Gold Coast Titans’ David Fifita contract offer is a canary in a coalmine
NRL clubs are throwing millions of dollars at young stars based on potential rather than performance – which sounds like a dream until the blowtorch of public opinion is brought to bear.
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This is the story of the policeman, the coalminer and a very confused young rugby league player.
As David Fifita’s future was being chewed over by puzzled press at Broncos training on Thursday, an old timer strolled in with a bit of gold.
Paul Hauff, the rangy Test fullback who played 51 games for the Broncos from 1990-96, popped in to watch training.
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He was a policeman when he played and still is. Back in the day he had the look of a man content with his work-life balance and he still does.
When talk turned to money his mind drifted back in time.
“I remember Wayne Bennett saying to me once you cannot be driven by money – it’s what you get when you are driven,’’ Hauff said.
“It comes later. I‘ve never forgotten that and I still say it to people.’’
If it is true that Fifita wanted to play next season with the Titans then return to the Broncos then Bennett‘s words have special relevance for there is no other possible reason for doing that than money.
But not everyone totally accepts the Bennett creed.
Former Wests prop Bryce Gibbs, now working as an underground coalminer, has no doubts what he would be doing.
“The last time I went to the bank they would not let me deposit loyalty,” he tweeted.
One thing clear in rugby league is that money is not buying happiness – nor contentment.
Millions of Australians are seeing their stress levels rise as they face reduce wages or no wages at all in the wake of the COVID tsunami yet Fifita sounds barely less stressed as he wrestles over whether to stay at the Broncos next season for a $700,000 or move to the Gold Coast on $1.25 million?
The story of Mal Meninga – the offer he has made to Fifita on behalf of the Titans and his own career contracts – shows how much league has changed.
Meninga once signed a similar contract to the one he offered Fifita – but with one less zero.
Meninga was the game‘s first $100,000 player with a deal he signed with Canberra in the late 1980s.
The figure was splashed across the back pages of the Sydney tabloids and Kevin Walters remembers arriving at training where it was all the buzz.
But the difference between Meninga’s and Fifita’s pay days was that Meninga, then in his late 20s, had been a representative star for almost a decade.
He could handle the pressure. Even if he failed there was a sense that he had paid his dues for the club.
Now players like Ben Hunt, Ash Taylor and Anthony Milford – and 20-year-old Fifita – are getting the deals for what they are expected to do rather than what they have done.
If you don‘t reckon they are pressurised have a look at their faces.
Sometimes you‘d rather be down a coal mine.