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So, who will be the first player to have a career end in tears? Sonny Bill Williams tends to change the landscape wherever he goes and now, it seems, even his reluctant re-entry into the NRL could have huge ramifications for the way clubs operate in the future.
Williams’ ability, injury aside, to sign-on for a stint in Japanese rugby, then bo,x and finally return to his handshake-wedded club in Bondi seems unique.
It’s a ‘Sonny deal’ that allows a man regarded as a supreme athlete to earn as much money as he can while his health and fitness allows him to.
It works for him, but previously the NRL wasn’t a fan of doing business this way.
In theory, they still aren’t, but his return under these circumstances has acted like a red rag to a bull for player managers across the sport.
The NRL had previously shown its unwillingness to co-operate with Benji Marshall having a lucrative stint in Japanese rugby during the off-season, but this week, his manager indicated that he’d be kicking the ants nest once again.
“It is probably something I will raise with the chief executive in the next couple of days, when they come back from their exhaustive camp,” Tauber told Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph newspaper.
“It’s a little bit different this time because Benji is contracted until 2015 so we have to get a release.”
Williams is in a completely different boat to Marshall and indeed any other player who is keen on a large amount of money in a short space of time.
Williams isn’t signing a two year deal with the Roosters and saying “sayonara” in between.
He’s coming to the code, playing and then most likely leaving again to prepare for the 2015 Rugby World Cup completely free of obligation to the NRL.
Marshall is under contract to the Wests Tigers until 2015 and has a responsibility to report for duty fresh, fit and well while that agreement exists.
The risk for all parties involved is immense.
Wests Tigers CEO Stephen Humphreys released a strongly worded statement after the story broke claiming that “this will not be happening,” sooner or later though Humphreys and men like him around the game will have to confront the reality that stars want it to happen.
In the past, the Wests Tigers have stood by Marshall through all of his injury troubles and paid him every cent he was owed.
If the club grants him a release in the future and the New Zealand international suffers a serious injury while playing in Japan, who is responsible?
Do the Tigers re-contract Benji and nurse him back to health, fearing that if they don’t another club, desperate for talent, might do so?
Or do they play hard-ball and choose not to spend part of their salary cap on a player who wasn’t injured while under their roof?
Common sense tells you that it would be the latter, but rugby league is a funny beast.
That’s the risk SBW runs with his career all of the time.
The world cup winning All Black spoke earlier this week of the motivation a short-term deal provides him.
He has to perform otherwise his income stops.
Williams arrived back at Sydney airport with his arm in a sling and with a nagging doubt that his stint at the Roosters wouldn’t come to fruition.
While that might’ve pleased him, given how “tough” he said it was to honour an agreement made with Roosters supremo Nick Politis, it would’ve meant a loss of income.
He’s not exactly doing it tough when it comes to finances, but they operate on different levels to John Citizen.
It’s not exactly that simple for the Tigers either in regards to Marshall.
They could let him go, on the understanding he returns to the club at the end of the Japanese rugby season, and hope and pray in the meantime he doesn’t get injured.
Or the joint-venture could maintain a hard-line stance and risk having an unhappy and unsettled player on their books.
It’s more complicated for clubs with players coming off contract sooner.
A series of one-year deals could become the norm for the games elite.
What havoc that creates with salary cap planning, often done years in advance, remains to be seen, but it would have to cause some issues.
It will also show the once significant issue of player burn-out is relative to the price attached to fatigue.
At the moment, end of season tests are seen as pushing the limits of endurance after a long and arduous NRL campaign.
Even extending the season to accommodate stand-alone representative weekends caused an uproar.
Now that is apparently an afterthought.
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