NRL draft on the agenda as expansion looms

A rookie draft is being considered as a way to ensure an equalisation of talent as the NRL heads towards a 20-team competition.

Players from Palm Beach Currumbin and Patrician Blacktown Brothers in the NRL National Schoolboys Cup final. The NRL is at least considering a rookie draft Picture: Glenn Hampson

The NRL is considering whether to introduce a rookie draft, among a number of ideas, as a way to ­ensure an equalisation of talent across the competition with three new teams on the horizon.

A steering committee has been established to examine rookie ­recruitment in general, with the NRL’s elite programs manager Brad Donald joining the likes of Queensland rugby league boss Ben Ikin on the panel, tasked with examining the game’s elite pathways.

Several issues including coaching pathways and the accreditation and training of senior coaches are also being analysed.

Currently, NRL clubs are able to secure and develop the best young talent without the constraint of a salary cap or a draft.

The balancing act for league ­officials is not to discourage clubs signing young prodigies, especially from rugby union, while looking for a more even spread of talent. Nor do they want to punish clubs that have strong junior nurseries such as the Penrith Panthers who have more than 8000 players.

As one rugby league power­broker told The Weekend ­Australian: “We don’t want to lose the ability to poach the best rugby union talent.”

Some players such as Joseph Manu with the Roosters were signed while still at school and flown to Sydney from New Zealand on weekends for junior ­representative matches. Joseph-Aukuso Suaali’i was signed by South Sydney when he was 14.

At least one club is concerned with the spread of talent at the senior level. Since 2013 the JJ Giltinan Shield, awarded to the minor premiers, has been shared among only three teams: Penrith, Sydney Roosters and Melbourne.

The AFL has had a draft for elite talent since 1986 but an effort to introduce it to rugby league was scuppered in 1991 after Terry Hill challenged it in the courts and won against the game’s then administrators, the NSW Rugby League.

Hill, who started his career at South Sydney, then agreed to join Wests before the NSWRL draft forced him to play for the Eastern Suburbs Roosters in 1991.

Hill, along with more than 100 footballers were plaintiffs in a successful legal case against the NSWRL. It was the end of the draft in rugby league and triggered the code to take a different path to the AFL. The AFL national draft is one of the important days for the sport with it televised nationally.

However some rugby league figures, such as NRL powerbroker and Wests Tigers boss Shane Richardson, says it’s time for a national draft to be considered. Richardson – whose rugby league executive career has included serving as South Sydney general manager of football and at the NRL as head of strategy and game development – said that as the competition expanded a draft should be considered to equalise the competition. “I think the competition now has grown up to a stage where it also requires a draft,” he said. “The biggest challenge with the salary cap is not really the money you’re paying at the top, it’s the money you’re paying at the bottom. I don’t think the caps the problem. I think the cap is now geared to the money we bring in so the players get an even fair share of it, which is the way it should be. But there’s no way in the world that rugby league shouldn’t have a draft like AFL, in my opinion. But what is a necessity is the spread of talent, especially with 20 teams coming in.

“For example, Western Australia or even South Island New Zealand, are not going to need to have the number of juniors required to be able to (compete) so really it’s even more important now that there is a draft in the competition, a truly national competition, where you’re going to have teams in states where they don’t have the number of players that we do in these eastern states.”

Wests Tigers finished with the wooden spoon for the third successive time this season.

Other NRL powerbrokers including South Sydney chief executive Blake Solly believe the salary cap works and the reality is that clubs who aren’t securing the JJ Giltinan Shield just need to be better. “The salary cap works, the fact that those three teams have won the minor premiership is more a credit to them and the rest of us have to be better,” Solly said.

The steering committee examining elite pathways is five weeks into meetings about the issues. The review process is expected to take 12 weeks but could go on longer if needed.

The NRL’s 20-team plan is poised to include PNG, Perth Bears and possibly a second New Zealand side. PNG or the Bears – but not both – could become an official expansion club by 2027. The other bid may have to wait a further two years.