New NRL is a bland exercise in box-ticking that misses the spirit of the Simply the Best campaign
Perhaps we should give them credit for aiming high – but this new NRL ad is a bland, politically correct gesture from an organisation losing touch with the majority of the game’s fans. WATCH THE AD HERE.
Opinion
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In attempting to be courageous and visionary the NRL’s new ad has failed miserably.
It is neither courageous nor visionary.
Instead the new ad is stale and cliched and, if you wanted to insult high schoolers, nothing better than ninth graders could trot out in film class.
It contains none of the daring of the original ad, which took tremendous early vision from the game’s then-boss, John Quayle, and then required courage to see it through.
If ever there was a metaphor for the game today …
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Once Quayle recognised that the game needed to go in a new direction to find a new audience, and Quayle convinced Tina Turner’s manager Roger Davies What You Get Is What You See should be the new anthem, the great shadow of Rex Mossop nearly killed it all.
Mossop, then the game’s biggest media figure, called Quayle with a question that sounded much more like a threat.
“Tell me it isn’t true,” he said. He’d heard an American grandmother was going to be the new face of the game, which isn’t quite how he actually said it, and he did not think it was a particularly good idea.
Quayle played dumb to Mossop, saying he wasn’t sure, but within hours others inside League headquarters grew terrified of the media backlash and urged Quayle to scrap it and go with something more traditional, more familiar and easier to like.
It was going to cost them their job, they said.
Quayle refused, saying, “I’ll stake my job on it.”
It took only days for the ad to become the benchmark around the world for how to sell a sport. The following year, 1990, the game launched Turner singing Simply The Best and the game went to another level again.
The NRL has re-launched Turner’s song to commemorate the 30th anniversary.
It is with some reluctance that a hand goes up today to admit that I was part of a small committee, along with several other league journalists, asked by the NRL to contribute storylines from the past 30 years for the ad.
I will leave it to the others to confess their role. The smart ones will admit nothing.
Perhaps that is why the ad actually looks like it was put together by committees and interest groups.
It looks like a box-ticking exercise. Bland, politically correct gestures from an NRL losing touch with the great majority of the game’s fans as it continues its blind path towards irrelevance.
It is a dangerous path they follow, ignoring the great majority of its fans.
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“A big moment for equality …” says the voiceover, while also showing a photograph of Women’s State of Origin couple Karina Brown (Queensland) and Vanessa Foliaki (NSW) kissing after the game.
Then up pops Macklemore, involved in rugby league for, oh, about 15 minutes tops, to take his place as another significant part of the past 30 years.
If there was a minority that was missed the NRL will be deeply depressed.
Meanwhile, forget about those who have volunteered a lifetime to the game, a great majority who once believed they were actually part of what was good in the game.
No, they remain unrepresented now, unless that is them in generic crowd shots, or perhaps marching down George St in support of the banished Rabbitohs, their moment swathed in anger.
The Super League war gets a start, another cause for division.
In all, it is an angry ad, highlighting everything that has or does divide our society. It overlooks the years of hard work many good people did to make rugby league an inclusive game, a game that actually united communities.
So Latrell Mitchell’s protest is recognised, a proud Mitchell dominating the ad while draped in the Aboriginal flag.
The actual reality, that indigenous players almost always bring a light to children’s eyes, that the women’s competition is so far ahead of its AFL rival, goes unrecognised as the game chooses to focus on other aspects of their contribution.
Rather than unite the game, as Turner’s ad once did, this ad creates the thought that there is separation.
Turner’s original ads were so outstanding you could dim the sound and it still visually stirred.
Turn down the sound on this one and by the end of it you will be angry enough to kick in your television set.
No, after 30 years all that survives is the power of Turner’s song.
The original ad made you feel a part of rugby league.
It was courageous and visionary and it made you feel good for being a part of it.
This one does not.