The NRL can use its relaunch to save itself from the mistakes of the past
The NRL has an opportunity to deliver itself from the mistakes of the past and set a new course for the future amid the coronavirus pandemic says PAUL KENT.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
‘It’s D-Day’: V’landys reveals deadline to finalise NRL season
Sport Con: Bennett nearly busted breaking NRL promise
Opportunity and adversity are close cousins in sport.
One inspires the other if done right. If not, it can be a disaster.
Brad Fittler was talking to Johnathan Thurston last Friday and Thurston got around to talking about Mal Meninga taking over as Queensland coach in 2006. That’s a heavyweight line-up of league champions right there.
Anyway, Thurston talked about Meninga’s first game as Queensland coach, and of how he spoke in camp of Queensland’s first Origin players, and what they endured, and of how a big part of why they did what they did was for the Queenslanders in their past, with no idea what they would create for the Queenslanders of the future.
Meninga was part of that first Origin game way back in 1980. He turned 20 the day of the game.
Relive classic NRL matches from the 60s to today on KAYO SPORTS. New to Kayo? Get your 14-day free trial & start streaming instantly >
When he took over as coach NSW had won the previous three series and the future looked bleak.
Fittler skips from breezy to deep thought often. By the time he called in to Triple M the following day Thurston’s story had swirled around in his head, who knows what else it bumped into, and Fittler did what he can do and distilled into a solid paragraph of pure thought.
“Every player that played State of Origin knew there was a genuine reason why it succeeded,” Fittler said.
Fittler is the NSW coach but his comments had nothing to do with playing Origin this year or where or when it should be.
He was speaking to the players about returning next month.
“I see this as a similar opportunity to all the players that will have to sacrifice. They are going to have to go and live in other countries, other states, for a couple of weeks or a couple of months, whatever it is.
“In time we will be talking about those players in the same sort of vein and saying these are the sacrifices they took and we will be able to build camaraderie and spread what the players did in 2020.
“I feel at the moment a few of them feel like they’re going to be doing it for nothing but, I can tell you, if I was coaching a team in five years time or 10 years time, the first thing I would be talking about is what the players did in 2020.”
There is magnificent opportunity in the game at present.
For the players and the code itself.
ARL Commission chairman locked himself away in a room with Channel 9 boss Hugh Marks and Foxtel boss Patrick Delany, confirming nothing but the May 28 resumption.
Marks was difficult throughout the meeting, pushing for a short season.
The T20 World Cup starts October 18.
Marks wants a 17-round competition, including the two already played, which makes an October 4 grand final.
Fox Sports and the NRL prefer a longer season.
Friday’s meeting ended with the intent to come back once more is known whether the cricket goes ahead or not.
Sadly, Marks has shown no appetite to play beyond October 4 even if the Cup is canned. He has already told his shareholders the saving that will come Nine’s way if no footy is played, the costs falling with each round less on the draw.
The high-powered meetings will decide the NRL’s immediate health.
Same as the COVID-19 crisis has exposed the fault lines within the game.
There are numerous problems that have been masked by years of mismanagement at the NRL.
The broadcast deal was inflated, the salary cap, football club spending, all above what the game could sustain. Clubs were poor at running their business, caught in an arms race, head office unable to control them.
Participation rates are falling and get puffed up with hollow numbers from clinics and school visits. Pathways are a disaster. The State leagues are struggling.
League Central lost its way years ago and, like a bad businessman stashing a catalogue of bad deals, had no way to correct itself without also exposing itself.
A crash was inevitable.
In this absurd way the worldwide pandemic could be good for rugby league. It provides the game, right now, the opportunity to correct itself without having to suffer through the embarrassment of going through it alone because the whole world is also suffering.
The game crashes as the world crashes.
So it is important is to get the correction right.
The game was moving as one this week, with a May 28 resumption stamped, when RLPA chief executive Clint Newton questioned why others involved in the Apollo meetings claimed they were set to resume on May 28.
