Why NRL can’t afford players demands as CBA stalemate gets ugly
WHO wins in the NRL’s standoff with the RLPA decides the future of this game. It is a game of bluff and its impact on the league could be catastrophic, Paul Kent writes.
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THEY look out the window across the park and here he comes, walking.
Graham Annesley, the Titans chief executive, is old-school rugby league.
He came through when the game was run on three small coins and a mountain of goodwill and somehow made it work.
Every time the chief executives meet in Sydney and Annesley flies down from the Gold Coast like we’d expect.
Once he lands, though, it changes.
Unlike some members of this current administration who sail rivers of gold when travelling, Annesley — once the NRL’s chief operating officer — remembers a leaner time and refuses to give in to new money.
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He catches a train from the airport to Central, not a cab, and then he walks from the train station up Foveaux St and across Moore Park to League Central.
He is a man of remarkable consistency. The day he finally pulled something out of his lunch box that was not a tomato sauce on white bread sandwich many around him went into slow shock.
For Annesley, in charge of a club in financial stress, the $3 million gap between the salary cap and club funding means everything.
“It is absolutely critical,” he says.
This Monday and Tuesday the NRL met the Rugby League Players Association but they got no closer to even agreeing to a model, let alone sort out some of the serious stuff like next year’s salary cap.
If the numbers the NRL presented are correct, and you have to hope they come from an independent auditor because nothing they say can be taken at face value anymore, it is hard to see how the game can afford the players’ demands.
Only two clubs, Brisbane and Souths, made a profit last year. The NRL’s proposal would give the clubs about a $3 million gap to run their business over paying their players, immediately making about half the clubs profitable.
Cameron Smith held his gun to the NRL’s eyes two days before Origin I when he criticised the League’s refusal to consider what it believes is fair payment. His words need to be revisited.
“There’s been a forecast of between $400 and $700 million that the game is going to bring in every year for the next five,” Smith said.
“You give the clubs 130 per cent funding, the game is left with $192 million to run the game — that is working on $400 million coming in.
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“Surely that is enough. If you can’t run a game with $192 million that’s a fair concern. Is the wrong administration in or are they spending money badly?”
It was a fair concern.
Yet Smith angered head office. Todd Greenberg and Ian Prendergast exchanged harsh words as the NRL chief executive believed the RLPA boss loaded Smith with slanted information.
Smith spoke to the low figure. The NRL has budgeted on the game making an average $730 million a year in total revenue — which would deliver the players a $13.2 million salary cap, according to their demands.
That eliminates the margin between club grants and them paying their players.
The RLPA counters by saying the NRL should pay the $3 million gap on top of that new salary cap. The NRL asks from where? It argues there is no more money after this.
The RLPA does not trust the NRL. The union believes there is hidden money the NRL is not releasing.
That big grey area is what Smith talks to. Few agree the NRL is doing a good job spending its funds.
Who wins, right there, decides the future of this game. It is a game of bluff and its impact on the competition could be catastrophic.
The easiest way to understand it is to follow simple math.
An NRL club last year received its $8 million grant from the NRL to cover the salary cap and it all went into the bank. Every club received the same, players got paid.
The club also banked $5.3 million in sponsorship, another $2.2 million in memberships, $1.1 million in game-day events and $1.3 million in merchandise, generating magnificent revenue of $17.9 million.
But the club spent $23.3 million.
So its leagues club, according to the charter, made up the difference of $5.4 million.
But the RLPA proposal is for total NRL revenue. Broken down, it means leagues club revenue is not included but the leagues club funding of football clubs is included.
So despite that $5.4 million being used to make up the budget shortfall, with the players already paid, the players also want 29 per cent of that $5.4 million top up — an extra $1,566,000 — towards their salaries.
Which then becomes a $1.5 million shortfall on the football club books again. It is a spiralling cost.
Vital to this is understanding not every NRL club has leagues club support and if the right funding model is not made then other clubs, like the privately owned South Sydney, Manly, Melbourne franchises, will survive only as long as their owners want to continue putting money into a losing business.
By way of evidence the NRL funds the Gold Coast and Newcastle until October 31 and then they will be set free. The NRL can’t afford to keep them.
More, it can’t afford to bail out any club anymore and so if they cannot run their business at a profit — for which the $3 million Annesley speaks of is vital — those clubs will simply die.
There no longer is the safety net of the NRL.
It is a threat Annesley, used to doing a little with not much, knows is very real.
SHORT SHOTS
SHANE Flanagan knew what he was talking about when he labelled Melbourne captain Cameron Smith “referee Smith” and accused him of “getting off the line early” along with other professional fouls.
Cronulla got out-Cronullaed on Thursday night, simple as that.
Both sides have come to dominate the game through a stifling defence that relies heavily on wrestling and other illegal techniques.
The Storm knew as much to laugh it off.
“Every time we seem to beat the Sharks it’s never really due to our great performances,” said Storm football director Frank Ponissi.
“It always seems to be something to do with the referee not policing a particular area.”
Flanagan knew what to say: other clubs say it about his team.
To the heart of it, though, is the allowance from the game’s officials for niggling, illegal defensive tactics to decide the outcome.
Again, this is a conversation the NRL should have without the coaches.
It needs to decide how the game should look and so how it should be officiated.
ONCE again the game rallies ...
Andrew Hodge and his battles are not unfamiliar to readers of Telegraph’s sport coverage.
The former Gold Coast player left the NRL in the 1990s to become a sniper in the SAS but was badly injured in a quad bike accident and has been paying for it ever since.
You can’t imagine the troubles he has faced, not least of which was the Australian Army failing to give him the proper support all our servicemen deserve.
So on June 23 a couple of Hodge’s football mates, including former Titans owner Michael Searle, have organised a fundraiser at the Kirra Beach hotel.
John Cartwright, Joel Parkinson and Adrian Vowles are guest speakers.
Tickets are $100 each and can be bought by phoning Searle on 0403 678 132 or Ian Graham on 0416 110 334.
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