I fear that in the coming months we will see momentum build for what may be the most disastrous move in rugby league history. Petero Civoniceva, one of the most modest and even keeled individuals I’ve had the pleasure of meeting, has unwittingly played a part.
By downplaying the comments of Jarryd Hayne in isolation he has, in essence, given tacit approval to speculation of a strike and increased rep player payments.
I doubt that it is his intention, but it will be seized upon as a point of support by those who wish to further their own agenda.
To be clear, all speculation of a salary cap increase raised by top level players doesn’t wash with Petero’s belief that the people that should be looked after are the lower paid player’s livelihood.
The most pertinent question is: without an increase in revenue, where does the increased payments to highly paid players come from?
The answer is the bottom rung of earners.
We can argue about Cretaceous, Jurassic or Triassic reptiles causing a poor revenue outcome half a decade ago, but the commercial reality is that we’ve got certain amount of money coming into the game and that is all we can distribute.
Arguing about if it should be more or less should have carbon tax applied for the waste of hot air.
Which raises the most obvious point: why even raise the prospect of a strike when you know your objectives can’t be achieved.
And how does the junior development pipeline survive this?
These young men are on $50k a year as the top percentile in their chosen field and have just forgone further education and career development to pursue their professional footballing dream.
These young men have neither the skills, nor the savings, nor the third party agreements to provide for themselves, or their families, during this period.
They will have three choices: move to the mundane working lives the rest of us live, change to a more lucrative code, or hope their families can support them.
So what Cameron Smith, Jarryd Hayne, Jonathon Thurston, and every other elite selfish player is essentially saying is, “I don’t care about this year’s pool of juniors and I care even less about the game in 5 years.”
Sadly, though, they will be the same ill informed, analysis light bleaters from the channel nine couch in 10 years who are oblivious to the role they played.
They’ll sit beside Gus and rave on about “the old days” throw up stats which are meaningless to the outcome of the game and move on.
But even worse still for the top players is that their actions have the down side of creating a fissure in the facade of united front for the NRL that is required for TV rights.
Having had the players hold both the NRL and TV networks hostage for the benefit of the elite is not a prospect that yields a great stable revenue stream.
Even if the strike is simply a big stick waved at the prosperity of the game the mere suggestion introduces an element of risk that the TV stations are well within their rights to price in and would be foolish not to.
It displays a fundamental ignorance of diplomacy and intelligence that has been the hallmark of the rugby league players association.
Sadly neither the players nor their “advisers”, and I use this term very lightly for a group that put Craig Wing into Indonesian golf courses and other players into the other Storm debacle, have the capacity to realise that their timing and demands actually hamper their own long term objectives.
The game would be better served with an Independent Commission for the players than the NRL. Maybe then we could stop the players cutting off their own noses.
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