NRL 2023: Why players need a reminder in true loyalty, Paul Kent

For every star leading his team to victory there is a million-dollar player in the opposition failing to do so. Loyalty goes both ways, but so does value, writes PAUL KENT.

Loyalty goes both ways. Raiders continued to pay Jack Wighton when he was suspended for 10 weeks in 2018, writes Paul Kent.

The sports pages and other tomes of high reading say a man is worth only what another is willing to pay, although who said it first has long been punctured by time and salary cap scandals.

Still, you get the idea.

When it comes to life, we all want to play centre on fullback money.

In any event it sets up the argument for why Joseph Suaalii blindsided the Sydney Roosters on Monday and signed a contract 18 months out to switch codes and play rugby union, and why Jack Wighton blindsided Canberra a day later to declare he was going to take his services to market, hoping the market would find plenty of room for him.

In both instances, the clubs have been more than understanding. Young men, seeking opportunities to set up their lives.

Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii blindsided the Sydney Roosters with his switch to Rugby Union, writes Paul Kent. Picture: Getty Images.

Suaalii will finish this season and next with the Roosters before going to be a Wallaby for $1.6 million, then $1.8 million and then $2 million in his three years in the other code.

Wighton, earning more than a million dollars a year with the Raiders, wants to see if anybody out there wants to pay him more before triggering his Raiders extension before round 10.

The arguments have flown thick and fast around both this week.

No need to go down the loyalty route. Loyalty went back when car parks were still available and neighbourhood footy games stopped only once the streetlights came on.

Anything since is misplaced romance.

The old romantics will claim Wighton has been loyal to Canberra so is entitled to see what his value is worth in an open market, forgetting true loyalty goes both ways.

Loyalty goes both ways. Raiders continued to pay Jack Wighton when he was suspended for 10 weeks in 2018, writes Paul Kent.

For instance, no one has mentioned how the Raiders continued to pay Wighton’s wages when the NRL stood him down for 10 weeks for assault charges in 2018, which ended his season.

Those 10 games represented 40 per cent of Wighton’s wage given their season lasted 25 games or, to go the other way almost 20 per cent, worth several hundred thousands of dollars, based on a contract being paid over the year.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars for sitting on the sideline, through no fault of the club.

But what stirs more and more to comment nowadays is this notion of a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work, and whether NRL players are really doing their part.

Not in a commercial sense, but a footy sense.

Most fans will tolerate the big payouts if their million-dollar man is delivering each week.

Statistically, the game can be read many ways.

Which clubs are getting the most bang for their buck? Art by Boo Bailey.

Sam Walker flicks a long pass to Jaxson Paulo who draws defenders and puts Drew Hutchison over Thursday night.

For that Walker gets a try contribution, Paulo a try assist and Hutchison a stroke in the try column.

The likes of line breaks and try assists and forced dropouts are all markers of the true game managers and the men who usually command the big bucks, but it is not everything.

The NRL is not Moneyball.

The greatest statistic still remains an instinct; how much does he contribute to the win?

Once coaches start fossicking in this area, opinions often change. The chief difference between the successful clubs and those still trying to figure out what success looks like is that the good ones have worked it out.

Before this season there were only a few million-dollar-a-year players in the game.

Nathan Cleary is the best player in the game and signed a contract last year that, at the time, was going to make him the richest player in the NRL.

Even then, Cleary took significantly less than he could have commanded on the open market, partly because he wanted to save enough room in the salary cap for Penrith to be able to continue putting out a competitive team.

As well as collecting houses, Cleary is also in the business of collecting premierships.

He showed his talents two rounds ago when he took Penrith into golden point against Parramatta with a display of talent few in the game, at any time, could have pulled off.

He kicked a late penalty into touch close enough to give him a shot at a 40m two-point field goal to send the game into extra time with just seconds left.

Nathan Cleary is the best player in the game, and even took less than he could have earned on the open market. Picture: Getty Images.

It was astounding, so extraordinary, it overshadowed Mitch Moses’ effort in the same game that caused Parramatta officials to sit back in their corporate chairs and order big fat cigars.

After Cleary sent the game into golden point, Moses steered his team upfield, took a deep breath, and kicked the game-winning field goal, just hours after confirming he was staying at Parramatta for the best part of $1.25 million a season.

That is what the big contract players do. Such requirement is inherent in the money they are paid.

Small-time players carry no such baggage, and is why they eat beans for dinner.

Melbourne is a completely different team when its million-dollar player, Cameron Munster, is in the side. Without him this season they have looked aimless in attack.

Munster brings threat.

Cronulla is getting tremendous value for money from Nicho Hynes.

The Sharks had a prosperous off-season but failed to fire as they would have liked in the early rounds and then Hynes, the reigning player of the year, returned from injury and suddenly there were threats all over the park.

In hindsight, the Sharks should have been wearing burglar masks when they stole him from Melbourne.

For such reasons Newcastle must be worried about the ongoing Kalyn Ponga situation.

A ratchet clause in Ponga’s contract pushes his deal up towards $1.5m but the Knights don’t appear much closer to a finals campaign and Ponga is doing little to help.

Admittedly he is out injured at the moment, an extension of the concussion injury that put him out for most of last year.

Except for singular moments of brilliance, though, Ponga still hasn’t emerged as the all-round game manager — like Adam Reynolds in Brisbane, paid almost half the money — that the Knights have invested in.

Kalyn Ponga is one of the games’ highest paid players and is yet to emerge as an all round game manager. Picture: NRL Photos.

Suaalii responded from a week in the headlines with a five-star game against Parramatta on Thursday night that justified every opinion held about him.

The NRL’s problem is Suaalii’s performance again highlights that rugby union’s best development nursery for young backs is the NRL and more will come calling.

At one point, it seems reasonable to ask, does the game move to protect itself from more raids?

Wighton will stay in the game, but where remains to be seen.

But as he goes to market there is no doubt that at some point the Raiders will begin to question their own investment.

For every key player steering his team to victory each weekend there is more often than not now a million-dollar player in the opposition failing to do so, and often enough to raise concern.

Not only does loyalty, or the lack of it, go both ways in the NRL nowadays, so does value.

SHORT SHOT

A warning label should come with the NRL’s threat to turn the NRL grand final into a Super Bowl type concept.

At first look it sounds like a money-winner for the NRL.

Put the grand final up, let governments bid, and more money for the game.

Unlike America’s NFL, though, which has 32 teams in 22 states, the NRL is played in three states with three governments to compete.

And the NRL is the dominant football code in only two of those.

The concern for the NRL is what happens when, having sold its soul by forgoing the tradition of grand finals being played at headquarters in Sydney and taking the show on the road, the law of diminishing returns hits the game.

It simply heads back to Sydney, where all the good faith with the NSW Government is gone?

The NRL should think twice before it puts the NRL grand final up for auction, writes Paul Kent. Picture: Getty Images.

Can three states, with just three suitable grounds, and possibly Perth or New Zealand if you want to scout wide, justify the NRL’s plan to put up a bidding process every season?

In a country with 32 teams in 22 states it might work.

But sooner or later there will come a time of diminishing returns, much like the Origin experiment in Melbourne.

The first few games were sellouts as the Mexicans bought in to witness first-hand this strange game they play up north which, often as not, was kicked off by a genuine brawl.

Over time, though, ticket sales slowed.

The smart move is for the NRL to find the new Premier, Chris Minns, and find some long term agreement.

It’s a start that Minns is a legitimate Bulldogs fan in a household filled with Dragons supporters.