No player is bigger than the game of NRL

hear hear.

Rugby used to be amatuer so for Rugby League players there was no incentive to play it.The idea that there was some golden age when money was not an issue is romantic drivel. Why did Harry Bath and Brian Bevan spend most of their careers in England, do you think they preferred the weather? Why did Johnny Raper leave Newtown for Snt George, or John Sattler head down from Newcastle to play for South Sydney? I coul go on forever but you get the drift,give us a break .

Emric.that,s unfair.I am the first to admit rugby league poached players ,after all it was the open professional game.And yes that applies to NZ Ru players.but don't kid yourself,that ALl Blacks were not looked after in the amateur era.Piggy Muldonn alluded to it once famously. Likewise with the Boks. You think losing the ellas and at one stage Fairfax to ru at school and then senior ru was good for rl. I won't even discuss the damage done to rl in France.

Its the superstars that needs to be saved

SBW WHO ?????. A great player and athlete, but SORRY, i wouldn't go to a league match to watch one player play no matter who he is UNLESS he is playing for the team I support. And no one player is bigger then Rugby League, it is a team effort and all team members get the rewards. "GO THE EAGLES"

To be fair, the RU in France between 1920's and 1950's is undoubtedly the worst any worldwide RU organisation has ever been. As far as underhanded tactics etc goes, the most underhanded could arguably have been Ball, Flegg and Joynton-Smith secretly buying the 1908 Wallabies to play Rugby League. It pays to look at the issue from both perspectives. Which Is what Fagan does better than anyone. Union for decades was run by men who received wages from gate takings while the players didn't receieve any money at all. Disgruntled players who lost money due to injuries sustained playing Union were the driving force behind the birth of Rugby League. The Union felt betrayed. The players who created League felt betrayed. That's essentially why the two codes never liked each other. To see it purely as one code having been f**ked over by the other is very close minded and misguided.

Unfortunately CrossCoder this weakens New Zealand Rugby. I couldn't really care about other nations and how things work there New Zealand is a small nation of 4.25 million people we are collectively smaller then Sydney in population and NSW in geographical size. The damage done by the league scouts to New Zealand rugby is a lot this is not about kids playing sport but about national pride. Rugby is our national sport if the All Blacks are diminished to strengthen the NRL then New Zealand as a nation is diminished One of the things that has always annoyed me about your arguments is your prepared to blame Rugby for all leagues problems but you've never acknowledged the damage done by Leagues money men to both New Zealand, Welsh and Australian Rugby.

Beale was offered a scholarship .If young men are offered opportunities to earn and play a sport ,because there are limitations where they live,then who am I to argue against it. It happened in France for many years with young rl players,because their code could not offer the money or opportunities.it happens in the UK.It's not just ru youngsters in NZ. That is the way of professionalism. loyalty to a code died with the dollar,or euro or pound.It's like changing jobs.the better the offer,the more chance of taking it up.

Agree mushi. The codes will always survive with the new crop coming through most likely containing stars better than what we are witnessing now. The Chiefs moved on from SBW and are through to another Super final. Just the same as the Roosters will build from this year and be a force next year without him. My point was more to do with Curtis' last line that its time for the clubs to start dictating to the players rather than vice versa.. When Id argue that bar a few extreme examples, that is very much the case now in all contract negotiations. Only a select few get to call the shots.

we are in agreement there however when it comes to rugby in new zealand a lot of kids in their college years are being offered a lot of money and pathways to get them to switch from the rugby union pathways to the league ones..

I don't have an issue with star players earning the big contracts but I think its wrong to have the ones who did the game wrong as the face of it, with Benji Marshall he is wanting a massive contract upgrade but yet on the field his performances don't warrant it, so the nrl cop flak for not trying to keep him, yes his image sells the game, but clubs true success is when they win. The tigers need to think of their future & how they can achieve a winning culture, because if they don't then when benji retires after getting the big contract he wants & still delivers unimpressive performances they could be a struggling club for years after & for what, because benji got to be on tv more & struck up deals for himself more so than his club. I know sports a business but there has to be some common sense, the nrl will lose more fans, when ch 9 shows roosters games, my dad who is a lifelong league fan turns the Tele off because it becomes the sbw show pretty much, this is the man who left this game & now still can't be sure if he commits to it for next year, and he is the face of our game, this is just plain wrong imo.

