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The departure of Sonny Bill Williams to rugby union has been met with all sorts of vitriolic ramblings on websites and radio stations.
It’s an issue which seems to have worked people into a lather, no matter what part of the spectrum they belong to.
I thought sport was meant to be a release from all the pressures of the day-to-day world. Modern sport just seems to add to them.
Maybe it’s because sport, as I’m told in about every third post I read on it from all around the world, is now big business.
For the most part, it seems to be pretty right. But it does seem to be becoming as ruthless as anything since the beginning of the industrial revolution in terms of the way people want to behave.
But there is not just business: there is good business and bad business.
As anyone who has been in business for five minutes knows, there is way that people should behave in order to stop the whole thing just crashing down.
Those cheering on Sonny and nodding along and declaring, “That is business!”, must also be just as excited when banks close branches, Telstra stops service, the cost of fuel gets jacked up, or dodgy tradesman take off with their cash.
“Ain’t it great how business works!”, they cry as their toilet floods into the living room.
I had no idea we could get so many volunteers to go around and evict a few families on Christmas Eve for falling behind on their housing payments. After all, it is business.
Personally, I think if Sonny really wants to go to France and play rugby, then good luck and god bless. But like many business decisions, there is a right way to do things.
Sportsmen, though, seem to be living in some sort of parallel universe at the moment.
Some people say it’s because they are from Generation Y. Others blame their managers. And, of course, the media is in on it as well.
It’s not just Sonny and it’s not just rugby league.
Take a look at football.
One of the world’s best players at the moment currently agrees with the head of football’s governing body that he is treated as a slave.
Yep, 200,000 bucks a week is pretty much akin to building pyramids and picking cotton these days.
No wonder Ronaldo has a tricky ankle. It must be hell dragging that ball and chain around.
A school fete in Queensland recently offered the chance for kids to get their photo taken with Michael Clarke and his baggy green cap. All for just $50.
$50! I’d hate to see what they were charging for a sausage sandwich.
But the excuse was, “we can’t have the baggy green cap out all day.”
Isn’t that the caps job? To be out in sun all day? Were they worried the advertising on it might fade?
One of the great lines about modern sport is that player’s need to maximise their earnings because they have a limited playing career.
Sure, if you are bringing in lots of cash, if chip packets are flying off the shelves because you are on a Tazo, then here is your share.
But why the obsession with retiring at 35?
Why is it that, at a time when we hear so much about helping players for life after football, we hear just as much about players needing to earn more and more because there is no life after football.
It just doesn’t quite make sense.
But it wasn’t just the money for Sonny. It was also the media, who just weren’t funny.
Poor old Sonny just didn’t like the constant invasion into his private life. But of course, it gets a little blurry when you live out your private life in the public arena.
We don’t hear much about the private lives of about 95 percent of NRL players, possibly because it doesn’t fill the Sunday papers when you’re acting like a normal human being.
Sonny’s rap sheet was hardly conducive to a bloke who was trying to live the quiet life.
So were does it all end.
Well, I’ve seen a little window into the future and it wasn’t that pretty.
When you watch the Olympics, have a look at the athletics teams for countries from the Persian Gulf. You might notice that a lot of their runners look strangely like Kenyans.
It’s because they are.
Oil rich states in the Gulf offer millions of dollars to young Africans to take up their nationalities and run for their country. In the trade it is known as the golden passport.
It is the same reason a lot of their footballers have names with a distinctly South American handle.
One million dollars for one Olympics is a pretty good rate.
I wonder how long it might be before those boys park the Bentley out the front of the AIS and start splashing to cash up a few young swimmers.
There is not much we could do really. And I don’t think Uncle Toby’s could match the cash.
After all, it is business.
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