Yes, you can. Lots of players have back-ended deals. For example, the several Sharks players who deferred payments to help the cap have effectively re-negotiated their contract to become back-loaded.
This assumption/misunderstanding seems to pop up from time to time on this forum. It's just not true. There are limits to the back/front loading of a contract but some variation year to year is common.
Okay sure, what I meant was the NRL does not want to approve significantly back ended deals, not that nobody can ever have an extra dollar on year two than they had on year one.
Renegotiating an existing contract is a bit different and probably looked on a bit more favourably than many back ended deals.
For example if Josh Dugan moved from 850kx4 to 850k, 750k, 950k, 850k or something that is very different to signing a new player for like 600k, 800k, 1m, 1m. Especially when both your contract offer and players market value suggest that 600k is well below their worth. Just because a players contract may look 'back-ended' also doesn't necessarily mean that is what the intention was either. For example small staggered rises for a young player in anticipation of expected rise in value are very different again to forking out **** all to lure a suddenly off contract star to your team before you can afford them by making it up to them later.
The information that has been suggested is that we lodged a back ended deal for Rudolf which was rejected by the NRL so we have signed him for just one year with a handshake agreement to give him a longer better deal soon.
Quite possibly also the same thing for Talakai even though he sold it well by saying he wanted a 1 year deal to stay hungry.
The club added the following comment to the Trindall re-signing announcement - so as discussed Xerri does not count in the squad.
"With his re-signing Trindall becomes the 28th player on the Sharks top 30 roster, leaving two places to fill for 2021."
So if he is found innocent what happens to his contract, his top 30 spot and the money we are supposedly holding for him?
Presumably all straight away becomes money spent on cap and top 30 spot assigned which makes it questionable whether we can fill that spot or spend that money before we have a definitive answer on him.