Eagles scrap bush venture
West Coast are scrapping their pre-season training trip to Broome and will scale back their AFL community camps from next year to help meet a funding shortfall linked to new AFL equalisation measures.
Eagles chief executive Trevor Nisbett confirmed the club would effectively be stripped of $650,000 for the 2015 season despite expectations it will not breach the soft cap on football department spending that comes into effect next year.
He said West Coast had embarked on an internal cost-cutting exercise over the past 18 months to combat the reduced funding received from the AFL.
A $90,000 three-day training camp held in Broome in November last year that introduced the players to new coach Adam Simpson and involved heat training and game plan workshops will not be repeated.
The Eagles held two-day community camps in Albany, Newman and Port Hedland in February this year, but this program may be cut to just a single day trip into regional WA.
Nisbett said team travel expenses would also need to be slashed, although West Coast would not change their policy of flying two days before matches.
West Coast are planning to avoid any staff or coaching cuts.
"The one thing we've tried to avoid is people cuts, which really affects your business," Nisbett said.
"Yes, it (scrapping the Broome trip) will affect us because we're not doing exactly what we'd like to do, but we don't think it's going to have a detrimental effect on how we progress our squad to be a better team."
Under the equalisation changes, clubs will be charged a 37.5 per cent tax in 2015 scaled up to 75 per cent in 2016 for every $1 spent on non-player football expenditure above the set industry average.
West Coast are on track to rein in their football department spending and keep it within the league's cap unlike fellow AFL heavyweights Collingwood and Hawthorn, who expect to exceed the threshold next season.
But the Eagles will still be financially worse off, with the AFL to stop paying a $500,000 annual dividend in league revenue to the three power clubs as they have in previous years.
The Eagles, Hawthorn and Collingwood will also be expected to pay for the $150,000 increase in player salary cap payments next year themselves.
Most of the other 15 clubs will have the difference paid by the AFL.
Emerging power Fremantle will lose $320,000 under the same equalisation arrangement that penalises the league's highest-earning clubs.
Nisbett said the Eagles would look towards membership and sponsorship to make up the shortfall.
WA Football Commission chief executive Gary Walton said the financial success of the State's two AFL clubs was "extremely important", with any reduction in profits having the potential to hurt WA football.
… we don't think it's going to have a detrimental effect …" *Trevor Nisbett *
