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Opinion
NRL players should be out to get every dollar they can – I have no qualms with them playing hard ball to boost their salaries and conditions.
But constantly crying poor in their ongoing pay dispute with head office is the worst possible way to go about getting what they want.
Harry Grant was the subject of ridicule the past week after he accused HQ of “low balling” the players, and it was good to see the Melbourne Storm release a media statement last week going in to bat for their hooker, CEO Justin Rodski saying it was “disappointing to read headlines and editorials this week selectively using comments from Harry Grant regarding the salaries of young players in the NRL”.
Grant’s on a great wicket, which he acknowledged, so the people who went after the rep hooker for being selfish likely only read quotes from Grant lacking context.
The main point the Kangaroos star made was that not everyone makes Harry Grant money.
(Photo by James Gill – Danehouse/Getty Images)
“The hard thing is everyone thinks [if] you’re playing NRL you’re on good coin, but the reality is you’re not,” Grant said.
“You’ve got a lot of expenses along the way, you have to move out of home to chase your dreams. I think a development contract is $60,000. Some blokes are better off getting on the tools and doing whatever.”
It’s good of Harry to think of the guys at the other end of the pay spectrum. But I didn’t crack a $60,000 salary until long, long after I graduated from university – and I’m hardly an anomaly.
The worst-paid squad player is still on a wage that hardly has them below the poverty line and, if reports from News Corp are to be believed, the NRL’s proposal for the new deal will see “the minimum wage for NRL development players to be lifted from $80,000 this season to $125,000 next season”.
Grant may not be naïve enough to pretend he himself is on struggle street, but when you’re a 24-year-old making the better part of a million bucks, what you consider “good coin” is probably warped.
A kid – and they are, for the most part, just kids – getting Harry’s $60K to play footy full time is on good coin, never mind if it’s actually $80K, let alone the $125K that has been offered but rejected by the Rugby League Players’ Association because it’s “low balling”.
As for these players having families to provide for? Well, that’s their business. I’m not seeking to be cruel, but you don’t get a pay rise for having kids, nor does a development player living the swinging bachelor life get paid less.
Of course, the granddaddy of all arguments for more money is the finite nature of a rugby league player’s career.
I’ll acknowledge they haven’t got long in the game, so should hoover up everything that a footy career offers.
But that’s not just money.
This is a period of their life in which they are going to mix with the big-money movers and shakers in their local area and connections are going be made. Players also stand to gain name-recognition, learn valuable lessons about teamwork and leadership, and if they want to attend uni, their club can foot the fees without any of that money going towards the salary cap.
All of which stands to help set these players up for life after football – AKA ‘life’ – and none of which necessarily require being in the game at all any further.
So absolutely stop whining about how you only have a short period of time to make money. You’re not going to die when you hang up your boots, you’ve got decades ahead of you to shape a new career and a springboard to launch into it the likes of which few others receive.
The common theme to all these arguments for better pay are that they can essentially be summed up as: we need more because life is hard.
And it is. But life is hard for everyone, so that’s easily dismissed as a reason for why you should get more.
You know what the players can say that no one can argue?
Footy is hard but we’re awesome at it.
(Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)
NRL players are elite athletes on par with any league on the planet. They can do things that almost no one else in the history of the world could do.
This coming winter, go watch your park footy first-grade side and marvel at the skill and ferocity on display. Rugby league at the local level can be freakish.
But those guys aren’t playing NRL – sure some might one day, or may have previously, but right now they’re not at the standard of even the bottom of a 30-man NRL squad – which should help emphasise the level of talent you’re witnessing when you cheer for your NRL team.
These guys are masters of their craft and masters shouldn’t get paid apprentice wages.
So stop sulking and start strutting: “Yes we deserve more money, because this time last year Edrick Lee and Te Maire Martin were on development deals worth peanuts compared to the amazing things they proved they can do when the season proper started.”
Don’t say you need more because you can’t make ends meet.
Say you deserve more because the game can’t make its ends meet without your playing prowess.
And on one else in the world can provide the service you do.
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