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Storm GM supports NRL Trade Period idea after free agency chaos
Nicholas Quinlan • March 29th, 2025 1:01 pm
With the Daly Cherry-Evans bombshell still reverberating around the NRL world, there have been calls for the NRL to implement a trade period to save player contract negotiations to a dedicated period.
South Sydney coach Wayne Bennett has led the charge on this recently, calling for the NRL to introduce a trade period similar to what the AFL has to avoid rugby league hitting ‘the self-destruct button’.
On his regular spot on SEN’s Dwayne’s World, the General Manager of Football at the Melbourne Storm, Frank Ponissi agreed with Bennett’s views but does not think that a NRL trade period will come anytime soon.
“I’m not sure if anything will get changed,” Ponissi said.
“There’s a lot of people that believe that we should follow what the AFL and other sports are doing and have trading windows at the end of the season.
“You know, we’re never going to have a draft in our game, but we certainly want to have some type of trading window where things are done because it’s not even round four Dwayne and we talking about players going to other clubs next year.
“The two biggest stories so far of 2025 is about two players leaving their clubs and going elsewhere.
“So, I’m not sure how that’s good for the game but Wayne Bennett was right on the money with his comments.”
If it were to be brought in, Ponissi believes that it should come at the end of the season and that it would need approval from the RLPA to be able to implement it.
“If there is enough consensus off the back of what Wayne said the other day.
“I think more realistically, the next CBA.
“Usually when CBAs are redone that’s when things change so nothing will happen before then.”
The current CBA between the RLPA and NRL will finish in 2027.
