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From the moment Daly Cherry-Evans signed with the Gold Coast Titans on March 6 this year, there has been speculation he would renege on the four-year deal.
Sure enough, on Wednesday the man they call ‘DCE’ performed a backflip that would make Nadia Comaneci gasp.
But the villain here isn’t Daly Cherry-Evans or his manager Gavin Orr. It is NRL CEO David Smith.
Smith fiddled while Robina burned. It is he who must answer to the aggrieved and outraged parties.
The atmosphere of celebration in which Manly’s Cherry-Evans announcement was made was great theatre. The assembled press tried their guts out to land scoring blows on DCE but they all deflected. It was a day of victory and joy for Geoff Toovey, Jamie Lyon, CEO Joe Kelly and especially Cherry-Evans himself.
The Prodigal Son had returned to Brookvale, before he had even left, and all was forgiven.
Cherry-Evans knew he was going to be attacked for his perceived crime. He knew he’d be vilified, castigated and derided. He was ready for all of it. His lines were delivered with the confidence of a man who was more than comfortable with what he had done and who didn’t give a crap if you weren’t.
On Wednesday night, Peter Sterling asked Cherry-Evans the following question:
“Are you concerned as to what may have happened to your reputation being tarnished during the course of this saga?”
DCE’s response was straightforward, forthright and unrepentant:
“I do understand that there are repercussions as a result of this saga. I understand that I’m not going to make everyone happy… The people who are really important to me at the moment they have no worries about the decision that I’ve made and they are fully supportive of that.
“At the end of the day I haven’t done anything wrong so I’m not sure what sort of tarnish that will do to my reputation considering that I’ve played well within the rules here.”
And he has. The bizarre Round 13 registration of contracts rule is just that: a rule. Cherry-Evans and his manager Gavin Orr have played within those rules and managed to get the best possible deal they could.
Just like James Tedesco and Sam Ayoub did last year. Just like Josh Papalii and Col Davis did in 2013.
On each of those occasions we have been amazed at the circus that has gone on, and questioned why the NRL didn’t get rid of the rule.
Of course NRL HQ have recently announced that they will soon introduce a 10-day cooling off period for contracts. After those 10 days the contract will be ratified.
But why wasn’t this change implemented after Papalii’s backflip? Or at very least after the Tedesco incident made it clear the rule was being used as a bargaining chip?
Why has it taken the men that are running our game three goes to learn a simple lesson? At what point, and by whom, is their competency examined and their tenures reviewed?
This NRL executive is the same mob that watched on as the Brisbane Broncos Limited poached a star junior from the Raiders, only to mumble some vague promises about introducing salary cap concessions for juniors that a club develops – promises that 12 months later remain unfulfilled.
This is the same mob that have jacked up the prices for Origin tickets to the point that most of the NRL’s core fans can’t afford them.
This is the mob who introduced marquee players and third-party sponsorship arrangements that have created a massively lopsided competition.
This is the mob who have presided over a steady decline in spectators at the grounds.
And this is the mob that rode into the Gold Coast in February to bail out the failing club and declared, “We are going to make a club we can all be proud of.”
Do you remember when you said that Mr Smith? I do.
At the time I hoped that it would be the dawn of a new and better era for football on the Gold Coast. Now I’m starting to think that all Mr Smith cared about was the short-term shoring up of the Titans so the precious broadcast deal wasn’t compromised.
Smith’s total failure to remove the Round 13 draft ratification rule – in spite of two years of hard evidence of what it led to and the subsequent tarnishing of the image of the game – has put the Titans in a bigger pit than ever before.
When the Suns were being set up on the Gold Coast, the AFL not only gave them bonus draft picks, they also gave them cap concessions that allowed them to lure Gary Ablett Jr to the club. Once the deal was done, there was no reneging. The marquee was assured.
For the Titans to recover they need a marquee player. However, the NRL – paying no attention whatsoever to the very clear Papalii and Tedesco precedents – put no safeguards in place at all for the Titans to assure their prized signing. The Round 13 rule was allowed to sit there like a malignant tumour. Even though there was constant press speculation about a possible Cherry-Evans backflip, still the NRL did nothing.
Of course, once the Titans had signed Cherry-Evans their salary cap was loaded right up and that subsequently affected how much they could offer other players. They subsequently lost stars Aidan Sezer and Nate Myles to the Raiders and Manly respectively. If they had more money allotted to them in their cap to help them “build a club we can all be proud of” they might have retained those two.
However, that sort of forethought would require people with good strategic ability and intelligence. These characteristics seem to be well outside the skill set of the brains trust at NRL HQ.
Now the Titans have no Cherry-Evans, no Myles, no Sezer, and a group of players with drug charges hanging over their heads.
If this is what you call building Mr Smith, I’m assuming your version of destruction is thermonuclear. What will you do for your next trick? Deregister the Sharks? Bring Barry Gomersall back to ref an Origin game?
Titans CEO Graeme Annesley did point out that he was less than impressed with Cherry-Evans’ management team, who apparently told the Titans throughout the whole thing that Cherry-Evans was definitely going to come to Robina. But however loathsome some people might believe rugby league player managers to be, their job is to chase the filthy lucre.
Cherry-Evans has expressed his apologies to the Titans and, while they still found out through press reports, the Manly number 7 at least had the balls to directly contact Neil Henry to talk to him about his decision.
Cherry-Evans doesn’t care that many believe that the Titans deal was used as a bargaining chip to get more money out of Manly. He doesn’t seem to care that while many of his 2011 premiership teammates were taking pay cuts to keep their unit together, it is perceived that his wish to get as much money as possible effectively Yokoed the band of brothers.
The only judgement he cares about is that of his family and close friends, and I’d bet that of the Manly faithful. Why on Earth would he care what opposition supporters think? If he gets results on the field, the Brookvale crowd will forgive the loss of Kieran Foran, Glenn Stewart and Anthony Watmough pretty quick.
That will surely be his mission.
Our mission should be to ensure that David Smith understands that we fans see this as the latest in a series of totally avoidable abject failures of management that have characterised his time in charge of the NRL.