They can try all they like, but the haters will never kill rugby league

Come here rugby league, you big, sweaty unit, and give me a hug.

Forget the haters. Ignore the trolls. Laugh at the elitists who say you’re too dangerous to play and too boring to watch.

This has been the NRL’s best season in CTE-affected memory, from the mayhem of opening the season in Las Vegas to the entrancing grand final between Penrith and Melbourne on Sunday night at Accor Stadium.

Even The Kid Laroi was great as the pre-match entertainment, although I initially thought he was Reece Walsh fresh off a Jetstar flight from Bali.

For decades now, I’ve been reading about the NRL’s imminent demise, killed off by lawyers, doctors and protective mums who would prefer their children join a sewing circle.

Like my endless search for abdominal muscles, it hasn’t happened.

The Panthers celebrate their fourth-straight premiership.Credit: Getty Images

Instead, old rugba leeg continues to thrive: record crowds, ratings, participants, and social media engagement; a booming women’s competition that attracts the best talent in the country; and an always riveting, unpredictable State of Origin series.

The NRL must be doing something right given the constant attacks from critics who neither understand nor, clearly, watch the sport.

Former player Kane Cornes is an AFL blowhard barely respected in his own code let alone others. He’s one of those talking heads who takes a contrary view, so people will listen.

Following the Panthers’ gripping 14-6 win over the Storm – their fourth in a row – Cornes decided to dump on rugby league’s decider.

“That was a disaster!” he said on Monday. “It’s just a shocking sport. I’ve said this for a while now. I really admire the physicality of the players and how tough they are. All of that. But tell me if there was one highlight? One single highlight in a whole game of NRL. There’s not even a full stadium there. It’s so repetitive.”

A few points, champ ...

I must’ve been watching a different AFL grand final last week because the one on my TV involving the Sydney Swans was done and dusted against Brisbane well before halftime.

Something similar happened when GWS Giants played Richmond in 2019. I attended that one and found myself necking Bloody Marys with then Victorian Premier Dan Andrews at the bar well before the long break.

‘You are perfectly imperfect, rugby league. I see all your faults but also the good.’

No highlights, Kane? Only someone who doesn’t understand the game – or is so myopic they don’t care to look – could’ve missed them.

The match was played at breakneck speed; faster than Origin, which is quite scary, with the ball in play for long, exhausting periods.

Nathan Cleary, the greatest player of his generation, produced another grand final masterclass with his pinpoint kicking game and toughness in continually taking on the line with a busted shoulder and hand.

A lesser team than the Storm would’ve leaked 10 tries in the face of the Chinese water torture inflicted by their opponents, but they are too proud, and too well drilled under Craig Bellamy, to cave in.

Stephen Crichton and his Louis Vuitton sneakers.Credit: Getty Images

The best highlight came in the dying minutes when Penrith centre Paul Alamoti leapt above the pack and took a spectacular overhead catch to kill the game.

Think Leo Barry for the Swans in 2005, Kane. Got it now?

The laughable part of Cornes’ remarks is that he made them while working on the AFL’s official trade radio network. With an AFL logo in the background. While criticising another code.

Conflicted much? I hope Media Watch was watching.

When I interviewed former AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan a few years ago, he sat back at his desk with a knitted sweater slung over his shoulders and refused to even mention rugby league let alone utter ARLC chairman Peter V’landys’ name.

This season, the AFL can’t seem to get rugby league out of its mouth, questioning its relevance in Sydney and Brisbane at every opportunity. (The NRL grand final had a total national audience of 3.4 million, the most since the 2016 decider between Cronulla and Melbourne.)

For reasons known only to them – let’s assume elitist snobbery – rugby union types also continue to criticise rugby league when they can, apparently blind to the shortcomings of their own game.

“It will be good for you to watch something bigger than the Wests Tigers at Campbelltown Sports Ground,” a Rugby Australia executive was overheard saying while waiting for his luggage after arriving in Paris for the Olympic Games in July.

I had to laugh. Rugby union can only dream of attracting the same sustained media interest as the worst team in the NRL.

Which brings us to the constant sneering at rugby league’s approach to concussion while turning a blind eye to what’s happening in other codes.

Where’s the outcry over the AFL ignoring the findings of the Victorian coroner in 2022 when he urged the sport to introduce independent doctors as the NRL did several years ago?

Where’s the outrage over Will Pucovski being allowed to continually return to cricket despite being repeatedly hit in the head by bouncers before finally retiring?

Where’s the applause for the NRL judiciary for ignoring days of outside noise from former players before handing Storm prop Nelson Asofa-Solomona a five-match ban for his sickening tackle on Roosters prop Lindsay Collins?

Why is the NRL continually facing an existential crisis because of concussion while other sports do not?

You are perfectly imperfect, rugby league. I see all your faults but also the good.

I see Stephen Crichton collecting the Dally M Captain of the Year award while wearing Louis Vuitton sneakers and wonder how many Samoan kids from Mount Druitt must be watching him, inspired to do the same.

I see Brisbane Broncos legend Ali Brigginshaw standing on the red carpet with her wife, Kate, proudly declaring she’s wearing a suit from MJ Bale, and realise we live in extraordinary times.

I see a game that’s a perpetual hot mess, riddled with self-doubt and paranoia and anger, but the one we invariably switch on when we collapse in the armchair at the end of a long working week.

Now let’s light one of Gwyneth Paltrow’s scented candles, slip into an ice bath, and hum Simply the Best.

After a long, crazy season, rugby league, you deserve it.

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