League gets gold, we get Gould, and everyone's happy

IT means another five years of Phillip Ronald Gould ... but for a billion dollars it's worth it.

IT means another five years of Phillip Ronald Gould ... but for a billion dollars it's worth it.

Channel 9 is still the one - and rugby league can be thankful for that. Network boss David Gyngell knows how important having the NRL is to his network and he wasn't joking when he said it's part of Nine's DNA.

And while there'll be plenty of backslapping at Nine about retaining the free-to-air rights, and probably a beer or two as well, the broader sport is just as big a winner out of this super broadcasting deal. It's hard to look past the huge cheque of course, but the NRL has got to its current position because of how spectacularly Nine and Fox Sports cover the game and beam it into our lounge rooms.

The growth of the code over the past 10 years has been very much through mums, dads and their children getting hooked and then rusted on from the excitement of television broadcasts.

Nine values its exclusive games highly. They do it brilliantly under the guidance of sports director Steve Crawley and are proud of delivering it free of charge.

Gyngell furiously defends the fact not all games can be shown live, pointing out that unlike the AFL, there are no long stoppages for commercial breaks apart from half-time.

When it was put to him that the NRL should consider 30-second time-outs at scrums or line drop-outs for TV advertisements, he declared: "We could not be a party to anything that may affect the great product that rugby league is."

So yesterday was one of the most extraordinary days in rugby league history. Forty years ago not one commercial station wanted to broadcast the game.

Now it's worth more than $200 million a season.

It's a credit to the Benji Marshalls, Ben Barbas, Paul Gallens, Billy Slaters and Johnathan Thurstons who have turned the game into such a wonderful product.

Rugby league is the winner.