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MASCORD: Dominos fall on player welfare

29th November, 2015
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Dave Smith achieved a lot in a short time as NRL CEO, but is still lacking on player welfare. (Photo: AAP)
Expert
29th November, 2015
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Despite what Clint Newtown and the RLPA think, the NRL does care about player burnout. That is, unless there’s a massive wad of cash involved.

Australia will play fewer and fewer Test matches in the coming years to lessen the load on State of Origin stars. They will include Origin in their tally of games compared with New Zealand and England.

Practically, that means Australia playing three fewer Tests per year than their major rivals. The NRL will risk derision from the rest of the rugby league-playing world – and real damage to it – to look after its biggest stars.

(One of the benefits of the proposed Nines World Championship is they’d be able to able to send an under-strength side)

But when the doors are shut, the TV executives are in the room and the pizza has been ordered – the players tend to be forgotten.

Much work had been done on a 22-round season when David Smith moved out of League Central and into a secret bunker to secure the $925 million deal with Channel Nine. The season they agreed on was 25 rounds – and the sacrifice made was the representative round, which had been trumpeted as a great opportunity for the international game.

Once more, international footy (and City-Country, but it had probably run its course) is the first to be shoved off the boat. The players are, invariably, next.

This year we had so much discussion about five-day turnarounds disappearing.

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Then the CEO of News flew in, the doors closed and Dominos got a phone call. As Trent Barrett reminds us, they are back in 2015. Now – in the Sunday press – we have the spectre of industrial action early in the new season as a protest.

In fairness, Monday Night Football is not long for this world. But won’t the same problems exist Sunday to Thursday? If not, how will this be achieved?

There is more to like about the new NRL TV rights and playing schedule than not.

One colleague said no-one would look back fondly on the original $925 million arrangement with Nine.

I do.

It created enough competitive tension to upset Rupert Murdoch. That’s a win in my book. With the loss of Premier League rights to Optus, Fox was placed in a position where it was forced to the table and the NRL ended up with as much money as it originally intended.

David Smith, who fell on his sword to make sure that objective was reached, deserves his bonus. So does whichever adviser who told him the digital landscape was changing so quickly that he was better off keeping his cards close to his chest in that area.

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The game needs more people who come in, piss people off, achieve an objective and leave. Generally speaking, our most effective administrators are those who could walk into another job at an time.

They tend to be the most altruistic.

The next battle is with the clubs. Tell me, what other businesses can you think of that have most of their wage bill and travel paid, have enormous intellectual property that matters to millions, and still can’t balance their books?

They want to spend money on things that, in my view, should be run from headquarters. I want to see clubs as shells, as true franchises.

They run a team, they sell tickets, they flog sponsorships. Let League Central do the rest.

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