Israel Folau situation has now become a circus act
Paul Kent
The Daily Telegraph
December 01, 2012 12:00AM
ALL that remains for Israel Folau is a nose ring which, for six per cent, the early betting says his manager will happily insert.
Big Izzy, as docile as a circus bear, has been dragged under the hot lights and made to look a fool again.
He stands for money and little else.
After holidaying with his manager Isaac Moses, who is supposedly suspended by the NRL at the moment but apparently goes about his business quite happily, Folau returned for the new AFL season so unhappy at GWS he called Ricky Stuart personally. He told him he couldn't bear one more Aussie rules training session and that he wanted to play at Parramatta.
Close to tears, he said his brother was at Parramatta, his mates were at Parramatta.
Stuart realised the Eels were close to their cap and threw a top-end figure at him. Money wasn't an issue, Folau said, he just wanted to come back and be happy again.
Calls were made, AFL boss Andrew Demetriou became aware, and Demetriou assured everybody involved that all Folau had to do was be genuine and respectful and the AFL would let him out of his contract.
As simple as that, he was.
Demetriou was smart. For all the battle lines between the NRL and AFL, Demetriou didn't want a player in the game who was clearly so unhappy, and if the phone call to Stuart was leaked it would embarrass the AFL deeply.
Now it appears Demetriou got played, like Stuart got played.
Indeed, everyone got played as Folau, the dancing bear, heads overseas for a rich contract in the third and final code, rugby union.
Would Demetriou have released him if he had said he wanted to play rugby union for great sums of money?
Everybody thought Folau's intentions were true.
It took some bravery to contact Stuart, and when it was all finally done Folau looked like a mixed up kid that got briefly swayed by the big AFL dollars but was back on track.
Folau was no longer a sideshow.
The NRL was supposed to right all that. Few realise, but as late as Wednesday it looked as though the deal had been done to bring Folau to the NRL. After Folau's release last month it looked a mere formality to sign with Parramatta and resume the trajectory his career was taking.
Then salary cap auditor Ian Schubert got involved.
When the NRL finally sits down and re-examines this whole sorry saga, and it should, this is where improvements need to be made. The game simply took too long to get it over the line. Folau could have been signed away by now, a great triumph for the game. Instead, the delay gave Moses time to hunt around.
In the end, the Eels took a gamble on the rise in the salary cap and included that in their revamped deal - more than the initial offer Stuart suggested to Folau - to satisfy the NRL.With little pushback from headquarters, chief executive Ken Edwards called Folau and Titan Management in Wednesday to tell them the deal looked ready to be greenlit. "We were able to table an unconditional offer that met all their requirements," Edwards said last night.Certainly nobody in that meeting said it was unsatisfactory.
The money seemed enough until yesterday, when a bigger offer came in, and once more Folau was dragged out to dance under the lights.
