Moore exit may help Brumbies

Editor

Brumbies chief executive Michael Jones has admitted that the loss of Stephen Moore could help the franchise keep other stars.

Moore announced this week that he will be leaving the Brumbies after 2016 to re-join the Reds.

Even though losing the Wallabies captain is understandably a blow for the Canberra franchise, Jones stated that it may free up room in the salary cap to keep other stars such as Christian Lealiifano and David Pocock.

"With Steve going we've got more crackers to deal with now… I'm trying to shoehorn, where you've got guys who you're paying such big bucks to, trying to fit the rest of the squad into a $5 million salary cap is hard," Jones told the Canberra Times.

"Trying to do the calculation of who do I keep, what do I do to keep a balanced roster is hard."

Jones added that keeping Lealiifano long-term was a priority, while he was busy coming up with reasons to keep Pocock in Canberra as opposed to the Australia star taking up big-money offers from overseas.

"I fired off the next round of offers to Christian Lealiifano [on Thursday] to keep him on a long-term basis and potentially convert him at the end of it into the coaching squad," Jones added.

"We're quite excited about that because I'm a real Christian fan – the problem is there's quite a few Christian fans around the world.

"It's no secret that I wrote to all the [Australian] CEOs to get dispensation to offer him a flexible contract and they whole-heartedly agreed.

"That's in the general dialogue of the discussion that we really want Christian to have a long-term future here. We're looking at every measure that we can.

"I'm trying to think of the most innovative ways that I can keep Poey [Pocock] here, including academic stuff, beyond just contractual… to look after the players so that staying here is beyond what's just in the pay cheque,"