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I hope everyone has had a good night’s rest after yesterday’s excitement. The signing of Israel Folau for the Western Sydney AFL franchise was indeed a coup for the code, but that didn’t stop a lot of people getting very carried away with its ramifications.
Many of rugby league’s regular critics and doomsday prophets were claiming that while they’d been wrong about the last 1,567 reasons why this marked the imminent death of rugby league, this was the moment the game crumpled in a heap.
While it may have also brought more attention for a revision of the NRL’s salary cap, it is unlikely any of the practical solutions for the cap posed would have stopped Folau’s switch if the figures of the deal are true (reports already range from a $3 million to $6 million).
Even if they had Brian Waldron in charge, it’s highly unlikely any rugby league club would have come up with that cash, nor would they probably want to for Folau.
From just a footballing perspective, which is what rugby league contracts are determined on, he is just not worth the amount dangled in front of him by the AFL.
Arguments have already begun about Folau getting his true worth in this contract.
But here is not so much a player but a tool of the club’s marketing department, and so he apparently can command such a fee. Folau is worth far more to the AFL to be popping in and out of primary schools in Western Sydney (and reacquainting himself with the streets of Minto, no doubt) than he is to the Broncos actually playing rugby league.
Also, let’s remember that his salary is not counted within the GWS salary cap, so this is an extreme example and one that shouldn’t guide the future of any NRL salary cap changes.
If this salary comes from the marketing budget, who’s next? Lady Gaga?
I’ve argued previously about the need for changes in the rugby league salary cap, but let’s move on for the moment.
Nearly every fan of rugby league that I have spoken to since his decision has had similar feelings: “Good luck, I would have done the same.”
Kerry Packer got his Alan Bond and Israel has his Andrew D. You are very lucky if at one point in your life some blokes wanders past with a wheelbarrow of cash and asks you to hold onto it for the rest of your life.
Generally speaking, if he does, say yes.
What has been stomach turning has been the PR that has accompanied it with all the predictability of a bunch of women on a hen’s night requesting the Annie Lennox and Aretha Franklin song “Sisters are doing it for themselves.”
Suddenly this Queenslander is Minto through and through, keen for a new challenge, and it’s just a hammer blow for the ailing sport of rugby league.
Man the barricades!
A bloke who has never played the sport has signed for a team that, as yet, doesn’t even have a name.
I’m sorry, I’ll admit I don’t like marketing people. They are loose with the truth (in the sense that they lie) and basically exist to speak bullshit to part you from your cash.
So the marketing line that was quickly trumpeted almost as soon as the deal was announced was that it had already paid for itself. Gee, it was almost like they’d done the calculations before getting the equations.
Former Brisbane Lions players and Fox commentator Alistair Lynch announced that when he saw the morning paper’s, “It’s very rare that we see AFL on the back pages here in Brisbane”, which must have gladdened the hearts of his former club, who have been toiling away for a not insignificant period of time.
I then started to wonder if Lynch had awoken from a particularly heavy night on the cans when he said: “It’s looks like it has already paid off”.
Really.
“AFL makes sports pages” is surely not breaking news these days.
I understand the point, that this has much much more to do with marketing and business than it has to do with sport (oh joy!). But what is the equation that tells us how much Israel needs to trouser before it becomes a waste.
Does the AFL really need to spend such enormous amounts to get people in Sydney talking about AFL? What have the Swans been doing for the last 20 odd years?
But if positive news stories are a plus, do we subtract from the total when Michael Voss, Brendan Fevola and a host of other commentators slam the move?
Probably not.
It’s not science, it’s marketing fantasy, where everything is bigger and brighter, everything is perfect, and everything boils down to a catch-phrase which actually means nothing.
Which brings me to another equation, which surely must exist in the marketing paradigm.
If we have had all these rugby league converts to rugby union, then surely someone has worked out how much they are worth to a code to bring them across. Seeing sport is business, it wouldn’t make sense for them not to pay for themselves, surely.
But then, if as every rugby fan seems to tell me, these blokes were a “failure”, why will they be a roaring success in AFL, a game that is less similar to their own game and in which they have less experience in?
I’m genuinely interested to know. Or doesn’t it matter?
For what it’s worth, if Folau’s exit is a sign that rugby league is a basket case, then how to do you explain the return of Lote Tuqiri and Timana Tahu and the expected return of Mark Gasnier?
Until Folau, it was about fitting in all the blokes wanting to come back to NRL, let alone stopping the exodus.
I simply think it is a sign of things to come, players will up sticks and move to whatever sport pays them the most, it might depend on their skill or their marketability to some key demographic.
But it will happen.
Eventually the absolute din which occurs with every transition will eventually calm down, much to the chargrin of our media, eager to sell a “code war”.
Look at the Titan’s Josh Graham. 2004 Queensland Reds, 2005 Melbourne Storm, 2006 Western Force, 2007 to present the Gold Coast Titans.
No Israel Folau or Mark Gasnier for the Rebels. Instead come on down Cooper Vuna and Jarred Saffy, and barely an eyebrow raised.
Get used to it.
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