There are a lot of easy targets in the Sonny Bill Williams saga: the headstrong runaway who’s done the dirty on his mates, the conniving managers, and the aloof CEO hypocritically demanding support from an enemy that has been savagely plundered by his predecessors for over a hundred years.
All of them make great caricatures for the tabloid press and talk back radio stations, but are any of them playing out anything more than the inevitable?
It is sometimes said that the two World Wars were really just two acts of the same war, with a couple of decades gap in between. The same underlying issues that started World War One were never fully resolved, and as problems lingered, the world moved inevitably towards their terrible conclusion.
The problems that caused the Super League War that ripped apart rugby league in Australia during the mid 1990s still linger.
The compromised peace deal that brought the code back together left it in pretty much the same state it was before the commencement of hostilities, give or take a few clubs.
However, whilst the game has continued on in this no-man’s land, some new problems have emerged. Most importantly, rugby league is no longer at the top of the food chain in the rugby world.
For decades rugby league has been the bully in the Australian schoolyard and now the ARU has called in its big, French brother to come and give them a taste of their own medicine.
They should have seen it coming.
Rugby league could have spent the last decade getting its house in order. However, now the horse and Sonny Bill have bolted and foolhardy legal challenges are unlikely to have any effect.
The NRL faces some tough choices ahead and the coming World Cup will do little to plaster over the cracks.
The options are to continue as they have been, indignant, hypocritical and self-righteous, or to make the tough decision to face up to the realities that confront them.
The later almost certainly means restructuring the competition.
Perhaps there is a third way, a path through Moria, that would see the NRL adopt the ELVs and the rest of the rules of rugby with them. It won’t happen in one fell swoop but, just as the steady flow of individual players has trickled across over the last decade, it will happen one club at a time.
It will start with, for example, the Bulldogs fielding both an NRL and a Super rugby team that share the same facilities. Or the Broncos and the Reds merging.
Then, as union slowly grows with increased money from a lengthened Super rugby season, the league side will begin to dwindle as the NRL fails to restructure its competition.
The club’s board will follow the trail of cash right over to the dark side, slowly choking the 13 man team in the process, and before you know it, a great old league institution will have ‘converted’ in its entirety.
It might not happen exactly the way I’ve described it, but it is a scenario that definitely sits within the realms of possibility.
The club conversion described above is not a dream but a warning.
Restructuring appears inevitable for the NRL, but are they aware of how things have changed since the competition last shed clubs?
Rugby in Australia is arguably now in a position to pick up not only players discarded by a restructuring NRL, but entire clubs as well. If the game once again turned its back on Souths, you cannot tell me that John O’Neil and SANZAR wouldn’t consider offering their board a means of keeping the flame alive.
O’Neil’s desire for a fifth Australian Super rugby team is well known, and jilted fans may prove more fickle than league bosses might expect.
Can the NRL afford to not only lose a team and its supporters, but to gift them to its rival? Can it afford not to?
When Wendell Sailor left the Brisbane Broncos to join the Queensland Reds, the rugby league press said “we won’t miss him.”
When Lote Tuqiri and Matt Rogers followed, the rugby league press again said “we won’t miss him.”
As each of Gower, Gasnier, Tahu and Williams have gone, they are still saying “we won’t miss him.”
And now, as the next Australian rugby league player starts looking to maximise his pay packet, somewhere in France a rugby scout is assuring his boss, “we won’t miss him.”
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Just a Fan said | July 30th 2008 @ 3:27am | Report comment
“rugby league is no longer at the top of the food chain in the rugby world.” Ha ha..never was! League is only big in Oz….to the rest of the world it is a non-entity….
Dave Gilbank said | July 30th 2008 @ 3:57am | Report comment
Garth, congratulations on writing the biggest piece of contrived bollocks and garbage written in many a day. No doubt you’ll stir up the wasps nest (bumbleebee’s nest) with this bilge.
Serriously, why not write somehting that’s interesting – and not the good old “wait, can you hear it? ‘Tis the death nell for Roogby Leeg!”
Your wiritng smells like the worst diesel fish trawler this side of Hull. Mate, get a job writing on the X-Files or maybe Scooby Doo.
