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The National Rugby League’s predicament in the Sonny Bill Williams affair shouldn’t have too many repercussions for the AFL, unless there’s a sudden rash of players wanting to try their luck as kickers in the NFL in the United States.
Or, even more unlikely, being sought out as goalkeepers by Man U or Real Madrid, or backrowers by French, Italian or South American rugby union clubs.
The dilemma for the NRL in the present case is that what Williams is doing is changing from one sport to another. Rugby league and rugby union are different sports, regardless of their similarities, just as Australian football and American football are different.
By seeking to prevent Williams from playing union in France, the NRL and the Canterbury club are effectively asking the courts to force Williams to keep playing rugby league for the Bulldogs, rather than take up another sport.
Courts are notoriously reluctant to make orders in circumstances such as this, when those taking action are asking them to enforce what is known in legal circles as specific performance of a contract – in this case, forcing Williams to come back to Australia and keep playing with Canterbury.
The courts would have no hesitation, of course, in ordering Williams not to play for another rugby league club that comes under the NRL’s control, provided they were satisfied his contract was not unreasonable, which can be a grey area, particularly under the NSW industrial relations laws.
How is any of this relevant to the AFL?
It isn’t, directly, unless one of the fanciful situations above arises. But there are some areas of the AFL’s dealings with players which could quite easily give the league a lot of headaches.
Leaving aside the issue of drafts and salary caps (a still untested area), the most obvious concern for the AFL would be its regulations preventing uncontracted players moving freely from one club to another.
The AFL and the players’ association occasionally talk about “free agency” or “limited free agency” (which is a total contradiction in terms) as possibly being on the agenda for discussions somewhere down some never-defined track.
By “limited free agency” they appear to mean that a player with, say, ten years of “service” to a club might be eligible to go and play somewhere else.
But the idea that a player can move from one club to another after fulfilling the terms of his initial or existing contract, which may be for one, two, three or more years, unless it contains a reasonable option clause, appears to be dismissed as heresy.
Yet that is exactly what happens in most other sports, including rugby league, and has been enshrined in Australian law since 1971, when Balmain player Dennis Tutty won a High Court case for restraint of trade by the club and the NSW Rugby League.
The AFL, and its predecessor, the VFL, have managed so far to avoid being successfully taken on to have the Tutty precedent applied.
It’s just a matter of time, though.
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