Why is everyone getting so excited about Joseph Suaalii? So he’s heading over to rugby union. So what?

Calm down people, he’s not going anywhere for two years. By then rugby league will have another boom teenager or two making headlines. Matter of fact, they’ll probably have four or five. Suaallii won’t be missed. As Roosters coach Trent Robinson so eloquently pointed out during the week, the NRL is the best weekly rugby competition – league or union - in the world. There will always be talented youngsters growing up dreaming of playing for the Broncos, Rabbitohs or, now, Dolphins.

True, the NRL can’t offer its players a one-off experience like a Bledisloe Cup, Rugby World Cup or British and Irish Lions tour, but when it comes to week in-week out competition nothing else comes close.
Robinson has been the biggest winner of the Suaalii embroglio (apart from soon-to-be multi-millionaire Joseph and his manager Isaac Moses of course). While NRL boss Peter V’Landys and his rugby counterpart Hamish McLennan have engaged in some childish back-and-forth and Gus Gould has been his usual belligerent self, Robinson has been the voice of reason.

The two-time NRL premiership winning coach has never made any secret of his admiration for rugby union. I remember interviewing him in Paris when he was spending a few days in the Wallabies camp on their 2014 Spring Tour.

Robinson told me he was there at the invitation of his good friend, Wallabies coach Michael Cheika, hoping to help out if he could and pick up anything that might be of assistance to the Roosters.

He doesn’t see rugby union as the enemy, just as Cheika and current Wallaby coach Eddie Jones are big rugby league fans. Jones, more than any other rugby union figure has straddled the fence between the two codes and anyone surprised that he would try to entice the best young league players with union backgrounds, hasn’t been playing attention.

Which raises the question: what was Phil Gould on about, saying that the NRL should show Suaalii the door right now?

Well, with Gus there’s always more to it than meets the eye.

Obviously, he is a man who likes to have his head in the media, and being provocative is his bread and butter. Trent Robinson might be a calming presence, but Gus prefers to stir the pot. Suaalii was just convenient click-bait.

Then there is the fact that rugby union was winning the publicity war over Suaalii. Gus might have just been trying to regain the ascendency. The more the spotlight was on him, the less it was on Eddie Jones and the Wallabies.

Although I think his motive was less altruistic than that. Gus wasn’t thinking of the great game of rugby league when he called for Suaalii’s immediate expulsion. He was thinking of himself, and his latest employers – because if Suaalii wasn’t playing rugby league for the next two years, he wouldn’t be playing against the Bulldogs.