So 5 visa players and a guest and a marquee outside the cap and a local marquee outside the cap and discounts for players that mature aged rookies and discounts for players with long service.
Why not just bump the cap to 3m and you have to fill 22 players under it and 1 outside of it and ditch all these stupid tweaks that they have which only benefit the teams that have the cash. Otherwise the competition will always be skewed.
Marquee Players – A Club can spend an unlimited amount on two Players (Foreign or Australian) it nominates as Marquee Players;
Guest Player – A Club can spend an unlimited amount on one Guest Player who must satisfy the prescribed marketability criteria as approved by FFA. A Guest Player is restricted to a maximum of 14 Hyundai A-League matches; one season; (was outside squad limit, not sure if that is the case now with changes)
Homegrown Players – A Club can spend up to a collective $150,000 on 3 Australian Players aged 23 or younger that have come through the Club’s youth system. Any payments to such Players above the $150,000 allowance are included in the Club’s Salary Cap;
Loyalty Players – A Club can spend up to a collective $200,000 across any number of Players that have given 5 or more consecutive seasons of service to the Club. A portion of a Loyalty Player’s contract value is excluded from the Salary Cap based on a progressive scale from 25% (5th continuous season) to 50% (10th continuous season onwards);
Mature Age Rookie – A Club can register an Australian Player that is aged 21 or older who last played in an Australian competition (eg. PlayStation4 National Premier Leagues) and has not played in a fully professional league for at least 18 months; (outside cap and squad limit IIRC)
Contracted NYL Players – Each Club can contract up to 3 under 20 Australian Players on the minimum youth salary. Any payments above the minimum salary to these Players are included in the Club’s Salary Cap;
Salary Cap Banking – A Club can access any underspend from the previous two Seasons to be utilised in the current Season, up to a maximum of 105% of the Salary Cap for that Season;
Relocation Expenses – Clubs can reimburse Players for bona fide relocation expenses (eg. airfares, temporary accommodation, storage) outside the Salary Cap up to prescribed amounts in order to assist a Player relocating to a new region for football employment.
http://www.a-league.com.au/about
So if a club had Guest, Marquees and Mature Age Rookie you could have 16 players only under the cap - of which some may have cap concessions due to loyalty and homegrown status. Could have a 20 man squad with average salary under the cap being about $185k