Paul Kent: NRL needs to address why gap between haves and have-nots has grown so much

If the difference between the good and the bad continues at this rate, a number of teams could be out of NRL finals contention by mid-season. And that’s definitely not good for business.

The Roosters just keep on churning out quality sides.

Not even two rounds into the season and already the NRL’s new rules, widely and rightly applauded, have prompted a fear the job is only half done.

Maybe the time has come for the NRL to finally get it right and bury the jokes about salary sombreros and boats still hidden in garages forever.

Loose rules and soft punishments have created a reputation of distrust around the game that have been tolerated for almost as long as the NRL itself, enough for even the casual fan to joke along.

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The Roosters just keep on churning out quality sides.

But a reckoning might be coming.

The new rules have opened the game and revealed the stark difference between the competition’s best teams and those struggling to keep pace.

Most agree the game is quicker and the fatigue they encourage provided some thrilling moments in the opening round.

Yet Manly fans are still scratching their heads in wonder how the team Des Hasler trotted out on Saturday, close to full strength aside from injury and suspensions to Tom Trbojevic and Manase Fainu, was worth anything near the same as the Roosters were worth.

Supposedly they were, though. It’s in the books.

Similarly, Penrith looked several lengths ahead of North Queensland even though, again, theory says they spend the same in their salary cap.

The Panthers might claim they have the best nursery in the game but the Cowboys, with all of north Queensland, are not far behind.

The Storm once offered Ryan Papenhuyzen to every other club - there were no takers.

For years the NRL tried to throw off claims the salary cap was crook by trotting out questionable statistics pointing to the array of teams that qualify for the finals.

All while overlooking a stark truth.

Only twice in the past 10 years was a grand final played without either Melbourne or the Roosters involved and, of the 23 grand finals played since the first NRL season in 1998, 17 have featured one of those teams.

There is little doubt they have historically been coached better and had better recruitment than most teams, some of whom are awful at their business.

The Roosters showed their slick professionalism only this week when the NRL had no choice but to grant the exemption allowing 17-year-old Joseph Suaalii to play, such was the quality of their submission.

Where the Roosters and Storm are professional in all they do, other clubs seem to only ever find failure.

Melbourne, for instance, offered a young player to every team in the league at the beginning of last season in a bid to ease its cap pressure. Only because there were no takers did the Storm keep him.

The Bulldogs endured a rough start to the season last weekend.

Then, inside a season, Craig Bellamy turned Ryan Papenhuyzen into an Origin player. He is already one of the best half dozen players in the competition.

You cannot argue with quality coaching.

The flaw in their argument, though, is that their success does not belong simply to a special generation of players, or a coach.

It spans two generations and is now pushing into a third. The success has preceded current coaches and players.

Without descending into a tirade about salary cap cheating, the days of brown paper bags long gone, there are advantages the more successful clubs enjoy.

The biggest problem was once third party agreements, which the NRL has worked hard to reduce. Far more are denied nowadays than are processed.

So clubs shifted focus and now the problem is ambassadorships and retired players employed on coaching staffs.

Manly hit a low ebb with their defeat to the Roosters.

One ex-player is running around on a three-year deal that pays him $250,000 a season.

An ambassador, nobody can calculate how many hands he must shake before he provides value for money.

Unfortunately, the rest of the fix might take more time than the NRL has to give.

Figures from the opening round show an average margin of almost 18 points per game over the eight games. It was the second most ever, behind 2013.

There could be 40 different reasons why this is so.

The makeup of the draw gifted five of the six teams that most have finishing high on the ladder against teams few believe will finish in the top eight.

Only the Storm and Souths game pitched two teams considered definite top eight finishers against each other.

The NRL’s problem is that of unintended consequences.

The Storm-Souths clash was the only R1 match to feature two genuine top eight hopefuls.

Where the new rules have created better football within the game itself, from a broader view there comes a problem.

If the difference between the best and the worst continues throughout the season at the rate it did in round one, then a number of teams could be out of finals contention by mid-season.

And the NRL’s job will be to fix it before the broadcasters realise it, given the game is gearing to go to market soon with Channel Nine’s broadcast deal ending at the end of next season.

A hurdle in those negotiations will be fans turning off their televisions by round 12 because the shift in rules, exaggerating the difference between the best and worst, has created a stiff gap in the competition.

Ratings usually fall away later in the season as teams are eliminated from finals contention.

While the new rules have made the footy faster and more free flowing, they have also made it harder for the struggling teams to stay close and even jag the odd win against better fancied teams.

A more rigid application of the salary cap might be the first step to balancing the spread of talent, which salary caps were designed to do all along.