Paul Kent: NRL 2020 is looming as the toughest season in rugby league history
Anybody who dares suggest this season’s NRL premiership comes with an asterisk will be found deep in the Pacific with an Early Kooka stove attached. It might well be the toughest season in the game’s history.
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Along with Luke Keary’s busted ribs, Mitch Aubusson’s bent wrist, Lachlan Lam’s rattling ankle, Jahrome Hughes’ torn groin and Suliasi Vunivalu’s broken jaw — was anybody missed? — another casualty emerged Thursday night of far more significance.
Once and for all, the asterisk was taken off the 2020 NRL season.
It wasn’t that long ago that many were declaring that no matter what the NRL did this season to get it going again, after the COVID shutdown, they believed the eventual premier would have an asterisk forever etched into their silverware.
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Not a proper competition, they said.
Immediately assuming its sanctity could not be protected, an impossibility, various ideas were tossed up to make the resumed competition more palatable, at least in their eyes.
Some wanted the first two games scrapped, some wanted a complete new season, some a round robin format, some wanted a 15-game season and some a full 24 round season.
The game settled somewhere in between, but even that was not enough.
Some suggested the NRL experiment with 11 players-a-side, some thought this season should be decided not by competition points but by for-and-against.
Some thought they should not be playing for any points at all.
The NRL held its nerve, though, and insisted the NRL would remain as close as possible to its original intent. A couple small rule changes were the only interference.
And that was enough. There will be an asterisk, some warned.
A small voice from these quarters said the more likely result, once the competition resumes, was the teams will tear into each other so furiously that by the end, when there was only one team still standing, most of this will be forgotten and the champion will emerge and be regarded as the true champions, the asterisk long forgotten.
And then Thursday’s carnage came and underlined just how tough it is going to be to win this season and that, dare it be said, this might be the greatest premiership of all.
Anybody who dares suggest this season’s premiership comes with an asterisk will be found deep in the Pacific with an Early Kooka stove attached.
This premiership should come with a bravery medal.
It might well be the toughest season in the game’s history.
There are currently 86 players sitting it out with injuries that have them sidelined for five weeks or more. Injuries sidelining players for more than five weeks have rocketed from an average of 3.97 per round in 2018 to 6.64 heading into this weekend’s round, just two years later.
The official figures fail to count the players carrying injuries into every game, every weekend, and getting through it with that special breed of toughness NRL players are born with.
It presents a tremendous opportunity for all those NRL teams still in contention.
For one of them, this season will forever be recalled as a magical season. It might even come to define their club.
The two least affected teams injury-wise are Penrith and Parramatta, who have so far escaped long-term injuries to key players and went into this round sitting first and third. Yet both have a story.
The Eels are in the competition’s longest premiership drought and ran last just two seasons ago.
Only a brief look is needed to understand that Penrith is creating a bond that runs inside premiership winning teams.
Around them is the carnage of a tough season.
The Raiders have suffered injuries to key players on top of a growing list. A few weeks back coach Ricky Stuart named the then-injured John Bateman in the 21 jersey because NRL rules stated he had to name a 21-man squad.
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They are not the only club.
Melbourne’s win over the Roosters on Thursday was measured by the absence of Cameron Smith and Cameron Munster from the team.
And then there are the Roosters.
Three players failed to last Thursday’s game.
Coach Trent Robinson did some triage after the game, sending Keary off to hospital, checking the bruises and bumps on the rest of his crew, and as he looked at his troops he realised that he has 11 players, more than a third of his squad, sidelined with injury.
A club in need of reinforcements, the Roosters are being pressured to play Sonny Bill Williams immediately now that he has emerged from his 14-day quarantine, with Robinson resisting the calls in the interest of Williams’ welfare.
Robinson knows of the cruel irony. As desperately as the Roosters need him their reluctance to play Williams might be what saves him.
Various reasons have been offered for why this season has been so savage on players.
Coaches vary on why, according to their experience.
The nine-week COVID shutdown served as an unofficial off-season and some believe the lack of a proper off-season, which lacked the intensity and timing of a normal off-season, left the players underprepared for the physicality on return.
Combine that with the quicker game brought about by the six-again rule and the amateur sleuths believe they are on to a theory.
The game-day travel combined with lack of rehab after the game, for those teams who have travelled a lot, is believed to be the other contributor. It could also explain why Penrith and Parramatta, who have travelled little, are perched so high.
Perhaps the toughest premiership ever won was in 1978.
Manly played six games in 24 days, including two midweek replays, to finish premiers.
Manly supremo Ken Arthurson later called it the greatest period in the club’s history.
It was a period that would go on to define Manly, and might still hold up as the toughest premiership ever won.
Having said that, this season ain’t over yet.
SHORT SHOT
In another of those odd twists that reveal an inability to understand the moment, Wayne Bennett continues to be part of Project Apollo even though he either deliberately ignored the rules or, bizarrely, misunderstood the very rules he was a part of implementing.
You couldn’t make it up.
As any decent fellow would have done, Bennett should have resigned from the committee but he is in an accusatory mood at the moment.
Not his fault, it was the person who gave him up.
The NRL has let Bennett’s confused and waffling excuse slip through.
He simply can’t be part of a committee designing rules he himself won’t, or can’t, follow.
This is the reality Bennett’s supporters don’t understand.
A COVID case in the NRL will not necessarily stop the season. But it could.
The moment the season stops players will no longer be paid for the rest of this season, which is now little more than two months’ pay.
But here’s the biggie: ARL Commission chairman Peter V’landys will have to renegotiate the broadcast deal for next season knowing he will find Channel 9 in an angry frame of mind.
Nine’s greatest concern about the competition resumption was that it would resume its payments for each round but that a second suspension would occur, wasting all that money.
V’landys gave undertakings the game would have strict biosecurity protocols, which have proven too much for some and which now threaten the game.
According to V’landys, if he is forced to renegotiate next season’s broadcast deal after another stoppage, NRL players will receive “a fraction” of what they get now.
That’s the reality.
They won’t be going to Grappa for any more meals, not because they’re not allowed, but because they couldn’t afford to.