A-League contracts start on June 1 (or whenever a player signs) and end on May 31 each year.
So in between the contracted season 1 end and season 2 start their must? be a further clause to cover that period that do's not accrue Wages, Sick leave, Holiday pay and lock them for the 2nd season.
Have a degree in Commercial law, but haven't used it in a while. My understanding is that playing football would be more likely to meet the definition of employment rather than contracting given they don't choose their time and place of work, don't provide their own tools (kit, balls etc) for the most part, are integrated parts of "the team" & I highly doubt that the payers are sending invoices to the club for payments. If the players are registered as independent contractors I'd expect IRD to have something to say about it - I'm not sure there's a single test that the Nix players would actually meet to be classed as contractors, other than some perofrmance based remuneration which isn't contractor exclusive anyway.
More guidance here: https://www.employment.govt.nz/starting-employment/who-is-an-employee/difference-between-a-self-employed-contractor-and-an-employee/
It's about the nature of the relationship to the employer. If you are more your own boss you are a contractor generally speaking. Employees get a lot more benefits and protections. If companies can get workers to take more risk and cost that usually suits them just fine, so they'll try to structure things to classify workers as contractors.
Tbf- we've no football and it is the contracted players thread.