The alternative to dishonesty is honesty.
As chopah says, the real issue isn't player payments at NL level, it's player payments at regional level which are unsustainable, and the reason it "spreads" is the fudge factor between professional and amateur football in this country.
There appear to be three mutually contradictory facts here:
1) We can't have a good-quality NL without paying top players "more than expenses", i.e. without pro players under FIFA definition.
2) The NL has to remain officially "amateur" because of the exemption for the Nix / pokie funding / young people wanting to play US college football.
3) Player payments at regional-league level are unsustainable.
Payments at regional level are sustainable if the source of the funding continues and is happy eg Olympic have paid players for years and can be considered sustainable thanks to their generous supporters - the problem is for the clubs that it isn't sustainable (ie without the money or supporters with money) for trying to compete for the same players, but thats not a lot different from professional leagues where some clubs have a lot more money than others.
Have a second level Christchurch team doing it at the moment to try get back into the MPL https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/62373223/th...
