Broadcaster Steve Price says NRL is ’second rate’ to AFL
Broadcaster Steve Price has unleashed on the NRL, saying it is “20 years behind” the AFL, and he gave plenty of reasons to back his brutal assessment.
Confidential
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Broadcaster Steve Price has slammed the NRL as “second rate” compared to the AFL.
“I can say this now I’m no longer a resident of NSW,” Price said on Triple M Hot Breakfast today. “I would’ve got my head taken off if I said this a couple of months ago.
“The NRL is a second rate competition, in terms of the way it’s organised, to the AFL. The AFL is 20 years ahead of the NRL in finances, fixtures, and the way they run their competition,” Price said.
“The NRL are bleeding money. Channel 9 wants to walk away, it would seem, from the television deal (with the NRL). They don’t want to pay the money they need to pay for the rights. All of the pokies clubs that finance their teams are all locked away. They are in a world of pain.”
Price’s comments came after the NRL set a May 28 restart date to the 2020 season.
“It’s pretty ambitious,” Price said.
“They’re basing all of this on a letter from NSW (Police) Commissioner Mick Fuller … after the chairman of the (Australian) Rugby League (Commission) Peter V’landys said: ‘Listen, is there any reason we can’t restart the competition using NSW based teams?’
“The reply from Fuller was, ‘There’s a number of exemptions, you could probably go ahead with it.’”
But Price said the NRL faces geographic challenges if it pushes ahead, namely three teams in Queensland, and a Kiwi side across the Tasman, who would all have to go into quarantine after they crossed borders to play matches.
Asked by radio host Eddie McGuire if the AFL could learn anything from the NRL, Price answered: “I don’t think the NRL can learn anything from the AFL, to be honest.
“The reason the AFL is so strong is because of club memberships. You don’t have that in NSW and rugby league. Rugby league supporters much prefer to watch their game on television. Crowds are poor.
“I never met anyone, in the last 10 years I lived (in NSW), that actually held a membership in any one of their clubs,” Price said.
“I’ve got four memberships at Richmond (Tigers). I see that as a donation to the football club every year. For 10 years, there were two empty reserve seats at the MCG every time Richmond played because I could never get there.”
Price said he had “no problem” with the NRL setting an “ambitious date” to return to play.
“It might give people something to look forward to,” he added. “I think it would be great if all our sporting competitions could get back and play.
“But we don’t want to blow up what’s happening with coronavirus by pushing something forward too quickly.”
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