You don’t know what you are talking about. Write about a game that you have watched or played, like netball, maybe.
bailey said | July 30th 2008 @ 6:34am | Report comment
i agree with ‘just a fan’ rugby league is ONLY big in Australia!!!! the fact that they feel union is taking over is stupid because by in large, union had always outsmarted league financially and globally, i think its only now that they’re really getting the brunt of it.
The Answer said | July 30th 2008 @ 6:46am | Report comment
Nice one Garth, for a minute I felt like I was Martin Sheen in “Apocalypse Now” finally getting to the end of the river and finding the madness you playing a brillant Dennis Hopper to Spiro’s Marlon Brando. “He’s the grrrrrrreat man!”
But the Tolkien reference gave it away, you were joking. I mean never ask a bloke who quotes Tolkien about sport and dames, right?
So an excellent satircial piece, and very well timed with everyone starting to think the union boys were starting to take themselves a little too seriously. I think the bullied school boy analogy was one of the best I’ve heard, there is poor old union still getting beaten up and it’s lunch money stolen by rugby league more than ten years after everyone thought it would go away. Thank god someone stepped in to even up the fight.
But still chuckling, the blokes who brought you the ARC, now bring you the NRL! Love it.
Here’s a slogan for the reborn body. The ARU. Played by mungoes, coached by Kiwis.
Dave Gilbank said | July 30th 2008 @ 7:06am | Report comment
The Answer! The Answer!
The Horror! The Horror!
Tom Bombadil is the ruler of the forest!
Bet ol Garth don’t even know who that honky boy is.
Sonny don’t surf and I love the smell of Garth’s palm in the morning.
Umbrellas up for the rain of Union propaganda/brown, smelly stuff that will soon fall onto this page from their blinkered festering putird mouths — and lets not forget that you MUST include some good old TV ratings figures for the last…let’s see….six years? Make it seven.
Union is dying. FACT. They should merge with abalone fishing. That way there’s a good chance they will be eaten and shat out by a Great White.
here’s hoping…
Mungo said | July 30th 2008 @ 7:36am | Report comment
Spot on Garth, funny how nobody likes the truth, Union dying? over 3 billion watched the last world cup, how many watch the RL WC? AFL WC who do they play, the Irish of course and predictably have to change the rules, ahhh its good to sit back and watch the panic…
Redb said | July 30th 2008 @ 8:55am | Report comment
Mungo,
You know what happens after pride puffs you up?
The codes won’t merge and this puffed up talk from union folk will just give the RL boys more ammo to stay separate and stick it right up you blokes.
Unless you live in another country the battleground is Australia for the hearts and minds. I dont see union on free to air TV? Just some ‘facts’. Elsewhere on the Roar there’s an article trumpeting the Bledisloe as a pay tv winner – oops only 25% of the country has pay tv.
Union still has a lot of work to do in this country. Shite I find myself defending rugby league.
Redb
Mitch O said | July 30th 2008 @ 8:58am | Report comment
I for one hope both league and union survive as separate entities for eternity. Diversity in sport is a wonderful thing – and to be cherished. The alternative, it seems, is for every man and his dog to play soccer (a much scarier prospect).
Terry Kidd said | July 30th 2008 @ 9:14am | Report comment
Thanks Mitch O for some sanity. Garth your article does no one any good and is really pie in the sky. Redb, you are correct. Rugby, both internationals and Super 14 must be seen free to air, even if they are delayed telecasts. Until that happens things won’t expand too much and both codes will continue pretty much as they are.
In my opinion Sonny Bill can go, and good riddance. The Bulldogs can now go and spend his salary on development of a wonderful group of junior players …. has no one seen Toyota Cup games?
Guys, lets face it …. a player has shot through seeking big money elsewhere. That player contributed very little to his club (played less than 50% of games since the 2004 Grand Final) and obviously didn’t think much of loyalty to his club or fellow players. By the end of this season that player will be forgotten.
alex said | July 30th 2008 @ 9:14am | Report comment
Merging is nice in theory, but the two codes actually represent fundamentally different philosophies. Because of this, rugby even with the ELVs, is not league with lineouts, as a major league official recently said (quite stupidly). Any merger will therfore be in reality a takeover. But do we want to take over the violent mess that league has become? Sure we want some of their crowds and promotional money, but isn’t rugby bigger than just that? If all this a response to the challenge of French rugby, we are misreading what’s going on.