By STEVE MASCORD
PERHAPS it’s just because I’m looking at it somewhat from a distance but the scene around the NRL seems to have changed more over one off-season than at any time since 1998, when the two warring comps came together.
I say from a distance because, while I have pretty much split the last three years between Sydney and London, I’m now in the UK to stay. I’ve current no plans to cross the equator, although a looming project which has nothing to do with football will mean I have to do so at least twice in 2018 (ie: once in either direction).
So I could be exaggerating the aspects of the southern hemisphere scene that feel alien to me because I am subconsciously trying to distance myself from something that is no longer as big a part of my life as it has been since I was about 11.
Taking that disclaimer into account, here are the things that just feel unfamiliar to me in 2018. If you’re an old timer like I am, perhaps some of this stuff with have resonance for you, too.
THE NRL ITSELF: I used to have a clear idea in my head what the NSWRL, and then the ARL, and into the beginning of the NRL, was. The NSWRL was Quayle and Arko and Phillip Street and that American guy who answered the phone but got sacked for scalping his grand final tickets. The ARL was those blokes but with a different logo. The NRL was David Moffett on his bike and David Gallop who always returned reporters’ phone calls and was on the 6.30 news every night apologising for some player’s boorish behaviour. But the NRL now? There’s an ‘independent commission’ which is about to lose its independence and its chairman. There’s Todd Greenberg who is hidden behind advisers and spin doctors like a government minister – but actually seems less accountable than a government minister. There’s a revolving door of consultants and people who leave before you even know they’ve arrived. And they all seem powerless to control the old school street fighters from club land who ruled back in Quayle and Arko’s day. So why did we have all that change again anyway?
THE GAME: I like watching NRL games; I’m not about to say it’s a poor spectacle. But the potential in the rules of rugby league – is it being realised? A sport which is supposed to involve outflanking your opposition by passing the ball backwards has become something that would be largely monochrome if not for the amazing athletes who manage to rise above the five hit-ups and a kick norm. For some reason, when colleague Nathan Ryan wrote that “the shift” would be the trend of 2018, people mocked him. I only hope he’s right.
THE MEDIA: This is perhaps the biggest change I can see over the off-season. In the old days you had the Herald and the Telegraph in Sydney, the Courier-Mail in Brisbane and then the likes of the Illawarra Mercury and Newcastle Herald covering the game aggressively, with The Australian always performing above the resources it devoted to the game. The advent of NRL.com has changed this enormously. In its bid to set up a digital platform which will allow it to stream games when TV rights bottom out, the NRL has hired some of the best journalists, editors, presenters and sub editors in the business. Meanwhile, Fox Sports is also a serious player with some of the most promising young reporters going around. It’s hard to see the traditional outlets competing. The message is clear: content doesn’t pay for content anymore. You need to be in another business: run a TV network or a competition. NRL.com look quite independent to me – although politics can fairly be expected to be a blind spot for them. Coupled with all this is locking down intellectual property. Apparently it’s condition of media accreditation this year that reporters can’t post any pictures, audio or video from inside the grounds on their social media. They’d be better advised to buy a ticket and sit in the stands – then they can do what they want! It all sounds very un-fun…
THE ATTITUDE: The fact that clubs want to stop players travelling internationally to play internationals on a spare weekend in June says it all. That Sunday in 1995 when Quayle and Arko stood at St George’s Park in Perth the morning of the first Western Reds game was the best of times and the worst of times. News of the Super League war had just broken. Not only is the NRL’s geographical footprint smaller but there seems no ambition to grow it. Perth could be in Super League before it’s back in the NRL. The ambition and excitement is gone, replaced by fighting over money.
