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Of all the bad publicity that rugby league has suffered, surely this is the lowest ebb. Rightly or wrongly, you can pass off drunken escapades as moronic boys being moronic boys.
You can pass off salary cap scandals as hyper-competitive clubs trying to cut corners and take risks to achieve success and riches.
Even the ugly, brawling scenes from two weeks ago can be palmed off as a high-aggression, contact sport, boiling over.
However, having the CEO – the game’s top dog and public face – to come out and liken passion to terrorism is an ill-advised, thoughtless (the fact that it was said on the 10th anniversary of 2001 attacks on the US boggles the mind), act that makes his position untenable.
It completely undermines the support aspect of the game, makes a mockery of the NRL’s own marketing of State of Origin, and alienates all fans who don’t attend, to sit down and shut up.
David Gallop has spat on the graves of everyone who have lost their lives to terrorism, and makes a mockery of our troops risking their lives abroad.
He isn’t some meat-head, ex-player media pundit, prone to the odd brain snap on camera or microphone.
He is a trained lawyer, who of all people, should know the ramifications of wrongly chosen words and think very carefully about the damage those words can do.
It is lazy opinion forming, to assume that the boos at AAMI Park were as a direct result of the punishment for the salary-cap rorting, as Gallop himself seems to have done.
Gallop was not a well-liked man, south of the boarder prior to 2010.
The primary reason is the ‘Melbourne is a footballing outpost’ mentality of the NRL and the rugby league media, and the general sense of abandonment that rugby league fans, down south feel.
Victorian rugby league fans have had to sit and watch the AFL muscle in, firstly on Sydney and Brisbane, and now doubling their presence in those towns, saving no expense.
Exemptions, concessions and direct investment in grassroots and marketing all liberally, dished out to make the move work.
We can thumb our noses at them, all we like, but the reality is that they are doing it and the NRL aren’t.
Never once has Gallop backed rugby league in Victoria, acting in the NRL’s best interests in the state. Having to exist in a saturated AFL market only highlights what the NRL aren’t doing in the same situations, further breeding the ‘Sydney hates us’ mentality of rugby league fans down south.
The cost of promoting grassroots football comes out of the Storm’s pocket – there is no QRL or NSWRL to pick up the tab down there – however the AFL has it’s centrally-funded AusKick program.
The most damming of all is television coverage of the game in Victoria.
It is an indictment of the NRL’s priorities when it remains a mystery as to whether or not State of Origin or finals matches will be shown live in Melbourne, let alone the regular Friday night and Sunday afternoon clashes.
The football codes have experienced an unprecedented commercial boom in the last decade, and the NRL hasn’t capitalised on this at all.
By not expanding the game into new markets and adopting an aggressive campaign to cement the N part of the NRL, rugby league has been treading water.
Don’t flatter yourselves, the front line of the code war isn’t Western Sydney, it’s Melbourne. The Holy Grail is to take on the AFL in their own back yard, and win.
The A-League has proven that you can have a very strong presence, and even steal the limelight during AFL finals week!
They have been successful enough to do in five years what the NRL hasn’t in nearly 15, and expand to a second team.
However, the starkest example is that of the Melbourne Rebels. With a similar base, and a similar colloquial attitude of the game, they are elbowing their way in, making lots of noise and attracting new people to the game.
While all of this happens, Storm fans read in their papers, and see on the news the way the AFL expands, how the FFA and ARU have expanded into Melbourne and begin to feel like the paupers of the Melbourne ‘outpost’ community.
This is why Gallop was booed.
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