Politics and rugby league have been thrown into a blender
It’s the most untrue statement ever uttered - sport and politics don’t mix.
In the NRL, not only are they mixing, they’re in a blender.
Let’s take the past few weeks as an example of how the game’s governing body has joined itself to the hip of governments right across the country.
The Perth Bears only exist because the NRL got a sweet deal from the West Australian government.
That was after the NRL rejected a private consortium, took the concept to the WA government and received an offer it rejected as too low, only for the government to come back with a new, higher offer. Money talks, but when you take it, you’re beholden to them.
Beware the hand that feeds you.
We all know the history of the Papua New Guinea team.
Keen to lock China out of the Pacific,
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese gifted the NRL $600 million over ten years for the team to exist, thereby currying favour with a rugby league-mad government in a rugby league-mad nation.
Why on earth the game is dabbling in the geo-politics of the region is anyone’s guess.
The PNG Board announced during the week looks very well-credentialed, so a big tick there. But there was a worrying moment when all league fans would have, or should have, cringed.
Politicians specialise in bagging everything opposing politicians do. It’s their modus operandi. They can’t help themselves and always think every other side of politics has it wrong.
Their brains are conditioned to babble on about how good they, and their initiatives are, while others, even ones that are good, aren’t.
A prime example came when Pat Conroy, the federal minister for Pacific Island affairs, spoke about the PNG team last week.
Now, we’re not making this up. He actually said: “I want to ensure the taxpayers’ timeline is on track (for 2028).
“When we get this project delivered through the huge investment of all three parties, this will make Penrith look like the minnows of rugby league. They will be made to look like Sydney Roosters juniors.”
What a dribbler.
The last thing rugby league needs is politicians immaturely sticking their bibs in after spending in excess of half a billion dollars of our money and then insulting the thousands upon thousands of volunteers and players who have built and nurtured the game from the ground up in districts like Penrith over decades and decades by saying ‘we’re going to be better than you’.
A little tip for you minister – you’re not.
Grow up.
Then we get to the latest chapter of the Book of Feuds between the Sydney Roosters and the South Sydney Rabbitohs.
It goes like this.
The Rabbitohs signed a long-term deal to play at Accor Stadium, but say they only signed the deal because they were promised by the then-Berejiklian government that the stadium would be revamped and a roof put on.
But that plan lost out in the unedifying stadium wars which saw the Sydney Football Stadium bulldozed and replaced by the gleaming, yet roofless, Allianz, and Penrith get a new boutique beauty.
South Sydney maintains they were told by the government they had to sign on to provide the stadium content, allowing the government to build the case for a rebuild.
A bit like the chicken and the egg – what comes first, the revamped stadium to attract the tenant or the tenant to justify the revamp?
In the end, the Rabbitohs were left hanging, while the Roosters got almost exclusive rugby league use of a billion-dollar taxpayer-funded asset.
When the Rabbitohs told the government they felt as though they’d been dudded and would rather move to Allianz to get better service their fans and, more importantly, the corporates in state-of-the-art facilities, they were rebuffed. Time and again.
The latest was by Premier Chris Minns himself, declaring Souths would not be let out of the contract.
Both stadiums fall under the control of Venues NSW, which is in a bind.
It needs ‘content’ at Accor to try and hold membership of that venue, while membership for the SCG precinct could sell out twice over. Maybe thrice.
Leading the charge to block the Rabbitohs’ move is Roosters chairman Nick Politis, who has put a land rights claim over the public property as the precinct has been the Roosters only home since 1908.
A bit like the chicken and the egg – what comes first, the revamped stadium to attract the tenant or the tenant to justify the revamp?
In the end, the Rabbitohs were left hanging, while the Roosters got almost exclusive rugby league use of a billion-dollar taxpayer-funded asset.
The latest was by Premier Chris Minns himself, declaring Souths would not be let out of the contract.
Both stadiums fall under the control of Venues NSW, which is in a bind.
It needs ‘content’ at Accor to try and hold membership of that venue, while membership for the SCG precinct could sell out twice over. Maybe thrice.
Leading the charge to block the Rabbitohs’ move is Roosters chairman Nick Politis, who has put a land rights claim over the public property as the precinct has been the Roosters only home since 1908.
It’s a fair enough position, ideologically, but one which has a major problem.
The club doesn’t own the stadium. And it can’t squat on it.
The Rabbitohs’ position is fair too, and if ‘Stingy’ Minnsy isn’t going to fix Accor, he can’t expect the Rabbitohs, and others, to fix his problem, which is that people are jack of going to matches at a stadium built to house athletics more than a quarter of a century ago.
Fans love Allianz because it’s a fantastic place to watch football. Purpose built. Brand new. Accor isn’t.
Try driving a brand-new Mercedes for a while and then jumping back into the old Falcon.
Australia is desperately falling behind the world when it comes to world-class venues. Then again, we don’t seem to be even able to build enough houses, let alone stadiums.
Maybe minister Conroy and his government should spend more time working out where everyone is going to live as migration booms. His party wasn’t voted in to bag its constituents.
Sport and politics aren’t strange bedfellows when it comes to the NRL.
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