The stage will be set for a lengthy industrial relations showdown between CA and players on Monday, with the governing body expected to outline its strategy for an alternative pay system in the first of two days of meetings with the Australian Cricketers' Association.

The two parties will come together in Melbourne amid negotiations for a new five-year memorandum of understanding.

The ACA has been in the dark about CA's intentions around the pay structure for players but has suspected that it would seek to determine the size of the player payment pool itself rather than have it automatically devised by a percentage of cricket revenue, as has been the case since 1997.

CA's position is exactly that, believing that the existing model is not sustainable for the organisation to pour as much money as it would like into areas such as grassroots cricket, game development, pathways, the women's game and club cricket.

That argument will be staunchly opposed by the ACA, whose negotiating team is headed by Marsh's successor Alistair Nicholson and who are determined to retain the status quo and have the player pool tied to CA revenue.

CA's intentions were slammed by former ACA chief Marsh, who now runs the AFL Players Association, which is at the same time trying to introduce a revenue-based pay deal for its players.

"CA's attempts to move away from a model that has been so successful are based on pure greed," Marsh posted on Twitter. "Players are not silly enough to let it happen".

CA board members dined with Australian captain Steve Smith and vice-captain David Warner in Melbourne last Wednesday night and the meetings with the ACA on Monday and Tuesday follow the governing body's own board meeting last Thursday.

Smith said at the weekend when asked about the dinner that "it was nice to see everyone on the same page and trying to get the best for our game moving forward".

Fast bowler Mitchell Starc said on Sunday the looming dispute was "not on my mind". "We work closely with the ACA and they've worked really hard for us," Starc said.

"I think the playing group are really confident with the way the ACA are handling it for us. It's something that the ACA and Cricket Australia can discuss behind the scenes and we'll just worry about the cricket."

There was a belief from the players' union side of the fence that CA were, in meeting with Smith and Warner away from the negotiating table, attempting to divide and conquer in their efforts to push through a new pay model.

The stance out of CA is that there is nothing inappropriate about their directors having met with the game's senior players, given they are their employees, and broadly discussing pertinent issues with them.

CA's position is that the percentage-of-revenue pay structure – whereby a sliding scale of between 24.5 and 27 per cent of revenue is tipped into the player payment pool depending on performances – is dated. Their negotiating team, led by senior CA executive and former board member Kevin Roberts, is set to argue that providing a fixed percentage amount to players is not a workable model because it only takes into account ballooning revenues headlined by broadcasting rights deals and not costs.

What CA will propose is that they set the figures for the player payment pool instead. It is anticipated that leading players, who earn in the vicinity of $2 million a year from CA, would stand to pocket even more money in the immediate future under an alternate system. However, it would stand to reason that the rises to the payment pool would not be as sharp as they have been when tied to revenue and the players would not automatically be eligible for a share of windfalls such as the $99 million net surplus CA banked as host of the 2015 World Cup.