The severity of coronavirus’s economic impact means the death of corporate virtue signalling

ARLC Chairman Peter V'landys speaks to the media in Sydney on Sunday.

Many people are aware the National Rugby League’s “Simply the Best” promotional video this year was a revamp of a 30-year-old campaign featuring Tina Turner, but did you know there was a revamp of the revamp last Sunday? This time it was Australian Rugby League Commission chairman Peter V’landys taking the stage with the microphone. In case you missed it:

I call you when I need you

The budget is dire

Send funds to me, wire it to me

Or I’ll expire

Ooh you come to me,

Give me everything I need

Give me a lifetime of subsidy

Treat me like a queen

Because I’m far more important

Than Corona vaccine

It can’t be wrong

Write that cheque and make it long, baby

I’m simply a pest

A fetter on all the rest

A debtor to everyone

Anyone I’ve ever met

I’m a whiney upstart

Demanding someone’s else’s pay

Make a brand new start? No no no

Baby I would rather be dead

Each time I’m flat broke I start losing control

All I want is your love and a massive bankroll

I’m no good at standing up on my own

Oh, baby, don’t let go!

That is a version which aptly sums up the NRL’s attitude. A little hyperbole admittedly, but V’landys and NRL chief executive Todd Greenberg deserve it. Their extraordinary press conference was not an impassioned plea for financial assistance, but a boorish and petulant demand. “An Australia without rugby league is not Australia,” declared V’landys. “The government has to assist us in this crisis because it is not of our own doing.”

Apparently the NRL is unique in that respect. “The last resort for us is to go to the players and ask them for a pay cut because, like the rest of us, they’ve got mortgages and made commitments on the money they believe they’re going to get,” he said. How is this different from any every other Australian, many of whom face the prospect of financial ruin?

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If that is indicative of the administration’s mettle, it may be time for the government and the Returned Services League to reconsider their approval for the code to play under the annual “Anzac Test” banner. The only precedent approaching this degree of pitifulness was in 2001 when the game’s administrators, to the dismay of supporters, initially cancelled the Kangaroo Tour to Britain, citing fears about terrorism in the wake of 9/11. It was rapidly rescinded when someone pointed out the attacks had stopped the brave men of league from travelling overseas, but not The Wiggles.

If rugby league’s governing body does fold, it will be terrible for those whose livelihood depends on the game. For many Australians, it would be a cultural void. No more televised Friday night games. No more spending September on the couch watching elimination matches. Above all, no longer will we enjoy the benefit of what the NRL has become famous for in recent years, and that is giving moral guidance to us plebs about the great issues of our time.

There is also the role NRL plays in education. Take for example its promotional video of this year. I found it most informative, for I learned that indigenous people play league. I never noticed this in all my years of watching the sport, even when seeing the greats like Larry Corowa, Steve Ella and Arthur Beetson, just to name a few.

We also know now that Souths player Latrell Mitchell shares this heritage, and that he has a habit of standing on the shore in the early hours with the Aboriginal flag draped around his shoulders. I get the producers were aiming for the mystical look, but Mitchell’s expression as he looks out to sea is more a forlorn one, almost as if he were contemplating the game’s future. Rather apt you could say.

The lesbians in this promo, I am pleased to say, looked a lot happier. Thanks to the NRL we also discovered this demographic are in the habit of kissing, which none of us non-woke folk knew before. But league’s administering body seized on what was a spontaneous act of affection to let us know that some of the officials’ friends are minorities. That not-so-subtle usurpation was reminiscent of that episode in the cartoon series The Simpsons where the family are on a Hollywood tour and Marge points out the residence of Ellen DeGeneres and her then partner Anne Heche, both of whom are holding hands on the front porch. “We’re lesbians!”, shout the couple excitedly as they wave.

The NRL’s video was “a box-ticking exercise, ” wrote Paul Kent of the Daily Telegraph earlier this month. “Bland, politically correct gestures from an NRL losing touch with the great majority of the game’s fans as it continues its blind path towards irrelevance,” he said. “It is a dangerous path they follow, ignoring the great majority of its fans.”

Kent is correct. During the same-sex marriage postal plebiscite, the 2017 grand final featured American artist Macklemore and his song “Same Love”. This concluded with him declaring “equality for all” whilst rainbow fireworks exploded in the background. It politicised the game and to many it was a case of league officials condescending to a captive audience.

Given the NRL’s obsession with gratuitous moral instruction, you wonder what pre-grand final “entertainment” would be if not for coronavirus’s reality punch. Perhaps this would take the form of former Australian Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs, Gosford activist priest Father Rod Bower, and human rights barrister Julian Burnside lecturing the crowd on the evils of the government’s asylum-seeker policies. Or maybe professor Tim Flannery doing an interpretive dance on the importance of addressing climate change.

All the big sporting codes must recognise the severity of the coronavirus’s economic impact means the death of corporate virtue signalling.

It is not just the game’s administrators who have become arrogant. In the 2019 State of Origin series many players, both indigenous and non-indigenous, boycotted the national anthem. While not taking part, Maroons captain Daly Cherry-Evans and NSW coach Brad Fittler both said they respected the boycott. In the lead-up to this year’s indigenous All Stars game, V’landys announced the anthem would not be played, citing players’ concerns about it supposedly not representing them. Presumably on principle none of these players will accept money from the taxpayers who sing with pride this same anthem.

If the NRL is to receive any public moneys – and that is a big if – then its officials, beginning with V’landys, need a lesson in humility. Whether it is deserving of support is highly contentious, particularly given club officials have for years warned the body that it needed to put aside $100m in emergency funds, something it failed to do. Commentator, former coach, club secretary and player Phil Gould castigated the organisation this week, tweeting that its “Overpopulated Head Office has squandered 100’s of millions of dollars.”

NRL in a very difficult position, so last thing we need is people adding to their problems. We all need to stick. However, this situation highlights just how wasteful & poorly run NRL has been. Overpopulated Head Office has squandered 100’s of millions of dollars. Time for change

— Phil Gould (@PhilGould15) March 15, 2020

V’landys’ outspokenness and brashness may return to bite him on the proverbial. “The people who don’t like me … are the hangers-on and the parasites, and I don’t have any time for them either,” the then chief executive of Racing Australia told Sydney Morning Herald in 2014. “You help the good people”. He better hope for the organisation’s sake the government does not heed this philosophy.

Still on humility, all the big sporting codes must recognise the severity of the coronavirus’s economic impact means the death of corporate virtue signalling. It is a self-indulgence none can no longer afford. Just last year Australian Football League chief executive Gillon McLachlan postulated that “people look to the AFL, as their governing body, broadly for their position on social issues” such as same-sex marriage. Only this week an exhausted McLachlan, commenting on coronavirus, said he was trying to ensure “we have an industry at the end of this”. Nothing like an existential crisis to remind you of your core business.

The survival of rugby league is assured. The game requires only two fullbacks, four wingers, four centres, two five-eighths, two halfbacks, two locks, four second-rowers, four props, two hookers, a referee, a ball, and a half-decent football field. It is a public institution. Highly paid administrators and players are not.

As for whether the NRL survives, it could well be a case of prime minister Scott Morrison singing tough love. To quote another Turner classic which also featured in the ARL’s promotion long ago, “What you get is what you see”.