The list management is not as hard as it might be for us because there actually isn't a really large group of the middle aged players - the 26-30 year olds as a consequence of the disappointing recruiting for those years between 2003 and 2008. We can quite easily back end contracts with players because we know that goodes, bolton, lrt, shaw will all be leaving over the next 2-3 years.
Hence internally (and I don't know how we do it) I'd be surprised if the salary scale was much out of whack. The better players and longer players would be on good coin and the system would be structured the whole way through the list.
The harder part is whether we can squeeze everyone in to the team who thinks they should be playing first team football. So far I think we've done a good job of running a club where young players come in, play ressies for a year without too much expected of them and then are expected to start pushing for selection in years 2 and 3. Thats only a problem if your best mate or that hack you played better than as a 16 year old is getting a run somewhere else or if other clubs start valuing you higher than what we do. but this is hard for other clubs because the value only goes up when they start playing first team football.
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