Assuming Peter V’landys saves rugby league from penury and looks back on a triumphant season completed against the odds, his successor might then consider what the sport should be.
For all the squillion-dollar player and media contracts, it’s still a sport.
A blueprint could be drawn up. The new start would see no school and weekend competitions until, say, age 11.
At the extreme, you then wouldn’t have a proud father of a son with a black eye saying it would make a man of the five-year-old, though it may scar the child for life.
It might conclude by saying there’s no point in having seven-year-old Pacific Island children four times bigger than the opposition monstering other teams. Plenty of time to kick a ball around in the park and have non-regimented fun.
When team play starts, an over and under weights system similar to that employed in New Zealand could apply. That way smaller players and their parents mightn’t be lost to the game.
It might be remembered Penrith coach Ivan Cleary has said he wouldn’t have allowed his son, halfback Nathan, to play without the system in operation, because he was too small to compete with the bigger boys when they were in New Zealand.
If a young giant still dwarfs the others, he can wait until he’s 14 or 15. It’s not too late to make up time.
(Anthony Au-Yeung/Getty Images)
Restrict school matches to zones and scrub elite competitions. Then scouts won’t haunt surrounding districts, vacuuming up players and waving school fees, and cliques won’t walk around school boasting they’re only there to play football.
Then schools wouldn’t have many more players than they need, with some boys unable to get a game.
Football should be a secondary part of secondary school education. It should be, but for many budding football stars it isn’t. They’ve already been signed to clubs virtually from the cradle.
How to make education the real winner? Getting rid of sports high schools would be a start. For many of those potential stars school lessons are just hours to be endured before football, future riches and stardom and living happily ever.
They don’t realise it isn’t that simple. Many aspire but few are chosen, and many of that smaller number are ill-equipped to cope with the pressure of life post-sport.
Their one great talent hasn’t prepared them for that, and the Mickey Mouse courses football clubs are now playing catch-up with are no substitute for an earlier education and an acquaintance with reality.
(AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts)
Watch some weekend teams of 14-year-olds prepare for a game and see them mimic NRL warm-ups that are almost as long as the match.
See trainers run on, loading players up with instructions during breaks in play. Keep them off the field.
Where’s playing what’s in front of you, testing individual skills, risking mistakes? Where’s the fun?
There are those weekend games and NRL club junior representative competitions for the gifted players. Plenty of games for scouts to view.
Ban NRL clubs from signing players until the budding stars turn 18. Make prospective signees pass a basic numeracy and literacy test.
Fail and they come back the next season. That will state the importance of school.
Speak to NRL player managers and hear stories of coddled players ringing with complaints like, “My car’s broken down”.
Response: “Call the NRMA.”
Remember the Super League war and beneficiaries signing inflated contracts and wasting the money on toys – money that could have been invested for when retirement arrived.
Such unworldliness is unsurprising when the players who make it often go from school to the big time without knowing a day’s work.
Former Canberra and Newcastle prop Luke Davico once spoke of staring into the abyss of retirement with terror. He’s doing okay.
Former Manly captain Jason King took double the time to qualify as a lawyer because of the demands of being a full-time professional.
King said combining the two was exhausting but provided a break from an environment in which for some players the only topic of conversation was rugby league.
Time was when there were doctors like Bill Roney, George Peponis, Nathan Gibb and Martin Raftery, lots of lawyers and schoolteachers and a civil engineer like the late Greg Pearce playing rugby league. And the tradies.
Such academic pursuits can’t be combined with an NRL career now, the game’s demands are too great.
Or are they?
(Ian Hitchcock/Getty Images)
The great Mick Cronin has said he couldn’t have imagined training every day. Players would have been sick of the sight of each other.
Surely there’s some elasticity there? Who is benefitting from such regimentation? The players?
Have non-studying recruits do some work, like sweeping floors, cleaning toilets or volunteering – any work a day a week in their first season. That should help keep feet on the ground and stars out of the eyes.