“We have to have a level of protection there and to assist with compliance and behavioural change,” Newton said.
“That’s just not players - it is industry wide.”
It was an untimely comment. It created pause when the game needs momentum.
V’Landys has held high-pressure meetings with the broadcasters, is negotiating a new deal he hopes to finalise next week, lobbied government in three States and two countries to get teams moving again and, when it all looked set to go, turned to face hesitation from within.
Clubs finances are so stretched the clubs can’t afford to waste even a dollar. They can’t begin facilitating all that needs to be done until they have a start date. The date has to come first.
The players will be better looked after than anybody in the country once they return to their clubs.
What’s left is to give a little back.
Today’s player carries a debt not acknowledged enough, the kind Fittler picked up on in his chat with Thurston.
They play the game in the era of the billion dollar broadcast deal and their truth is that this deal was delivered on the back of those who came before them. The money was earned in their past, not this present.
The negotiation at the last Collective Bargaining Agreement was built around today’s players demanding to be partners in the game. They argued they were the ones that put on the show so should be entitled to the big coin.
All agreed, and then the NRL went and put several players at each club on third-party marketing contracts to do publicity.
It was not all the players’ fault. Once they got their partnership they baulked at doing more, as they had indicated, and so the NRL offered them more money to activate them.
So last year one player, an international, picked up an extra $70,000 in NRL funding for media appearances. That is just one example.
There are countless others. Another international picked up an extra $40,000-odd a few years back while injured, doing what he pretty much would have been doing anyway.
At some point there has to be proper buy-in from the players.
Now is the time for the players to show that playing the game is not simply a transaction.
The old stories players tell are not stories of wealth, but of sacrifice and commitment above normal.
Thurston still remembers Meninga’s talk, 14 years later, and Meninga still remembers what happened 40 years ago.
The opportunity for something greater is here.
SHORT SHOT
Todd Greenberg was always accused of being a “politician” during his tenure as NRL chief executive and he carried it through right to the end.
Greenberg held a press conference outside his home on Tuesday and looked every bit the beaten politician.
Like, literally. Greenberg emerged from his home with his family and gave a stand-up press conference much like a dumped premier giving his concession speech the day after an election. Greenberg was a good man in the wrong job.
He said he was not concerned with the criticism he earnt over the years because, he said, he realised the job was “not a popularity contest”.
Yet that was his downfall and, some thought Tuesday, he was still on the job of giving “popular” answers.
For example, when asked what he was most proud of his during his tenure Greenberg gave two politically correct examples, citing Macklemore’s One Love song at the grand final as an example of the game’s “inclusiveness” and the innovation of women’s rugby league.
Revisionist history is an amazing thing. The NRL has never admitted that Macklemore was booked as a grand final act only after Pink was booked but then had to withdraw as she was booked to perform in the UK.
The same as it never acknowledged the debate over whether he should sing One Love or, to be honest, that they even knew the song existed at the time he was booked. But it worked out in the end, they believed.
The NRLW got off only after the under-20s went into the bonfire and several large sponsors told the NRL that if they did not get a women’s competition running like AFL did then they were taking their millions of dollars with them, so the NRLW was fast-tracked years ahead of plan, which explains why it was a four-team comp at the end of the season.
Again, it worked. Kind of.
All’s well that ends well.
Originally published as The NRL can use its relaunch to save itself from the mistakes of the past
Buzz’s top-50 NRL players for 2024: Four millionaires miss the cut
Phil Rothfield’s Top 50 NRL players for 2024 is littered with the game’s highest paid players, but four million-dollar men from the Rich 100 failed to make the cut. See the full Top 50 and have your say.
What Seibold’s revival says about ‘cursed’ Broncos coaching role
“It’s you not us’’ was the cry when Anthony Seibold was effectively shown the door in Brisbane. Maybe, ROBERT CRADDOCK writes, it was the Broncos all along.