Uh-oh, it’s time for our annual State of the League address (the word ‘union’ is, after all, banned from this column).
Let us start with the Kingdom of Beattie, to the south. Quite frankly, the peasants are revolting.
The NRL is the envy of the rugby league world, with its rivers of gold, wall-to-wall media coverage and in-house TV station-cum-newspaper-cum-everything.
Yet, its practitioners have never been worse at dealing with the spotlight than they are right now, with sexual assaults, amateur porn and drunken aeroplane antics marring the offseason.
I have no doubt behaviour was worse when the spotlight was dimmer. What the scrutiny provided by the post-social media digital blitzkrieg shows is that behaviour has not improved at anywhere near the same pace as the number of people watching and the number of things they see.
I’ve no great ambition to toss another dollar in the well of opinions on the whys and wherefores of this except to say that even though rugby league is huge in Australia, there are hundreds of thousands – and perhaps millions – there who look down their noses at it as a bogan sport.
And there are high-end sponsors who wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole because it doesn’t reach the demographic they sell to. The NRL are correct to take drastic measures which can create a paradigm shift that has eluded all their predecessors going back to 1908.
They’ll probably fail – but it’s always worth a try. Despite having everything in its favour, the Kingdom of Beattie is teetering somewhat.
We shall now shift to the Province of Ralph, whose borders remain – despite years of effort – very much in the north. The king’s vaults are empty and taxes have risen as a result.
The Rugby Football League was able to post a story on its website yesterday saying the unbeaten starts of Toronto and Sheffield had come to an end. Wow! Two big, world-famous cities playing in the same competition.
Yet the RFL’s point of difference from Super League – its geographical spread – does not seem to be something it wishes to leverage. Instead, it clings to the vintage concept of “membership” of the league and wants to charge outsiders – including the holders – half a million pounds to compete in the Challenge Cup.
Surely, in the face of an M62-centric Super League, the jewels in the RFL’s crown should be the aforementioned outpost teams along with Coventry, the Welsh sides, London Skolars, York, etc Instead, heartland teams like Widnes continue to go to the wall.
(Photo by Naomi Baker/Getty Images)
If it is not careful, the Province Of Ralph will end up little more than courtiers In The State Of Elstone.
Super League’s partial breakaway from the RFL has had some good moments – like some of the social media offerings and the World Club Challenge – and some not-so-good, like a couple of crowds at Wigan and the apparent antipathy towards the opportunities on offer at Toronto and with other overseas clubs.
It’s perhaps unfair to say that since Wigan owner Ian Lenagan led the charge in the breakaway, and his team is struggling, the breakaway is inherently flawed. Sport has winners and losers.
Things aren’t that simple.
But there’s a feeling that the whole #newbeginnings thing will continue to fade as the season wears on – even though the comp itself is actually quite engaging. You’d give them a pass mark so far, I guess.
Now to the House Of Nigel, the international game.
Some good stuff happening here but also some chaos. Great Britain are back – which I think is good, others disagree. The Oceania Cup will see the Polynesian and Melanesian teams on a level footing with Australia and the Kiwis and the undoubted commercial potential of these teams begin to be unlocked.
Nines is also commercially a very strong prospect and an alternative income stream for the international game and the World Nines are finally being revived in 2019.
But the Great Britain tour takes Ireland and Scotland’s players away just when they need them for World Cup qualifiers. A reader pointed out confusion about the final continental World Cup play-off between South Africa, the United States and the Cook Islands – where is it being played and when?
And that’s still the big problem with the international game; everything is announced so late. How can Great Britain fans realistically follow their team to the southern hemisphere when the dates were only announced last week?
Like everywhere but the NRL, resources are an issue for international rugby league. There’s not enough money to go around and despite the best efforts of many, things still seem to be made up on the run.
But this will go down in the game’s history as a massive period of growth, nonetheless.
And we have a new territory – the municipality of Jon. Jon Dutton is the boss of the 2021 World Cup and it is, without doubt, the pride of the league at the moment.
25 million pounds in government funding, of which 10 is being spent on facilities and infrastructure for the game, means we have a big, well-oiled and classy machine putting out first class content and engaging with the community in a measured and agreeable way.
Perhaps the other three territories can learn from the House Of Jon. Anything’s possible … if you don’t have any of those pesky players and matches to worry about.
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