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Ss Daly Cherry-Evans has done exactly what he lambasted the media for speculating he would do.
There are many people defending DCE after he decided to renege on a contract with Gold Coast and stay at Manly. They say most readers would have done the same thing.
I’ll tell you what I wouldn’t have done: I wouldn’t have belittled others for saying I might do something that, in the back of my mind, I knew I might actually do. That is where, to me, the trust is lost, where Cherry-Evans comes off looking disingenuous at best.
The media that annoyed DCE so much turned out to be right. Player transfers are the bread and butter of rugby league beat reporters and always will be – and thankfully they didn’t lay off just because Daly asked them to.
This is the sort of expedient behaviour we see creeping into the game now – like using the “personal reasons” cover-all to hide bad behaviour. Reporters deliberately drop off “personal reasons” out of respect – respect and trust which is betrayed when it is discovered the personal reason was a bar fight.
The wider issue is that rugby league keeps coming up with bandaid solutions to gaping wounds.
The June 30 deadline was introduced because the NRL accepted it couldn’t police negotiations between players and clubs. So all contracts signed before that date were rendered null and void.
On the surface, a smart move.
Players – led by DCE – then turned the signing of a contract into the beginning for a defacto trade window where the heat of negotiations was just turned up.
Think about that: the signing of a document that in the real world was legally binding because a declaration that you were available to the highest bidder.
Given this rather unfortunate development, the rules have now been changed to a “cooling off period”. Can someone please tell me how this is any better?
The signing of what is otherwise a legal document is still a giant ad in the paper for an NRL player! Hello, I signed a contract you’ve got a few days to come and get me! Sale! Limited time only!
Surely when one party signs a contract with another, there is an implied commitment that goes beyond how that contract is viewed by a third party.
Anyway, there’re only two true solutions to the transfer mess. One is the Integrity Unit becoming a sort of police force, with fines and expulsion for players and agents who negotiate outside of the agreed period.
The other is a draft, pure and simple. Then there are no negotiations and the roles of the player agents are greatly reduced.
Daly Cherry-Evans can take some short term pleasure in being one of the players who forced a change in the game’s rules. But he won’t be remembered for it because the change he prompted won’t be around for long.