NRL great PAUL GALLEN will appear on Nine’s 100% FOOTY every Monday night of the NRL season, debating rugby league’s hottest topics alongside Phil Gould and James Bracey. Tune in tonight at 10.20pm (AEST) following a bumper round eight!
So now we’re considering salary cap exemptions to get players from overseas or rugby union to come to the NRL. Seriously?
There’s apparently going to be $1 million on the table to sign players who aren’t already in the Australian, New Zealand or English rugby league systems.
At first glance I think this is ridiculous.
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We’re jumping at shadows here because one player – Joseph Suaalii – who already had a background in rugby union, is jumping ship.
And you know what? He’ll be back. They always come back. Look at Roger Tuivasa-Sheck. I guarantee Suaalii will be back as well. It’s not like the floodgates have opened and we’re seeing a mass exodus to rugby.
The salary cap works best when it’s simple. There’s a dollar figure, and there’s 30 players, and that’s it.
The more exemptions we have, the more chance there is of teams getting into trouble. We’ve got third-party agreements which can get confusing, what’s been approved, what hasn’t been approved, what goes into the cap, what’s outside the cap.
Do we really need to be making it more complicated?
And we’re talking allowances here of up to a million dollars. It’s not insignificant.
It opens up a can of worms. If you’re going to give exemptions to sign players who are currently playing rugby, why not give an exemption to STOP a player going to rugby in the first place? That makes just as much, if not more sense.
Or looking at it another way, what if the Roosters had examined their roster six months ago, realised they couldn’t keep all their stars, and told Suaalii to go and play rugby for a year or two so they could claim the exemption to sign him back?
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Maybe former NRL players won’t be eligible for the exemption, which would be even more stupid. Imagine having an exemption so you could sign an unknown from rugby, but not being able to use it to get someone like Suaalii back.
I’ve been very clear on a number of occasions. I don’t like rugby. There’s nothing about the game that appeals to me. As a former rugby league player I can’t see what the appeal would be for someone to switch codes, apart from money, and I’ve got no problem with anyone taking the cash as a professional athlete.
Can you imagine Payne Haas playing rugby union? He’d be bored out of his brain. He’s a free-running, big striding forward. How would he go if he was made to ruck and maul with the defence half a metre away? Give me a break.
Let’s be realistic here, and I don’t want to be rude or disrespectful, but how many players are we going to find that aren’t already on our radar?
It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. And it certainly won’t be a James Tedesco or a Nathan Cleary, someone who can manage a game for you.
It’s probably going to be a hard toiling forward or a big strong winger.
Do we really think the addition of a rugby back-rower from Argentina is going to improve the NRL one bit? Will it bring one extra spectator through the gates? Will one extra person tune into the TV coverage?
Of course not.
We saw what happened about 20-25 years ago. Rugby union was going OK then. But then they started poaching rugby league players, like Wendell Sailor, Lote Tuqiri and Mat Rogers. That came at the expense of developing their own juniors. How did that work out? They got the sugar-hit of those big names switching codes, but long-term it did nothing for them.
It’s like the pyramids. Unless you’ve got a solid foundation, nothing at the top works. They neglected their pathways and now they’re stuffed.
That’s not rugby league’s problem. So I don’t know why we’re reacting to this so-called threat.
Rugby league at the moment is flying. It’s going so well. We have seven great matches every week.
Yes, there’s an issue around the hip-drop tackle, but I’m confident that will get sorted out. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
By comparison, have a look at how rugby union is travelling. The Super Rugby competition is nowhere near the NRL in terms of interest amongst the Australian public.
There’s no need to do something like this.
I can guarantee every club would be trying to take advantage of it. They’d all be trying it, nothing is more certain, because every club employs some very smart people to get the most out of the salary cap.
If a club is lucky enough to sign a regular member of their starting 17 to one of these deals, like a winger, they’ve all of a sudden got some extra cash to throw at a big name. They’d effectively have a 31-man squad. And that extra player will likely do nothing to grow the game.
Remember, for every action there’s a reaction.
The more you think about it, the sillier it sounds.
Our game just doesn’t need it.
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