No-one is suggesting starting a rebel competition in opposition to the NRL at the moment, but Pete V’landys and his fellow administrators of the game would do well to pay attention to the old saying that goes something along the lines of, ‘those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat it’. The last thing anyone involved in rugby league wants is another schism in the game like the one in the mid-90s, but that’s where we are headed unless the parties in dispute start engaging in some give and take.
As Wayne Bennett said to the media after the Dolphins win over the Titans on Sunday, ‘it’s not that hard if someone wants to give a bit’. Which, of course, is what could have been said about all disputes through the centuries. The problem is, no-one wants to be the first one to give. Still, as Wayne said, from the outside looking in, it all seems rather simple. The players should accept the NRL’s pay offer and the NRL should give the players what they want in regard to conditions.
As for the clubs wanting a say in when and where an 18th club should be admitted, I can’t see the problem with that. They are the ones that will have to travel to where the new club is based and they are the ones who, in the first instance anyway, will have to provide the players. There is no debating the fact that the Dolphins have been a huge success on and off the field, but the other clubs in the competition would argue that it has come at a cost to them.
Wayne Bennett has done a magnificent job putting together a side that has responded superbly to his coaching and bought into the culture he has cultivated. Much has been written and said about how he has taken players who were unwanted by their previous clubs and turned them into world beaters. In many cases that is true, but clubs down the bottom of the table like the Tigers and Dragons would tell you that they would have loved to have the room under their salary cap to sign those players, and that the Dolphins gain was their loss. The Broncos have lost two of their best players to the Dolphins for next season and Wayne is only just getting started.
Which brings us to the whole issue of expansion. The NRL would tell you that the game must expand or it will die. Or, put another way, the more clubs there are, the more games there are. The more games there are, the more TV content there is and the more TV content there is, the more money there is. Ah yes, money. The one thing it all gets back to, and the one thing that always clouds the issue because it would seem to me that before the NRL starts looking for another team, it should ask itself a very important question: where will the players come from?
When you have results like the Cowboys beating the Tigers 74-0 or the Sharks putting 52 points on the Dragons, you have to wonder if the NRL should be pouring more of that TV money into propping up junior clubs and beating off the AFL advance in country areas to build a player pipeline rather than cannibalising the current clubs to satisfy the great god TV. As Wayne Bennett said, it doesn’t look that hard.