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A Cronulla player announces he is moving to the Bulldogs in a big-money switch early in the season, only to be dumped to reggies by the coach soon afterwards.
For $550,000 – who is Andrew Fifita. I mean… Michael Lichaa?
For those who’ve spent the last couple of days playing ET’s Rugby League instead of reading the back pages, Cronulla young gun Michael Lichaa has been removed from the Sharks’ 17-man side to play the Dragons this weekend, after signing a three-year-deal with the Bulldogs earlier in the week.
On the playing surface there seems to be not an awful lot going on here.
After getting annihilated on Monday night, the Sharks should fair dinkum be dropping half a dozen players and, as we’ve seen so far this year, for every Cronulla player ASADA is circling, the Doggies seem to be circling even more in their Big League Buyers Guide.
What is news here is, in a possible coaching masterstroke, Cronulla box-warmer Peter Sharp has decided to unleash the old ‘Bennett backlash’.
While it is yet to be seen whether Lichaa will now go to the Bulldogs and develop an attitude problem, make a disastrous state of Origin debut before returning to the Sharks to play out of position in a grand final victory; the Northern Eagles Coach of the Century has re-opened Pandora’s Steve Walters.
Yep, he’s gone and dropped rugby league’s own L word. Loyalty.
Most cynics would argue the concept of loyalty in rugby league in 2014 exists only in a glass display cabinet next to Reg Gasnier’s Reg Grundies in the rugby league museum. But if you look around, you’ll see the concept is a lot more like set pieces from scrums – rare, but still out there.
This season alone, Cam Smith decided to play on with the Storm, despite the Broncos promising him everything but the Big Pineapple; Joey Leilua has stuck with the Knights after they threw him a lifeline and James Tedesco will soon re-sign with Wests after they stuck with him through more injuries than the entire run of ER.
Even the evil-guy clubs have been getting in on the act, with the Broncos deciding to pay out the remainder of Jharal Yow Yeh’s contract, despite his premature retirement.
And really, most fans outside of the loonies standing on the hill in a g-string and body-painted in their teams colours will accept that players signing with other clubs for more cash is just how things go.
What continues to put a dampner on proceedings though is the continual stupidity of players signing for new clubs when the season has only just begun, something that has little to do with loyalty and more to do with a laughable player transfer system that makes keeping a track of ‘who’s going where’ like a footy version of ‘who’s shagging who’ on Home and Away.
If Lichaaa had a whole NRL season at the Sharks before he was open to negotiation, would he have stayed? Surely it couldn’t have hurt.
Loyalty? Yeah, it’s nice. But right now as a fan I’d swap it for a season that can go longer than two weeks before being eroded by a marquee player legally signing for a different club.
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