If players weren’t so unworldly, they mightn’t need the managers who proliferate.
Like those in the wider world considering a job, they might find the club where they feel comfortable and the money acceptable and have a lawyer look over the contract’s fine print.
The ones in demand for media and promotions could employ a secretary part-time to sift through proposals.
Few sportspeople can also be a Dr Peponis, Gibbs or Raftery. For many, being elite footballers is the one great talent they were given. Like those in the arts, it’s how they express themselves creatively.
The game owes them more than the prospect of money and the chance to be winners. It must educate them that during their playing days football might be the primary thing but that there’s a greater thing called life post-football.
“Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing,” said American football coach Red Sanders.
“Football isn’t a matter of life or death; it’s much more important than that,” said Scottish-born Liverpool soccer coach Bill Shankly.
For “winning” and “football” substitute “education”.
In the broad sense education is always the answer. But can this blueprint be employed?
Not a chance. Rugby league isn’t a sport, it’s a business, and there’s money at stake.
Nat
Roar Guru
Hi Monorchid. Yeah, the are horrible and in no way am I saying incidents like these don't happen. I've seen it and been apart of it. 2 broken necks (yrs apart), is the worst I've seen in games I've been involved in, it can be a dangerous game. 2 things though, those 2 incidents and most serious injuries were u13s/14s. In my previous post I'm talking about the collisions up to u10s. The author goes on to say they shouldn't tackle at all until 11-12yo (at the moment it's u7s). I would argue the benefit of learning that skill in those formative is far less dangerous than starting at 12yo. As te author rightly points out, that approx the age where some semblance of structure starts to appear in junior footy. Weight based grouping. It is unfortunate when injuries happen but it isn't soley based around the big bopper. Being hard/impossible to tackle is different from being hurt (excluding the footprint the big P leaves on them :stoked: ). Getting your head in a bad position resultig in injury is as likely to occur against any size player. We see it in NRL now. It may also reinforce my point above where learning te proper technique is vital. Not to say it won't happen, just reducing the risk. I get your point about the Mum's perception. 1st hand experience right here with my boy. It's hard to tell Mum the idea is worse than the reality. As hard as it is to imagine your kid lining up against the Bopper, when they do bring them down it is a massive confidence builder. Plus, learning they can run around the Bopper has the same effect. The Bopper is physically big but mentally and emotionally they are average age. Putting the 70kg 9yo into u12s is unfair on many levels IMO (without rewriting all above). What about the alternative? Do we put the 35kg 12yo back down to u9s? It's rugby league, there is a place in the game for all shapes and sizes and they all have to learn how to play with/against those various size boys. Of course it's an opinion only but it's changing far too much for the sake of the very few.
Monorchid
Roar Rookie
Nat, I like your posts, but I have to disagree with you about the issue of collisions in junior RL. I do watch junior RL on a local field fairly regularly. I saw a case a couple of years ago where a smaller boy was badly knocked out trying to tackle a much bigger boy. The parents were distraught. I could clearly hear the thud as the boy's head hit the ground where I was about 15 metres away. The ambulance paramedics had an awful time trying to revive him. This sort of thing is why parents are sending their children off to play soccer. Certainly, junior soccer is strong in my district while junior RL seems to be struggling. The only way that I can think of RL dealing with this is to bring back weight based competition which is what they had when I was young. Why was this changed?
Succhi
Roar Rookie
I have mixed feelings about the best approach to junior league. When I was a kid, we played weights in primary school, then moved to age divisions in high school. I was a small skinny kid, but my dad and coaches taught me how to tackle effectively and safely - around the legs. I used to enjoy tackling the big kids. I don’t the the division style is the issue, I think the game has removed the benefit of tackling low. The focus has shifted to tying up the ball and slowing down the play the ball. Apologies- probably off topic here!
