I’m so sick of the Daly Cherry-Evans sideshow that my ears and eyes are bleeding from the mind-numbingly boring and excruciatingly drawn-out coverage it has received. Round 13 can’t come quickly enough.
I’d rather watch back-to-back episodes of Keeping up with the Kardashians for three months straight than read another article or watch another report on where he’ll be next season.
I know I’m not alone.
We’ve endured almost daily (pardon the pun) updates since the start of the season.
Which club is he meeting with today? Where has he been seen looking at property? Who is his best friend? What does his wife want? Will he backflip? Did he sound convincing? What colour underpants is he wearing?
If this isn’t the death-knell for the nonsensical Round 13 contract registration rule I don’t know what will be.
Everyone has had ‘mail’ or ‘the word’ on where DCE will end up. It’s beyond a joke.
When you buy a house, you have a five day ‘cooling off’ period to change your mind.
We’ve had to sit through 82 days of ‘will he or won’t he’ speculation since it was announced Cherry-Evans had signed with the Gold Coast Titans on March 6. Please make it stop!
NRL boss Dave Smith has confirmed the Round 13 rule is “under review” by NRL head of strategy Shane Richardson, who has apparently been working on a top secret blueprint for the future of the game since landing at League Central several months ago.
Why Smith can’t just jump in and scrap the rule himself is beyond me. It’s sport, not politics – we don’t need four committees and three reviews to determine the outcome of something that is so blatantly on the nose.
I actually feel sorry for Cherry-Evans, as he strikes me as an intelligent, articulate, well-mannered young man who unfortunately has been misled by poor management.
Having said all of that, managers these days are just using the rule as a bargaining tool in order to squeeze every last dollar out the player’s current club, and making the most of a loophole which was designed to stop players signing for a rival team years in advance.
Sure, DCE is not the first to go through this – think Tim Moltzen, James Tedesco, Josh Papalii, the Mata’utia brothers and so on, but he sure as hell should be the last.
The fact they are even allowed to consider reneging on deals makes the NRL look like two-bit, half-arsed, amateur organisation and not a high-level professional sport looking to squeeze a couple of billion dollars out of its next TV deal.
The most palatable solution seems to be an AFL-style trade period when all business is done within a certain window at the end of the season and anyone found guilty of doing deals outside that is heavily fined.
I guess we all just have to sit back and wait to see what Richardson comes up with. But don’t hold your breath.
Thank God there is just 17 days until the Cherry-Evans circus comes to an official end. In the meantime, if you need me, I’ll be watching the Kardashians on loop.
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