Rugby league must strive to survive player self-interest and a bloated head office
Every night at 6pm, Peter V’landys rescues the NRL from itself. But as the game careens towards a return on May 28th, can it survive the toxic influences that still remain.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Revealed: Latrell set to appeal police fine after Cleary cleared
Super spray: ‘If any of you f… this up you will deal with me’
The two most compelling sports stories on our televisions at the moment take place each Monday, when Netflix releases The Last Dance, and nightly at 6pm when Peter V’landys rescues the NRL.
One is a miniseries, one should be. You could not make it up.
Jordan’s documentary has emerged as a template for many elite Australian sportsmen. They focus on his tremendous talent and his greater will to win and they find the perfect blend of athlete.
Sadly, there is a bigger lesson being missed.
Before The Last Dance launched, Jordan’s first comment was his concern that behind the scenes footage would tarnish the image he so carefully crafted as fans saw the private and more acerbic, more vicious Jordan.
Jordan always understood the value of his clean cut image. This was at odds with it.
If that does not attract the interest of the modern NRL player then maybe they should look at it in the only terms they seem to understand.
Relive classic NRL matches from the 60s to today on KAYO SPORTS. New to Kayo? Get your 14-day free trial & start streaming instantly >
Jordan catapulted that image into millions.
Jordan made about $US90 million in salaries as a player.
Now, while many might say that such money is more than enough to sip on pina coladas for the rest of their life it is worth understanding that Jordan had to limit himself to buying only small islands, and put a strict cap on his restaurant chain, until he began to earn the real money.
Last year, Forbes Magazine listed Jordan’s wealth at $US2.1 billion.
Jordan changed the sports world when he signed a $US250,000-a-year deal with Nike and became as much a marketing phenomenon as a sports freak.
Everybody wanted to ‘Be Like Mike’.
Nike boss Phil Knight launched the Air Jordan shoe based entirely on this image and they all got rich on it.
The Air Jordan brand now pulls in about $US3 billion in revenue a year for Nike.
Jordan’s growth continued well beyond his career because people liked him.
Part of the fight V’landys, the ARL Commission chairman, is having with broadcasters right now is that the NRL failed to live up to its own billing when they renegotiated the last broadcast deal and promised a surge in ratings to justify the payment.
The NRL promised greater buy-in from the players to help sell the game. The players were about to be made partners in the game, earning them more.
Yet none of it transpired.
Some, their money insulating them from the need to do any extra, became even more difficult to deal with.
Others carried on with such anti-social behaviour that sponsors simply walked away from the game while the player went on unconcerned, because he was still getting his.
As the COVID-19 virus brought down economies across the world the NRL, primarily through V’landys, has pushed hard to resume its competition.
In the country we are in, it was not too big an ask, and the NRL looked to be finally in a position to return last week having worked the appropriate corridors of power.
Just keep your head down, the governments told the NRL, and they will push it through.
Then we had the Taree-gate, followed swiftly by a Tik-Tok dance video that won’t be appearing on Dancing With The Stars anytime soon.
Just as it looked likely, the players were threatening to undermine their own season.
Then they doubled down Wednesday night, when they nearly made a fatal mistake by leaking they were preparing to boycott a return to training if certain pay demands were not met.
Manly’s Joel Thompson tweeted: “Whoever’s leaking to the media, is leaking the wrong information. Money is a small part of the conversations.”
LISTEN! The Daily Telegraph NRL podcast is back — Adam Mobbs is joined by Phil “Buzz” Rothfield and Michael Carayannis to talk why Latrell Mitchell was hard done by, Josh Addo-Carr, Nathan Cleary’s omission of fact, Project Apollo and that Queensland Grand Final bid
The tweet was everything that is wrong and right about the game.
Thompson’s concern is legitimate, but he might need to look within to find the culprit.
Senior players with influential managers, among the game’s highest paid players, drove this. For their own gain, not caring a fig for the low and middle income players in the game.
Sadly, despite Thompson’s best intentions, they simply do not have the power to stop them even if they knew it was occurring.
The demand for money almost unanimously turned what was left of public support against the players.
Once again it took V’landys, the ARL Commission chairman, to rescue the day.
It is hard not to write about V’landys without sounding like a paid up member of his fan club, which meets Tuesdays at nine, but it is frightening to imagine what state this game would be in if he was not there.
He was at it again, fixing the kind of mistakes those in charge and those who used to be in charge have been making for years.
V’landys called it a “breakdown in communication” after a phone hook-up with the RLPA and senior players, saying, “And I take responsibility for that.”
It was a sacrifice more than an apology.
The failing was not V’landys’ failing, it belonged entirely to NRL management which, once again, made promises it was unable to keep.
Some weeks back NRL management told the RLPA that for every day the NRL was late delivering information they would delay the start of the pre-season.
It was an attempt to placate the players, to show them the game would not march forward with the competition before a pay deal was in place.
That is entirely where the confusion began.
It was another empty promise from those at League Central who were supposed to be getting the job done but who seem incapable of handling even the simplest paperwork.
One of them, Greenberg, is already gone, but more must go.
V’landys had no idea the promise was made, which explains why the players saw the deadline come and go and so, Wednesday night, made a decision to refuse to return to training on Monday unless it was resolved.
A little hurry up for League Central.
So V’landys was back on the phone trying to give the players some “clarity”, to use their words.
Before a renegotiation with the broadcasters, where he is fighting for every dollar, and which would give him an exact figure, V’landys has offered the players 80 per cent of their contracts for this year.
Given contracts begin November 1, and it is now May, 53 per cent of their contracts have been paid so an adjustment will be made over their final five months to hit 80 per cent for the duration.
Some argued it should be 80 per cent of the final five months and struggled to see the difference.
The maths confused them. By their maths, if it takes one ship seven days to cross the Atlantic, then seven ships should be able to cross the Atlantic in one day.
As one player in the meeting said later: “Thank God we’ve got Peter V’landys as chairman.”
V’landys has almost certainly offered the players a greater share of their salaries than the rest of the game and, when the players baulked, he told them he will have to slash costs at League Central to find the balance.
This is tough but necessary. And well overdue.
For years I have written about the exorbitant waste at headquarters, based on two facts the NRL fights to keep well hidden: they stacked their contracts with bonuses that were easily achievable, triggering annual pay increases, and they filled their contracts with clauses that mean enormous payouts if sacked.
High six-figure sums. It created a built-in safety clause against their incompetence, for each other, because they simply made themselves too expensive to be sacked.
But, as one club boss urged V’landys this week, “it’s time to drain the swamp”.
“It might be cheaper in the long run,” he said.