Rugby league player roundabout is starting to read like a Hollywood script
With players changing clubs like they change their underwear, how can supporters be expected to stay loyal? Mike Colman asks.
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There’s a scene in the movie Moneyball where baseball club CEO Billy Beane, played by Brad Pitt, does a complicated deal to secure the services of a player from the team his side is about to face.
With the sides in the dressing rooms preparing to take the field, Billy is upstairs working the phone like a commodities trader.
“I can let you have this guy if you give me that guy,” he says to one club, before trading the second player to a third club in order to get closer to the one he really wants.
On and on it goes, a kind of musical chairs with the prize a player named Ricardo Rincon.
When the deal is finally done, Billy tells the CEO of Rincon’s former club, “Oh, and I don’t want him pitching against us tonight. Tell him to change his clothes and send him over.”
In another scene Billy gives his assistant the job of breaking the news to a player that he has just traded.
“What do I say?” the assistant asks.
“Just tell him he’s been traded and give him the name of the person who’ll arrange the travel details,” he says.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
It might seem like Hollywood fantasy but in the world of US professional sport it is real life.
Players get traded without any prior notice. Some find out they have been off-loaded to a rival on the other side of the country while they are away on a road trip and have to fly straight to the new club while their former teammates head in the opposite direction.
Former Memphis Grizzlies player Garrett Temple was on a one-game trip in Oklahoma City last February when he was told he had been traded to the LA Clippers, who were in Boston on their own road trip.
As he had only expected to be away overnight, Temple had packed light. On the way from Boston airport to Clippers’ training Temple told the cab driver to pull into a shopping mall.
“I didn’t have any more underwear,” he said.
For other players the issues aren’t as easily solved as buying a six-pack of Reg Grundies. They have wives and partners in jobs and children in schools.
Being traded can be a major disruption – especially when it happens without warning.
And not just for the players and their families.
What about the fans? How can they be expected to show any loyalty to the players who represent their clubs when the players and clubs don’t show any loyalty to each other?
Rugby league is still a long way from US sports when it comes to the speed and lack of consultation with which trades are finalised, but the gap is shrinking by the day.
If rumours of Kodi Nikorima heading to the Warriors, who the Broncos play in four rounds are true – and in rugby league they usually are – where will it end?
Players playing for one club one week and then for another – against their old club – the next?
It has already happened in the one season, when Mitchell Moses played for the Tigers against the Eels in round nine of 2017 and for the Eels against the Tigers in round 20.
What about players making a straight swap, club for club?
We’ve already seen that too, with the Sharks James Maloney and Penrith’s Matt Moylan exchanging jerseys last year, to say nothing of the great Wayne Bennett-Anthony Seibold switcheroo this season. (Can’t see them getting Brad Pitt if they make that one into a movie.)
Now we’re told that James Roberts, who the Broncos have given more last chances than a one-eyed cat, could play for Brisbane against the Rabbitohs on Thursday night and then sign for them next week.
Well, if that’s the case, I’ve got an idea.
Make it easy on yourself Jimmy. Don’t come back. Stay down there on Friday.
Just remember to pack plenty of undies.
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