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As NRL post-match media conferences go, these were two doozies.
First up, after Melbourne’s 15-8 victory over Brisbane at Suncorp Stadium, Storm coach Craig Bellamy said forcing his men to play three times in 10 days was “criminal”.
Sitting alongside him, Cameron Smith – the most powerful player in the competition and captain of Australia – revealed the NRL’s stars had already told the league in no uncertain terms that they did not want five-day turnarounds between games from next season.
We reporters already had our lead. There can be a month of post-match media conferences without quotes as good as these.
But, as in so many areas of life, it’s either feast or famine, isn’t it? It didn’t rain quotes last night, it poured.
Brisbane coach Wayne Bennett paused when told about the comments of Smith and Bellamy, weighing up his options.
He started off slowly. It’s a “balancing act”, Bennett said. The only reason the game gets so much money is because people watch it, and people won’t watch if we can’t have the best teams on TV. And it’s hard to get the best teams on TV if there are no five-day turnarounds.
Then Wayne got more strident. He was not down with player power, yo.
He reckoned it was hypocritical of the players, who were being paid a motza and happily backed up two days after State of Origin matches. It was “double standards”, he said, something he disliked.
Normal journalistic practice dictated taking these comments back to Smith and Bellamy. But the Storm weren’t letting media representatives even into the giant anteroom, packed with sponsors and people like Danny Moore and Chris Flannery.
No biggie. Getting their reactions to Bennett’s hard line will tie us over for a few more days. This is an exchange that has legs.
What to make of it, then?
Smith and Bellamy have a very good point – but they are in a very weak position. The Rugby League Players Association has recently lost its CEO, who reportedly walked before being pushed, and the league has just agreed a new free-to-air TV deal which doesn’t even start until 2018.
In that deal, there is just one fewer round in the NRL regular season – the NRL and players really wanted four fewer.
Player welfare? It’s already been dismissed to a degree. You’re not getting a break, boys. What can the game’s stars do to abolish five-day breaks between games when they have already copped it in the neck (or somewhere else) over the number of rounds?
Do they have the requisite cajones and unity to threaten industrial action, in careers that are over in the blink of an eye, to get what they want? Are they willing to sacrifice their income in a sport invented 120 years ago to give them just that?
Bennett’s argument is interesting.
Under the new TV deal, we are told that the NRL “has control of its draw”. But what we don’t know is what the NRL actually wants from its draw.
Is it not in the game’s best interest to share the free-to-air pie around? Should Canberra not be on television as much as Brisbane, to grow their sponsorship and fan-base?
Bennett’s argument seems to be that fans don’t want Canberra or the Warriors on TV, and if we force-feed them, they won’t watch and we’ll get less money from broadcasters next time.
Easy to say if you are coach of Brisbane, who are on every Friday.
He says everyone has to cope with adverse conditions, but do they really?
At its most basic level, it is immature and unfair of the NRL to treat clubs differently, to make any concessions whatsoever to broadcasters. If the NRL really believed it had an even competition and that every game was a spectacle, it wouldn’t care which were on free-to-air and which ones weren’t.
The NRL won’t get less if it makes Channel Nine show the Raiders every eight weeks – the increase in the next deal just won’t be as big as if it allows them to show Bennett’s team on the same bat-time, bat-channel until 2020.
And that’s a sacrifice it must absolutely make. Broadcasters buy a certain number of NRL games. They deserve no say whatsoever in which games they get. That is just backwards-thinking from a sport lacking self-confidence.
The second part of Bennett’s argument is classic double-think.
Players back up two days after Origin so they shouldn’t complain about doing so at other stages of the season, because they’re always going to back up up two days after Origin.
When asked if they had a choice in the matter at Origin time, Bennett said sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t.
In other words, his logic is because players have to do one thing they don’t like, which is rough on their bodies and could shorten careers, they are hypocritical to ask not to do it again.
And that’s not logic at all.