagues and just use amateur forms and not paying out any monies.

The problems would occur that most clubs would be using amateur forms with no money or very little as most players might leave but they have no other clubs to go to who have money to pay, thus players would end up back at the amateur form club, thus hardly getting any money at all to play football.

Before the bosman , in the junior league and to a certain extent the senior league
There were two forms, amateur or proffessional
If you signed an amateur form; you were amateur and tied to a club until the end of the season, (unless there was a fall out and you then had 40 days before you could leave the club).  Money was never given unless you were classed highly and the clubs would pay money.
The professional form; you would sign, you'd get an arranged signing fee and a weekly wage but after the years contract if you wanted to leave you could no as you would still be registered with the club until they decided to release you and clubs, managers, committee would take it upon themselves to try to ruin a players career by not letting him go.

[parsforlife]

12 minutes ago, Bestsinceslicebread said:

Couple of things, I get totally what you are stating but if this was to happen, proffessional contract and all clubs paying the minimum wages then I'd say approx 60% of WOSFL clubs alone would cease being semi proffessional as they cant afford to pay the minimum wage for 16 to 20 odd players per week.

So what possible could happen to those clubs, either they would have to leave the senior league, or stay in the senior leagues and just use amateur forms and not paying out any monies.

The problems would occur that most clubs would be using amateur forms with no money or very little as most players might leave but they have no other clubs to go to who have money to pay, thus players would end up back at the amateur form club, thus hardly getting any money at all to play football.

Before the bosman , in the junior league and to a certain extent the senior league
There were two forms, amateur or proffessional
If you signed an amateur form; you were amateur and tied to a club until the end of the season, (unless there was a fall out and you then had 40 days before you could leave the club).  Money was never given unless you were classed highly and the clubs would pay money.
The professional form; you would sign, you'd get an arranged signing fee and a weekly wage but after the years contract if you wanted to leave you could no as you would still be registered with the club until they decided to release you and clubs, managers, committee would take it upon themselves to try to ruin a players career by not letting him go.

 Not sure what you’re on about on your initial point not all players need to be of the same status, you can have a squad with some pros and some amateurs.   As for hardly getting any money, I’d class 20 a week in that criteria. 

Talking about pre-Bosman you might as well be talking about all amateur Victorian leagues, a complete historical irrelevance which means nothing in current discussion.

[santheman]

25 minutes ago, Bestsinceslicebread said:

Couple of things, I get totally what you are stating but if this was to happen, proffessional contract and all clubs paying the minimum wages then I'd say approx 60% of WOSFL clubs alone would cease being semi proffessional as they cant afford to pay the minimum wage for 16 to 20 odd players per week.

So what possible could happen to those clubs, either they would have to leave the senior league, or stay in the senior leagues and just use amateur forms and not paying out any monies.

The problems would occur that most clubs would be using amateur forms with no money or very little as most players might leave but they have no other clubs to go to who have money to pay, thus players would end up back at the amateur form club, thus hardly getting any money at all to play football.

Before the bosman , in the junior league and to a certain extent the senior league
There were two forms, amateur or proffessional
If you signed an amateur form; you were amateur and tied to a club until the end of the season, (unless there was a fall out and you then had 40 days before you could leave the club).  Money was never given unless you were classed highly and the clubs would pay money.
The professional form; you would sign, you'd get an arranged signing fee and a weekly wage but after the years contract if you wanted to leave you could no as you would still be registered with the club until they decided to release you and clubs, managers, committee would take it upon themselves to try to ruin a players career by not letting him go.

I take it your last paragraph is referring to the old retention rule which was thankfully binned.

 

[Bestsinceslicebread]

16 minutes ago, parsforlife said:

 Not sure what you’re on about on your initial point not all players need to be of the same status, you can have a squad with some pros and some amateurs.   As for hardly getting any money, I’d class 20 a week in that criteria. 

