NRL 2020: Rule changes have immediate impact, Paul Kent
Peter V’landys is showing what can happen when an NRL administrator understands his job, listens to others and makes decisions for the right reasons, writes Paul Kent.
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It took not even 20 minutes into Thursday night’s game between Parramatta and Brisbane, the season resumed, to see what benefit fatigue brought to the game.
The football was fluid and engaging. The stop-start nature of the past was gone.
And somewhere in there was the difference between can’t be done and can do.
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For years the NRL administration has denied the scream from fans that the game was decaying under the wrestle, seemingly incapable or unqualified to stop it.
Then two simple changes created an immediate cure that might not be permanent but certainly puts the game on the road to redemption.
ARL Commissioner Peter V’landys is showing what can happen when an administrator understands his job and listens to others, when somebody has the nerve to be boss and to make decisions for the right reasons and simply does not try to exist by pleasing everybody.
V’Landys bulldozed in new rules, one ordering a six-again call instead of a penalty, to keep the game flowing, and then a drop from two referees to one.
For sure, after all that he has done in the past few months, V’Landys could have sat back and got on with the same game as last year, but he listened when Channel Nine boss Hugh Marks said the game was becoming less attractive.
He refused to be weak when the referees grew nervous and the coaches pushed back against the rule changes, saying he was listening to the fans.
For too long the game has been administered by men who did not know and would not listen.
The game has strangled itself under the influence of wrestling and the simplest way to eliminate it from the game was to introduce fatigue to the game.
The one aspect coaches cannot coach against is fatigue.
Some years back Bob Fulton, an Immortal, and Matthew Johns, met with then-NRL boss Dave Smith to campaign for the game to drop from a 10-man interchange to six. There was considerable support around the game.
Smith handed the evidence to his then head of football Todd Greenberg, who took the usual rout and tried to please everybody, with the coaches pushing back, making it eight.
By no means the new rules were perfect. There will be improvements, but small ones that build on what has begun.
And it all began with a bold decision from V’Landys, choosing to ignore the coaches and do what he thought was best for the games greatest stakeholders, the fans.
The way V’Landys is going, statues will be built in his likeness. On Friday, Penrith’s Western Weekender already published a pullout poster of the man who “got rugby league going again”.
Yet, this being rugby league, it can’t be left alone. Still they gather in their dark corners to bring him down.
As late as this week V’Landys’s leadership was questioned while a quiet cheer was raised for the former chief executive, Greenberg.
The Sydney Morning Herald, which has an admirable commitment to backing losers, campaigned heavily for Greenberg the moment tensions between the former NRL chief executive and incoming ARL Commission chairman V’Landys became apparent.
Half a decade of failing management was not enough for the Herald to understand they backed the wrong horse. Or that change was necessary.
The information being received served their own purpose too well so, with a stubborn insistence, they have pushed on, surviving on a supper of hope, and continued campaigning for Greenberg.
As late as this week they were still occupying the dark corners and whispering mischievous half-truths.
Clearly somebody very close to Greenberg is leaking.
Greenberg would benefit by tracking down who it is and pleading for them to stop.
Their information, well detailed and supportive of the former boss, is beginning to embarrass him.
This week the Herald suggested Greenberg lost his job because, this time, he stood up to Channel Nine boss Hugh Marks early in the broadcast negotiations.
Greenberg, claimed the Herald, told Marks “the 2018-2022 contract did not even require the NRL to take less” and yet, once Greenberg pushed for it, “it was the end of his rugby league career”.
It was portrayed as a show of Greenberg strength and an insinuation V’Landys might have negotiated a rights reduction when it was unnecessary.
As most with a connection to the game knew, Greenberg’s career at the NRL was ending well before his show of strength to Marks. He was days away from being sacked in March when the COVID-19 crisis broke.
The clubs continued to campaign against him throughout COVID-19.
This revised history being pedalled also ignored the commercial reality.
To claim that Greenberg argued to not take a cent less is one-sided, mischievous and misleading.
Greenberg did say to Marks that, based on the NRL’s legal advice, the NRL did not have to accept a rights cut from the broadcaster.
But Marks’ lawyers told him the opposite. They believed Nine had a strong case to not pay the full amount given the NRL had suspended its season.
Yet the Greenberg strength was presented without balance.
Also let pass without mention was the reality that the only way to decide whose lawyers were correct, with absolute surety, would be to take up to three years in court for a judge to decide.
It was an option the NRL could not afford.
As Greenberg and V’Landys knew, the game was in deep financial stress and there was a risk up to six clubs would go broke before the season resumed.
The NRL needed the money now.
An expensive court case was not an option.
Also unmentioned in the Herald was the reality that if the NRL held firm for a full payment was still a benefit for Nine.
Marks had already sent a statement to the ASX, in March, saying it would save shareholders $130 million if the NRL failed to come back from its suspended season.
The commercial reality was that even if Nine lost in court the likely damages payout would be less than what Nine saved by not televising the game, so the network had nothing to lose if it called Greenberg’s bluff.
So V’Landys had to negotiate with Nine, aware a reduced broadcast deal was the only option.
Greenberg could insist all he liked that the NRL’s lawyers believed Nine was obligated to pay in full, but it was never a reality.
Again, somebody close to Greenberg leaked information that really did Greenberg a disservice, and it has been going on for some time.
Earlier in the negotiations another storyline that carried a positive Greenberg spin emerged with a story in the Herald claiming that Seven West Media boss James Warburton “reached out” to Greenberg with an interest in free to air rights.
Greenberg was still fighting to save his job at the time, and so we learned they apparently shared a “close long-time relationship”, an asset at the time.
It was also presented that Seven’s interest “strengthened” the NRL’s position in negotiations, presumably because it gave the NRL another bidder at the table, and would pressure Nine.
But almost as soon as the story broke Warburton privately dismissed the story. He and Greenberg knew each other, but were hardly close, and Seven had no interest in the NRL.
Clearly whoever was leaking this information did Greenberg another disservice, as it was later revealed that it was Greenberg who approached Warburton and, despite the early narrative, Seven was never interested.
This was confirmed by the fact the network made no bid and, indeed, did not even enter into a negotiation.
We now understand the leaked story, while it seemed designed to save Greenberg at the time, was also potentially damaging to the NRL.
V’Landys was due to meet Nine and Foxtel after the story appeared and had guaranteed both broadcasters, to build trust, that he was not talking to other broadcasters.
So someone was being mischievous.
Thankfully much of this is in the past and the NRL powers forward with a new level of positivity.
Early indications of the new rule suggest a strong step in the right direction.
Meanwhile, Greenberg seriously needs to find who is leaking all these positive stories about him and tell them to stop.
This revisionist history, so easily rejected with a few simple phone calls to balance the story, is killing what is left of his reputation.
Originally published as NRL 2020: Rule changes have immediate impact, Paul Kent
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