Jon Lowe left for a promotion not because of staffing cuts..
I didn’t say specifically that Lowe left for that reason. It was a generalisation based upon our financial predicament.
You're arguing that we might'nt have the money to progress academy contacts to senior contracts-that would be an increase of about £10k yet we can find the salary of loan players and other clubs senior rejects such as Robinson, Drissell Crawley and Sowter. With a financial model like that we'd deserve to be in financial mire.
It’s quite a regular occurrence during any loan in team sport that the parent club may pay part of a particular players contract. If a player is coming from a club looking to lessen their own financial burden, it may well be that we, as the loaning club would benefit from ‘preferential terms’.
As for the ‘increase of about £10k’, there’s a minimum wage in cricket and the figure from a couple of years ago (pre-pandemic) from memory was £27k a season. The figure for an academy player was a little over half of that and the key thing to note about it, was that two pretty influential factors impacted when a club would have to pay the full wage. One was age (although I forget the actual numbers) and the other was on appearances made. Which could go a long way to explain why we would release academy prospects as opposed to signing them to a senior deal AND also why more academy lads aren’t getting appearances in the senior side.
Furthermore, players on a short term deal would potentially come under a different banner entirely, there’s a band as I understand it for trialists and that’s more of a day rate.
It doesn’t make it right by any means and I’d be as disappointed and frustrated as anyone if the club were making decisions on who to keep and who to release based mainly (if not solely) on finances as opposed to talent, but again, that is where we are at as a club. Whether we like it or not.
If Franklin has no say in player retention then his grandiose title is a complete misnomer and I'd withdraw criticism of him but I'd find it very hard to believe
I wouldn’t expect he has/had ‘no’ say. But at the most basic level, we have a Director of Cricket. If it is like it’s footballing equivalent, it could well be that North has the ruling decision on any comings and goings. It’s not uncommon in modern sport. It’s certainly more of a thing in US Sport but there are some quite big football clubs whereby that is true.
You made reference to Franklin’s job title, many have mocked it this last few days and I have to agree with those who say it’s a pretty ridiculous and far-fetched title. It does however leave room for a lot of ambiguity when it comes down to what exactly the bloke is and isn’t responsible for.
Ultimately on most of the points raised I don’t know 100%, I concede a lot of this is all just my own reading of the situation backed up with bits and pieces of facts that have come out along the way. It’s just another example though of where the water may well be muddier than some would like to believe and that is the entire point of what I’ve been saying on this issue for days now.
My overall position on Franklin hasn’t changed, but I would expect people who claim to love the club as much as they say they do to have done their due diligence to even the most basic level on this. After all, there’s plenty to get stuck into him for without making things up and jumping to ill informed and incorrect conclusions.