Nat
Roar Guru
There's a few assumptions here, some truths but also some aspects that are simply idealistic and not correct. For starters, edication isn't for everyone. If they choose to they have every opportunity and these are uni or tafe courses the players undertake, not "some mickey mouse" oeration. Unless you are playing NRL, the players are mandated to work or learn. Of course King found it hard, anyone who works FT and studies anything, let alone law, finds it very difficult to do both. Being an NRL player makes no difference in this scenario. Of all the NRL players only a special few are taken directly from high school, the rest still have ambition but they will have to find some type of wrok or study to fill their time - it is part of their contract. ISP players don't earn a fraction of what NRL contracted players earn, they literally have to get jobs to eat. Starting playing at 11 to save face of a son with a black eye. You haven't rwally watched much junior league have you? There are very very few big collisions and even fewer injuries. It's pretty much hug-and-hold until they are u10s. If you start a child at 11yo, they may have a higher risk of hurting themselves because they haven't learned the basics of tackling and being tackled. Weight-based grades are garbage IMO. The vast majority are all around average but for a few big kids. Big doesn't mean tough or damaging, it just means big. If they are taught to tackle correctly, big kids come down just as easy as anyone else. RL has for every child , big and small. Think of all the best players in our game, the minority of the greats are props. Where some have the advantage of size, others have the advantage of speed. Lets see your 70kg 10yo catch the 35kg speedstar. How may times have you seen NAS catch DCE? Further, that large child is certainly not mentally or physically developed enough to play in their weight group. Kids 2-3yrs older will hit them harder than they know how to handle. They get hurt/scared as easy as any child and you want to dump them in with more mature but similar size kids and think that's being fair? I like the American college system where athletes are forced into education and (mostly) have to meet certain eductaion standards so they do have a bit more life experience than G12 to Top Level. In Australia, again like King, if they choose to further their education they can. They cannot come back to league as a 30yo and acpect to make NRL level so why not earn the money with the skils you have and use that money to set yourself and family up before deciding on Career B.
Monorchid
Roar Rookie
I agree Womblat. This article does wander around a bit. You make a good point about junior football, and I've had the same opinion about club football. Frankly, I can't afford to go to watch the senior franchises (business term) now that I'm retired. But I can afford an afternoon at local club games where, as you say, the atmosphere of the game is relatively untainted. I'm quite interested in the statement that "Football should be a secondary part of secondary school education". I agree with this having gone to a football mad school where successful performance on the field was paramount and subservient to all else. But I don't know how you convince some parents that children go to school for an essential education, not the hope of getting a senior club contract. Just on Dr George Peponis. My memory is that he approached his club (Manly? Memory lapse) with the offer to take a lot less money if the club put him through university, and the club did. If my memory is right, then that's smart. Don't the Broncos encourage their young blokes to get a trade? If so, then that's smart too.
Womblat
Guest
The headline is misleading. The NRL is a business, a barely 2 decades old one. Rugby League is a sport, a grand old 112 years of it. Failing to distinguish between the two is the same as confusing royal tennis with the tennis you and I know. They are utterly different, even though one spawned the other. Too many people have let the NRL assume the tyrant's role in the sport now, giving them the rights to change the rules on a whim with no regard or respect for the century of discipline and blood and sweat behind them. It does no credit to the hundreds of thousands who had a role in the game to this point and very little care for that long path it has walked. People died for this game, literally, and the way modern suits and skirts tinker with the rules having never made a tackle, marked a field or served a soft drink just sullies the memories of what put us here and demonstrates what a money focussed charade the business is. If you want to see real League the way it always was, go to a junior carnival one weekend when it all opens up and watch the kids run around for no reward other than their team morale, the trainers, coaches and refs doing it for nothing, and the volunteers working hard to keep the sport alive. Only then will you see real Rugby League.
max power
Guest
putting budding RL teenagers into regular high schools wouldnt help at all. they would still have the same attitude, RL is a carrer for players, not a business