Ive always said let em go, NRL players are paid way to much. Marshall turned down 750K (I repeat 750K, thats nearly 40k per game) to chuck a footy around for a club that supported him through good and bad times. I disagree with the salary cap but I believe the NRL would do better to concentrate on making game day more affordable and exciting for fans and less on pampering the egos and filling the pockets of young players. The sense of entitlement of contemporary players is out of control, Dugan for example is earning more in a year than a lot of his clubs fans will in twenty, twice as much as the Prime Minister of the country, and he cant even be bothered to turn up to training cause he's too busy tweeting pictures of himself getting pissed on premixs and is so disconnected from reality that when hes sacked he doesn't change his behaviour and bleats about being hardly done by. In my view NRL needs to take a leaf out of the swans book and start a 'no dick heads policy'

but even with SBW and Foalu it isn't like either game they left blew up. Good on them for maximising their outcome but if a game isn't bigger than the current crop of stars then start writing the obituary.

I love seeing the SBW's and Foalu's of this world holding codes to ransom, getting lambasted for doing so and then backing it up on the field showing what out and out stars they are. As people have pointed out sport is a business. For every SBW who gets to call his own shots when it comes to contract negotiations, there are hundreds of others who are royally scr*wed over by the clubs. For every good story of say Simon Dwyer getting injured and securing an off-field role with the Tigers, there are dozens of others being left in the lurch and thrown on the scrapheap. The players are simply commodities, easily traded and always expendable. Good on guys like SBW and Folau for turning the tables on the clubs and the codes themselves. They are taking all the risk in signing short term deals, as they are only one injury away from not being picked up again. So hats off to them.

Why all the hate for SBW? He walked out of his contract (terrible move), got banned for 5 years, served his punishment and then came back. He did the crime, he served the time.

Like Tippett perhaps .Salary cap and the CEO gets 6 months. Received by whom,the Roosters club more likely.The NRL did not have a press conference about his arrival,that was the Roosters..There are still many rl fans unimpressed about it all.Please don't exaggerate.Ask Bulldog's fans. You think his press conference comments endeared him to all rl fans? You are kidding. And who is one of the biggest Rooster's supporters? None other than David Gyngell.channel 9 and ratings and all that. Read between the lines.

That's exactly my point Emric.it happens in this country at times.So the argument about players being plucked from code A ,comes across as being let us say a little wushy washy ie meaningless. I played soccer as a kid,ru in my teens and 1 year of rl.My junior upbringing is rather confused.

Crosscoder its not uncommon nor unusual for a New Zealand rugby player to play both rugby and league in their younger years.

I agree with the thrust of this article. SBW tore up his NRL contract, walked out on his club, basically spat in the face of his fans, and then refused to apologise in interviews or even concede that he'd treated the game badly. Then, once he was ready to return, how was he receievd? Like a returning hero and people's champion! It was all very bizarre. Even at the press conf to announce his return, SBW said that it had been a hard decision to return to league and that he was doing primarily it out of obligation to Politis (what a man of honour!), with the intention of returning to rugby the following year. The response? Cheers and confetti. (The less said about Ch.9's OMG campaign and thought-bubble in Game 1 the better). Obviously, he's a super athlete and an asset to the game of league. But when someone treats the game with utter disdain and ignores binding contracts they have signed, there must be consequences for that. Otherwise, it allows players - and their agents - to ride roughshod over clubs and the administration.

Bit harsh on SBW Bulldog. If he was only interested in the money he wouldn't have returned to the NRL this year as he would've taken a pay cut from Union to play NRL again. In fact he wouldn't have gone to NZ to play rugby for the ABs either as the money in France while at Toulon would've been more again. Hes done some average things in the past that you can criticise him for, but being about the money isn't really 1 of them IMO.