NRL boss Peter V’landys should focus on running his own competition, rather than continually pitting it against AFL
The NRL resumed its season on Thursday night. But the unnecessary gloating from league boss Peter V’landys risks starting a code war with the AFL that rugby simply cannot win, writes Graham Cornes.
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Do we really need a football code war?
It certainly looks as if we’re headed for one if the attitudes of the chairman of the Australian Rugby League Commission, Peter V’landys, some of the NRL’s legends and sycophantic rugby league journalists are any indication.
The NRL resumed its COVID-19 interrupted 2020 season competition on Thursday night.
It was great to see live sporting action back on the television screens.
It didn’t need the gloating from V’landys and his flunkeys and his ridicule of the AFL, whose caution in resuming our game is based on the best medical advice.
So the NRL has resumed its season two weeks before the AFL is about to resume its.
Wow! We didn’t realise it was a race.
Well done you, but please give up on the gloating and the cheap shots.
We would have applauded you if you weren’t so bombastic about it.
It’s not as if you have the whole of Australia and its differing jurisdictions to negotiate with.
A professional game that is only played on the eastern seaboard does not have to contend with the complicated border restrictions of the rest of the country.
And in case Mr V’landys hasn’t noticed, those other jurisdictions have done a pretty good job in containing our country’s most serious health crisis.
Being able to resume your season two weeks before the rest, despite concerns from the medical experts, does not give you justification to ridicule the other codes.
All it does is validate the inferiority complex and envy that rugby league suffers when it is compared to our national game.
Peter, it’s called Australian rules football for a reason.
Besides, the NRL trying to pick a fight with the AFL is futile.
It might get you some cheap publicity, but it’s like bringing a knife to a gunfight.
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It’s great game to play, but not so great to watch, unless it’s a classic State of Origin contest or maybe the 2015 NRL grand final.
The game will never win the hearts of the wider Australian sports public.
Still, V’landys appears set to blunder on and ride roughshod over the concerns of the nation’s pre-eminent medical experts.
His next intention – to have crowds back at NRL games by July – has been met with a scathing response from the Australian Medical Association’s president, Tony Bartone.
“Put bluntly, this absurd and dangerous idea belongs in the sin bin”, he said.
Even with the restrictions and precautions that V’landys intends to put in place, it places the wider community at risk if the infection rate spikes.
It seems hardly worth it and smacks of the grandiose recklessness that has been so evident in the USA, Great Britain, Brazil and so many other countries where the epidemic has taken hold with such disastrous effect.
I’ve always admired rugby league players.
Even now when they so often fall foul of the PC brigade there’s much to like about them.
They’re tough, hard men who play a tough, hard game – the sort of blokes you’d go to war with, have a laugh and a beer with.
Maybe you wouldn’t be over the moon if your daughter brought one home, but they encapsulate working class Australia – east of Broken Hill at least.
However, despite V’landys’ attempt to alienate the rest of the country, we were able to learn a couple of things from Thursday night’s season resumption.
The most obvious thing from the telecast was the artificial crowd noise.
It wasn’t always perfect, but it certainly helped to create the atmosphere of a regular game.
It should also work for an Aussie rules match.
Most noticeably, or perhaps less notably, reverting to one referee did not impact negatively on the game or its flow.
We should reduce the number of on-field umpires as well because we have too many umpires in an AFL game.
It’s an unnecessary expense and leads to differing interpretations of the same game.
The AFL is going to resume with shorter quarters and the coaches are lobbying for extra interchange players.
The shorter quarters may not impact dramatically, as most quarters will still run for 27-28 minutes.
However, we don’t need any more players on the bench.
Coaches have to be smarter in the way they manage their players.
They say the game is quicker and more explosive these days because the players can rotate and rest more often.
I think that’s a fallacy.
Vision as far back as the early 1990s when we only had two interchange players and minimum rotations still show a highly explosive game.
If a good player needed a rest, he went to the forward pocket – a little like Dustin Martin and Nat Fyfe still do today.
The constant meddling with the rules of our game has not made it any more attractive because the look of the game has never been so widely criticised.
Peter V’landys can take credit for reinvigorating rugby league.
He’s given it a renewed profile and restored morale to a code that had suffered too many embarrassments.
But he should remember we’re all Australians. We’re not enemies. We can all take pride in the other code’s successes.
However, if he persists with the sporadic potshots and the hostilities escalate, just remember who fired the first shot.
The NRL simply cannot compete with the AFL.