Paul Kent: Why the NRL would be dead without Peter V’landys
He may pronounce Rugby League a bit differently, but there is no doubting Peter V’landys has helped the NRL survive the coronavirus crisis.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
He calls it “ru-bee league” — the G is silent — and in what seemed a short lifetime ago he sat at a table and called on government to come to the rescue of this ru-bee league, and he declared the game would play on, and in his strength he stood against all the hysterics and cloud thinkers who naively believe it will all just somehow turn out okay in the end.
Rugby league got blessed when Peter V’landys took over as ARL Commission chairman.
Nobody knows how long the coronavirus pandemic will impact the world and the NRL’s small part in it but, if isolation periods are still being practised in three months time and the game is still being played, then it is safe to say V’landys will have saved not only the NRL but all 16 clubs.
There is little doubt that under any of the more recent NRL administrators the game would have bowed to populist thinking and quickly shut the door to wait out the virus, and when the clubs began falling over and the game itself went broke in three months time their response would have been the same as it was through the entire years of their miserable term: “Not our fault.”
Watch the 2020 NRL Telstra Premiership on KAYO. Every game of every round LIVE & Ad-Break Free during play. New to Kayo? Get your 14-day free trial & start streaming instantly >
V’landys satisfies the No.1 quality rugby league has wanted from an administrator; he fights for the game.
Close behind he brings intelligence and a contempt for populist thinking, often the blind leading the ignorant, which has riddled the game since the independent Commission era began.
Instead he practises in common sense and sound economics.
Yes, Peter V’landys arrived just in time for the NRL.
Not so long ago NRL types watched the AFL bulldozing ahead under the leadership of Andrew Demetriou and wondered why rugby league could not have a similarly strong leader like that.
Now, there is little doubt the AFL’s decision this week to go ahead with round one was heavily influenced by the fact the NRL was already playing. Wednesday morning AFL was set to shut down the season.
After a meeting in Melbourne, and a sneaky eye was thrown over what the NRL was doing, and by the afternoon the AFL had changed its decision.
The move by the two football codes is in stark contrast to the rest of the world where some competitions have been suspended indefinitely and some even cancelled.
Part of rugby league’s decision was driven by economic reality.
V’landys realised the game is not in control of itself.
FOOTY TIPS! Join Australia’s best footy tipping competition for your chance to win big. Add our experts to your league and join now at TIPS.COM.AU.
While other competitions around the world invested wisely enough to have money to see out the crisis the NRL was made vulnerable by the poor management of those before.
The NRL is over-reliant on broadcast rights which many within the game are realising pays the game too much, and the players too.
It looks increasingly certain that it will take just one suspended game for the NRL to break its broadcast contract and trigger a new round of negotiations with broadcasters Channel 9 and Fox Sports.
Instead of paying the game $360 million a year the new broadcast deal would likely better reflect the economic reality of the sport — which has failed to grow the game that the broadcasters gambled would to justify the agreement.
The potential for this is extreme.
Ballpark, most NRL clubs operate on an annual $25 million turnover. It varies according to club.
Of that, $13 million comes from the broadcast agreement while the rest is generated through leagues club grants, sponsorships, memberships and gate takings.
Poker machine turnover its usually resilient. Even in recession gamblers still found money to feed the Queen of the Nile. Now it is clear they value their lungs more.
Poker machine revenue in leagues clubs is down 30 per cent and will fall further.
Most clubs have looked through contracts of their sponsors and predict a bloodbath.
Why would sponsors pay for signage at games if no crowds are in the stadiums?
Every NRL team is already restructuring its business in response to the threat.
Junior employees are about to be made redundant. Executives are soon going to be asked to take pay cuts.
No cost is too small.
Some club bosses have told executive assistants that a packet of biscuits for the tea room must be first approved by them.
Under-riding all these, too, is the reality on the flip side that sponsors are already under financial pressures themselves, so why throw away $100,000 on sponsorship?
Amid all this is the game’s greatest source of revenue, the broadcast deal.
What if the broadcasters, on their economic modelling that shows what best delivers them a profit, believe a 12 team competition works best? Or a 10 team competition?
Under pressure of going broke, the NRL is in no position to argue.
Some around the game have even wondered whether the coronavirus is doing what the Super League war could not.
Back then, the code had two media tycoons fighting for a large part of their business and the fight to win saw players wages spiral. When the game finally came back together the salary cap was almost double what it was three years earlier.
Since then player salaries have always been uncomfortably more than what the game could afford without broadcast money.
The economic reality is players have long been paid above what they were actually worth, in a pure economic sense.
The slow-witted, like Manly prop Addin Fonua-Blake, who thinks he should still be paid if the competition is suspended, despite generating no money, are finally being told it is better to say nothing and be thought a fool …
The crisis facing the game is tough enough to decipher without listening to the ignorant.
Nobody knows how long the crisis will last and so only now is thought being given to the reality that, once it is over, the game might not look like it does now.
V’landys asked government for a stimulus package to protect the sport.
He came under heavy criticism
Since then the entertainment industry has followed suit.
Arts Minister Paul Fletcher was on a phone hook-up Tuesday where the entertainment industry asked for a $850 million stimulus package to save it.
“We’re seeing our industry hitting the wall and we need a cultural package,” said Live Performance Australia executive director Evelyn Richardson.
Maybe it is because it was the arts, which brings colour to the cheeks of the Left, that Ms Richardson copped none of the backlash that V’landys received.
V’landys was ahead of the curve.
Industry across the country has now recognised the challenges ahead and Prime Minister Scott Morrison is trying to navigate a way forward.
It was V’landys doing what he does. The great leaders are great for their time, like Churchill leading Britain through the war.
MORE NEWS
Revealed: The only man allowed on Leichhardt Oval hill
Revealed: The 184 player deals halted by virus
V’landys pushed through the rhetoric and virtue signalling like the undersized second-rower he was years ago in the Wollongong competition. Any country footballer can tell you determination always measured higher in such players.
That is why they were prized.
The silent G in rugby league is a product of his Greek background. Having schooled with his cousins, who also dropped the apostrophe from their surnames, I can confirm the silent G is heritage and not ignorance.
Intelligence was never in question in that lot, though.
Some have urged V’landys to practise saying rugby league, heavy emphasis on the G, to protect himself from the critics and satirists.
I want him to keep calling the game ru-bee league. When he finally walks away from the game his legacy will be the job he has done, particularly now.
And if he keeps doing the job at this level his pronunciation will became an endearing feature of the man who saved ru-bee league.
Heck, doing the job he is doing, he can call it Shirley for all I care.