Hawthorn coach Sam Mitchell believes the limitations of the AFL’s soft cap has contributed to the departures of Alastair Clarkson and Damien Hardwick.
The AFL slashed the soft cap, limiting club spending on coaches, administrators, football department personnel, doctors, physios and more, to get through the COVID pandemic.
However, it still sits below 75 per cent of pre-pandemic levels, while players and AFL administrators are now earning more than ever.
Mitchell, who is in his second season as Hawthorn coach, believes the stresses caused by the soft cap need to be addressed.
“Personally at this stage, I’m very early in the job, and I love it. I worked for 10 years trying to prepare myself for this type of thing,” the Hawks coach told SEN Breakfast.
“I recognise that a lot of stresses come with it and there are things that jump on your plate pretty quickly.
“I think when we look back, the AFL has done such a brilliant job since 2020 and the game has been able to hold up and some people have had to pay for that, but I think the AFL has done a really good job.
“It’s a bit of a wake-up call around the stresses given we’ve had two of our most senior experienced coaches stepping down because of the stress of the job.
“The soft cap right now is about 72 per cent of what it was in 2019, whereas the players are up around 107 (per cent of where it was) and the AFL executives are around 110.
“All their salaries have gone up and I think it’s time to catch everyone else up now that the game is in a good spot.”
Mitchell believes the cap going up would help retain key people within football clubs.
“Yes, absolutely (the soft cap has contributed to coaches leaving). I had a good chat with (Head of Football) Rob McCartney because there’s talk about adding more money to the cap and what we would actually do with an increase in the soft cap and it would really be around increasing your workforce to try and take some workload off some of your current people,” he continued.
“We see the head coaches because they’re public figures, but it doesn’t count the assistant coaches and the analysts and administrators who are all going through the same level of competition and fight for being better than the next team. Every aspect of your club goes through the same thing.
“It’s a challenging industry to be in, but it’s so rewarding when you get a result like we did on the weekend and we want to make sure we can keep the best people in it.”