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Wait a minute. Did John Grant really say that the NRL may use its fabled marquee player war chest to sign Jarryd Hayne?
Hold on a sec. I’ll check.
Yes! It appears he did! The following quotes appeared in The Courier-Mail four days ago: “That was a commission approved initiative and it is still on the table. Sam Burgess has just come back. Clearly the other opportunity would be Jarryd Hayne.”
I am truly gobsmacked. Or, as retiring Super League player Luke Robinson put it, mind-boggled. (“What mind-boggles me is….” he was quoted as saying.)
One, the entire ‘discretionary player fund’ is complete nonsense. The current administration has already done an awesome job of dismantling the talent equalisation programs overseen by David Gallop with its relaxation of the rules surrounding third party agreements.
Now it wants to further inflate the market by offering some pot of gold at the end of rainbow made of grass with goalposts. What club these lucky souls would play for is anyone’s guess.
But the really insane thing about the idea this money could be spent on Hayne is that he is a rugby league player who left to play a few minutes of NFL!
Not for a moment would I denigrate the achievements of Hayne. I am not a hater. What I like most about Hayne’s story is that he threw everything away to chase a dream.
Now, that’s the thing over which colleague Paul Kent attacked Grant – Hayne didn’t leave for money so why would he come back for it? My argument is a little different.
Why are we so insecure in rugby league that you become a bigger rugby league star by not playing rugby league? It’s got me beat. Two billion dollars for the TV rights and we are still needy enough to crave the validation of others.
(This may seem contradictory to regular readers of this column. I think rugby league should be conscious of the way things look to outsiders, sure. And this looks pathetic!)
Burgess had a year in rugby union. They didn’t like him. Rugby union people reckoned he was a failure. Maybe – objectively – he wasn’t.
But how has he come back a bigger star after a year of not playing? Please, even if you never make comments on the bottom of stories like this, knock yourself out and make one below.
Explain it to me.
And here is the really balmy thing: if you set a precedent under which you give players money outside the salary cap to come back to rugby league, surely you are actually giving them an incentive to leave!
Maybe if you become a DJ, join the circus or get a gig on Dating Naked – just for a year, mind – you can get John Grant to offer you a pile of cash outside the salary cap to come back!
If A) you can play rugby league and B) you do something else that reaches a bigger audience for a little while, you are set for life. We’ll pretend you’re Pele or the Dalai Lama and fawn over you until we vomit… or you do.
Because, see, the less rugby league you play the more valuable you will become in the eyes of a sport that wants to prove it can attract the big stars.
That is, blokes who used to be stars in its own competition, which is clearly not a big enough star.
I’ll sum it all up in just two words: grow up.