Paul Kent: The flaw in the NRL’s age-restriction policy
The NRL’s age-restriction policy has a noble premise but it is unworkable, writes Paul Kent.
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The silliness of the NRL’s age-restriction policy was all in the pause.
On Monday this week, Joseph Suaalii was out in the sun with the rest of the Roosters squad answering questions about the season ahead.
The whole session was fairly routine except for the presence of Suaalii, who continues to be a fascination in the game. He is 17 and his skillset represents the best of everything. His reserve-grade debut with North Sydney last week only reinforced the hype.
And so here he was Monday morning, the rugby league media all around, trying to find understanding for why he cannot play in the NRL.
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It has been explained away by age and a commitment to schooling, under the banner of welfare, which as Suaalii soon revealed, does not pass even the simplest of tests.
“How many days a week do you go to school?” one of his interrogators asked.
Suaalii paused.
“Two,” he said finally.
It seemed a nice round number.
There is no doubt there are some weeks when Suaalii, doing his HSC at The King’s School at Parramatta, does in fact attend school two days in a week.
Other weeks, well, he gets busy.
There are 400s to run and gym sessions to do and video and skills and all the rest it takes to be a professional NRL player because, right now, that is the future for Suaalii.
There is not another 17-year-old in the country earning the money Suaalii is now earning, unless that kid is playing sport.
Yet this charade of completing his HSC two days a week persists, while denying him the chance to play in the NRL and get started on that journey that gives him his best chance in life.
Only Suaalii, as we know, cannot play NRL right now because six years back the league introduced a rule forbidding anybody to play NRL until they turned 18.
Why 18? So he can drink with teammates?
It was an arbitrary decision based on nothing. Certainly 18 does not appear a premature football age.
The last player to debut in the NRL at 17 was Jason Taumalolo in 2010, who suffered no ill-effects. The year before was Dale Copley. The year before was Jordan Rankin (at 16) and Wade Graham.
The season earlier it was Mitch Pearce, Chase Stanley and Israel Folau. Four of the seven are still playing and own several houses.
A quick check of NRL records reveals often as three or four players every season make their debut before they are old enough to vote.
Brad Fittler, Andrew Ettingshausen, Laurie Daley … a look through the list and, overwhelmingly, most go on to wonderful careers. Certainly their success rate of transitioning from debutant to full-blown career is no lower than 18-year-olds, or older debutants.
Most were still at school, too.
It is a noble premise, this saving the kids from themselves, but unworkable.
Suaalii is the first to come along to test the new rule and at the first hiccup the NRL looks set to fold, providing an exemption.
NRL chief executive Andrew Abdo has a series of meetings planned and a report due for the Australian Rugby League Commission.
“The Commission wants to see some additional information on his physical and mental readiness and the support they’re going to put around him,” Abdo said.
“We’ve asked for the plan that’s going to be put in place for him to get all the support to handle the rigours, on and off the field.”
Abdo also plans a chat with Tony George, headmaster at King’s, who can recognise him only because he reads the papers.
“We want to make sure that between him and the school and the club he is going to complete Year 12,” Abdo said.
If schooling was the priority, Suaalii would not have been there on Monday. And he would be at King’s a hell of a lot more than two days a week.
If two days a week was able to work, why aren’t they all doing it? It is pointless.
To search for an argument that Suaalii is somehow special, and so worthy of dispensation, is also pointless. Just about every kid that comes along ready to play NRL at 16 or 17 is special. Box-ticking to show the critics that a rigid process was put in place to protect the player’s welfare.
Who really knows?
Part of the reasoning behind the NRL’s age policy is to give young men time to mature. To give them a chance to make smarter decisions and, hopefully, live a normal life.
But their lives are already abnormal.
Suaalii, when aged 16, had two sports and several clubs offer him buckets of gold. He asked for contracts to allow him a clause to quit and chase a spot at the Olympics.
Some hope the delay will allow him to finish his education so he has something to fall back on. It makes fine sense.
Taniela Tuiaki was Dally M Winger of the Year in 2009, when he broke his ankle in the third-last game of the season. He never played NRL again.
Jharal Yow Yeh went up for a bomb and when he came down he also never played the game again. Yow Yeh hobbled around Broncos training for years, his leg forever swollen, a reminder of the cost of the sport.
But all got a start in life.
Money provides opportunities toward education. Many players are furthering their education in part-time studies.
To try to delay Suaalii’s debut on some notion that delaying his NRL career will enhance his education is absurd. To believe that by waiting until he is 18 will have him better prepared to live a normal life is equally ridiculous.
He is already living an uncommon life.
The trick isn’t to try and create a normal life for Suaalii. The trick is to teach him to live an abnormal life.
SHORT SHOT ...
As the NRL season nears its kick-off, Matt Burton is no closer to landing at Belmore than his November 1 arrival date.
Nor should he be.
Penrith coach Ivan Cleary has refused to release Burton, even though the Dogs have dabbled here and there.
The Bulldogs argue that Burton has been pencilled in as the club’s third or fourth-choice playmaker and fifth or sixth-choice centre – should it come to that – and that his development will be stunted if he is not released to Canterbury immediately.
But that is exactly why Penrith will not release him.
A few injuries and suddenly Burton will be very needed at a club which is a serious chance at winning the premiership.
Only a fat dose of compensation will prompt Penrith’s interest. Until then Burton stays at Penrith, even as some around him continue to plead his career is being stalled by the Panthers’ refusal to release him.
What happened to players sucking it up and committing themselves to training hard and playing well and ousting the bloke in front of them, based on their form?
Burton has that choice. He certainly has the talent to go past Jerome Luai if playing well.
The only difference is he wouldn’t be earning the money he would if he was released to immediately join the Bulldogs.
And suddenly, it all makes sense …
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