NRLW 2022: Major scheduling concerns over rapid expansion to 10 teams, Paul Kent

There is a growing chasm between ambition and achievement in the fields of women’s sport, writes Paul Kent, and the NRL’s latest move suggests nobody has noticed it.

A certain amount of heavy comes with any column written about women’s sport, at least by those of us unfortunate enough to be born with that pesky Y-chromosome.

That women will someday soon rule the world, consigning the rest of us to life in a test tube or moving heavy furniture, only adds to the stress.

That said, warning shots are being fired from everywhere at the moment about the growing chasm between ambition and achievement in the fields of women’s sport, and it might be worth a listen.

Netball Australia’s financial mismanagement – such that nobody can be sure the sport at the elite level will continue to be there beyond even 12 months – has put the spotlight on a very real but very difficult problem.

One the progressives don’t like to admit.

Most thought this impossible, a sport as popular as netball folding, but there it is, blazed in red on the balance sheet.

That the news broke the same week that the NRL announced it was supersizing its NRLW competition from its current six-team format to 10 teams next year, a 60 per cent rise in teams and wages and also running costs, was a silent worry that nobody picked up on.

Few have paused to consider the ramifications.

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Netball Australia’s financial mismanagement has unearthed some fears about the future of the NRLW, writes Paul Kent.

For one, the NRL has no idea where it can play the NRLW games it plans to schedule next season.

The NRL’s biggest thrust for the new competition is for the NRLW grand final to be played on the same day as the NRL grand final, a decision no doubt pushed by the reality it would maximise the NRLW’s exposure by sharing the day with the men.

With a quick look makes great sense.

But how do they get there?

The NRL was hoping the NRLW games would be televised as curtain-raisers to the men’s game, and any suggestion they would not be televised would create an immediate return that the game was disrespecting the women.

Only problem is, bookings are all full.

Friday night, for instance, Manly played North Queensland at 6pm and was followed by Melbourne and Brisbane at 7.55pm.

How could the women’s version of Melbourne and Brisbane, as the NRL hopes one day to have, play a televised curtain-raiser before the Storm-Broncos game if the Manly and Cowboys NRL teams are playing at the same time in that earlier timeslot?

Midweek games are also no good. Almost all the women also have to work.

One idea was to play the NRLW games earlier on Saturdays and Sundays, before the men’s games kicked off, with games kicking off before lunch.

The NRL has said no to that.

Serious questions still remain over how scheduling will work for the NRLW, with the NRL ruling out games being played hours before men’s games. Picture: Getty Images.

Fox Sports’ belief is the game should wait for clear air and be played in the golden months of October and November when the football seasons are over and the cricket has yet to really take off.

Racing and boxing have maximised this timeslot for years.

The NRL is not keen for that option, either, as the men’s grand final will be long over.

The warning for the NRL is Netball Australia, which dreamt too big, too quickly.

As other codes created women’s versions of their game Netball Australia rushed in the professional era, to a backdrop of slick editing and flash marketing, and silently hoped the safety net of broadcast money would be there forever, like rivers of gold, to prop up the sport that was clearly living beyond its means.

It now owns an $11 million debt and a “going concern” notice from the bank that risks shutting down the sport.

At the heart of Netball Australia’s crucial error was its decision to pay players on ambition rather than any financial reality.

Netball Australia pledged 92.8 per cent of its broadcast revenue on player wages without offering any practical reason for such a high amount, beyond not much more than they “deserve” it.

It was the fast road to going broke, and seemed an ill-considered bid to match the growth of the other emerging competitions around Australia, the NRLW, AFLW and WBBL.

The oversight on Netball Australia’s part is that those three sports are backed, and underwritten, by a men’s version of the game.

The men’s game subsidises the women’s versions, which so far are struggling to meet their own costs.

Not that we should give up the fight.

But it also means random spending, because it appeals to the vision of the progressives, is a dangerous lure. The games fail to rate highly enough to justify the cost, at least for the moment.

The further worry is that despite running at a loss the RLPA is already urging for payrises for the NRLW based on some notion that, just like in netball, they “deserve” it.

Netball might put the truth to that argument.

Netball, primarily a participation sport Australia-wide, and not a spectator sport, with no men’s competition, does not have that.

The recent Covid pandemic has forced almost every business around the world to reassess its spending.

That even extends to the pay-TV networks, which broadcasts each of the sports and which also airs a little show called NRL360, where I work. That information is released in the interests of full disclosure, although I have no say over what brand of coffee gets served let alone a say in how the network runs.

I do know, though, that a certain amount of goodwill was included in previous broadcast contracts, an overpayment from the broadcasters Fox Sports and Channel 9 to help sports grow their game.

The pandemic caused a full reassessment of that, though, prompting the likes of rugby union to head to market.

Netball Australia also gambled on this and lost.

The NRL cannot make the same mistake.

The NRLW began in 2018 with four teams. The NRL privately explained the four team format was to keep the quality high, believing there was not enough talent to be spread among many more teams.

It grew to six this season and next year was supposed to grow to eight before going to 10 teams but, in a rush of blood, the NRL jumped immediately to 10.

That’s five NRLW games, on top of the eight NRL games played each week if the NRL gets its way.

Somebody tell Matty Johns he might be coming on at midnight.

Benny Elias says the NRL could revamp State of Origin by allowing teams to pick some international stars.

SHORT SHOT

Benny Elias lit up social media on Wednesday night when he suggested that State of Origin could be revamped by introducing two internationals, per team, to spice up the Origin squads.

Personally, I think the idea would be a disaster, but Benny has about $80 million hidden under his bed in what is solid proof that he has a much stronger entrepreneurial streak than I do.

Benny has always been an ideas man.

He was the brains behind the LED goalposts that lit up Origin I and he won’t settle on anything less than world domination.

In recent months he has been flying all around Australia to meet with stadiums and football codes about bringing in the LED lights and right now a set of goalposts are on a train headed for Perth for Origin II.

Rugby is all over it, as is that other football code, AFL, and most of the big stadiums around Australia are showing interest of their own, but being a rugby league man all the way down to the bite marks on his hand, Benny wanted the NRL to have first crack at it.

The potential for advertising on the posts, which is the obvious next step once fans are used to the posts lighting up in the proper moments, is the next big step.

Benny might have to get a bigger bed.

I was with him the night at the Sackville Hotel in April when Mario Fenech, with Jeff Fenech, called in to say hi and about three decades of bad blood was finally put to bed.

The breaking of bread has resulted in the Elias-Fenech Shield, a Test match that will be played between Lebanon and Malta at Belmore Oval on Wednesday.

Originally published as NRLW 2022: Major scheduling concerns over rapid expansion to 10 teams, Paul Kent