Jack Wighton's deal with Souths under scrutiny as Raiders lodge complaint

The Canberra Raiders have reportedly lodged a complaint with the NRL over Jack Wighton's deal with South Sydney, calling for an investigation into the four-year contract. The Rabbitohs announced on Tuesday that they'd secured Wighton's services from 2024 on a four-year deal.

The World Cup winner reportedly left about $1 million on the table to sign with Souths, knocking back bigger offers from Canberra and the Dolphins. But according to News Corp, the Raiders have lodged a formal complaint with the NRL about the terms of Wighton's new deal.

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According to the report, the Raiders have expressed concerns that Wighton’s deal with Souths is “laced with third-party arrangements”. The report states: “Canberra have also taken the unprecedented step of disclosing precise details of their upgraded four-year offer to the NRL to ensure Souths’ deal is of comparable value."

NRL CEO Andrew Abdo confirmed to News Corp that Wighton's deal will be looked at once the league has received it. “The salary cap auditor will review the contract and test market value,” Abdo said. “We haven’t received anything yet (from South Sydney).”

According to NRL rules, players must be paid their fair market value in order to stop bigger clubs from stacking their rosters by under-paying big-name stars. The Raiders reportedly offered Wighton $4.4 million over four years to stay in the nation's capital, while Wayne Bennett and the Dolphins were also willing to fork out more money than the Rabbitohs. But Wighton clearly believes his best chance to win a premiership is at Souths and is said to have left about $1 million on the table in order to join good mate Latrell Mitchell at Redfern.

“The Canberra Raiders are obviously very disappointed that they’ve lost a player in the calibre of Jack Wighton, considering they offered $1.1 million for four years,” Corey Parker said on Fox Sports on Tuesday night. “From the start when Jack retired from rep football to leaving the Raiders, it just had a smell about it.

"It just had a smell of something’s not quite right. Now that the Raiders are making a formal complaint to the NRL in regards to his contract, I don’t think this is the last we’ll hear about this.”

Cooper Cronk added: “I find this weird and this could get uglier and uglier depending which way it goes. I’m not saying anything but the Raiders are alleging they want everything clear and clean and then if it is clear and clean, then Jack’s left for reasons that he thinks the Raiders can’t get him where he wants to get to. This could get ugly.”

South Sydney's salary cap smarts to sign Jack Wighton

On Saturday, David Riccio of the Daily Telegraph explained how the Rabbitohs could afford to sign Wighton without having to lose any of their big name stars. “A lot of discussion around South Sydney’s salary cap and just a bit of insight I can give you is that they didn’t sign a player from outside the club this season,” Riccio said on Triple M.

“They have gone with the same squad. They also never replaced Dane Gagai, who was on significant money in that marquee centre spot.

“They’ve basically been going with the likes of Isaiah Tass, Izack Thompson, Lachlan Ilias - they are not $500k players so there is money there. The other key ingredient is that through all that CBA negotiating and the guessing game of what the salary cap would be over the past eight to ten months.

“Well South Sydney undercut themselves, they went lower than the predicted figure so they actually have surplus cash because they set the bar much lower than what it ended up to be. That’s where they can find some extra cash to go after a marquee like Jack Wighton.”

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