Talking about pre-Bosman you might as well be talking about all amateur Victorian leagues, a complete historical irrelevance which means nothing in current discussion.

 

a complete historical irrelevance, even back then smaller clubs could only afford certain amount of money but back then the clubs could arrange to work with small fees.   Its harder now regarding rules of minimum wage and if it went exactly to plan yeah lots of clubs would be in difficulty.  Yes clubs have amateur and proffessional and non contract proffessinonal forms so if it did happen I can only see most of the clubs in the WOSFL mainly having amateur forms and some players on professional forms I can think of  a few clubs even in division 1 who would change the way the sign players if the minimum wage kicked in

 

[parsforlife]

7 hours ago, Bestsinceslicebread said:

 

if the minimum wage kicked in

 

It did.  In 1999!

[Arthurlie1981]

11 hours ago, parsforlife said:

Maybe coming at things from a different prospective,  looks to me we are talking about pro contracts, and not the utterly weird non-contract pro category that the sfa has made up. Said it a thousand times but we really need to get rid of this archaic nonsense, every club should register players with the sfa and submit relevant contract info(wether that be we pay f**k all or he’s or £60k a week) .  Our registration system is an outdated joke, a player is a player. 

 

 

 

In that case then the minimum wage does apply and any club not paying it is taking a huge risk and will be fined (as you rightly mention above) and outed publicly as they release a list of companies every so often (I am sure that Talbot appeared on it previously).

I do agree we need to change (get rid of the non contract) and what I would do is make a minimum release amount for amateur players to be transferred. Say it is £500, then if club A want the player they know what club B would have to accept and means that the rules cannot be manipulated to get the player for free. BTW senior clubs are the worst for it, we got royally shafted by a senior club for a player under the age of 23 by manipulating the rules to get him without pay any compensation (aided by the SFA to do so BTW).

Some of the worst clubs to deal with were senior clubs who (in some, not all) looked on clubs at this level with distain and had the view we want your player and we are taking your player for nothing. I had a club contact another player and ask him to breach his contact so we would release him and they would sign him and pay him a bonus to do so.

 

 

[cmontheloknow]

13 hours ago, parsforlife said:

Maybe coming at things from a different prospective,  looks to me we are talking about pro contracts, and not the utterly weird non-contract pro category that the sfa has made up. Said it a thousand times but we really need to get rid of this archaic nonsense, every club should register players with the sfa and submit relevant contract info(wether that be we pay f**k all or he’s or £60k a week) .  Our registration system is an outdated joke, a player is a player. 

Posts such as below made me think we were thinking of contracted pros.  Non-contract pros(a ridiculous term) can’t be paid a single penny above expenses.

 

 

You are misunderstanding me I think. When I said "Minimum £1 a week for a full professional contract - players of professional status but effectively signing on amateur terms sign as 'non contract' professionals" it was two separate things separated by the hyphen. NCPs don't get a penny other than expenses. The £1 a week thing was very much the thing before NMW when contracted players got £1 a week wage plus an up front signing on fee. Pollok did not give someone a weekly wage until 2005.

I have no involvement at committee level with any club so no idea how things work nowadays but I am pretty sure there are players happily signing for a grand a season at lower levels and would prefer that to the zero they'd get otherwise.

 

Edited July 11, 2022 by cmontheloknow

[Bestsinceslicebread]

4 hours ago, parsforlife said:

It did.  In 1999!

Didn't mean that way, so that's my bag, i meant it as its changing as in rising since its inception and I believe right now it should be more and if there are clubs who aren't paying minimum wage it's because if they were they would not be able to continue
It's just hard for teams lower down to but they are at lose levels just because they are and have reached their level and try to survive on what they have.

[cmontheloknow]

The elephant in the room really is that NMW will make Scottish semi pro football as it currently is largely amateur. Who wins in that scenario? Everyone gets what nobody wants. Would there be a reduction in player numbers due to lack of (even minor) incentive?