RL independence day arrives - NRL Independent Commission announced for November 1

[Quidgybo]

"The million dollar question"

If this not settled by the kick off of the season will all 16 clubs break away from the NRL and form their own commision to run the game.

Well that's the ultimate danger of the game the establishment are playing. The figure Searle put on it the other day was "96 per cent of the revenue is derived by the elite aspects of the game". Now presumably the "elite aspects" would include Origin and Tests but the club competition would still be by far the biggest component of that revenue. Yet the clubs currently have no say, let alone anything like a majority say. That's a very precarious political situation. And especially so as we approach a milestone at the end of 2012 where all club agreements, television and sponsorship contracts - in fact everything that ties the clubs to the existing structure - will come to a nice clean end simultaneously.

United as a block, the clubs are perhaps the most powerful part of our game after the paying customer. Players come and go but for the majority of fans, their identification with Rugby League *is* the elite club competition. And it shows in the balance of revenue. If you don't explicitly recognise the power that gives the clubs with a substantial say in how things are done, then they could just take the club comp to their own Commission and leave everyone else to come begging. Those holding out in the current process need to very careful. Because if they give too little and the clubs don't like it then they really could be left with nothing.

The current proposal may not be perfect but it at least recognises the political reality of where the power lies. And at the very least that promises a stable future. If you fail to adequately recognise the power of clubs now in the new arrangements then it is going to be a constant shadow over a Commission or any other body administering the game in the future. Whenever the clubs get rolled by those parts of the game not bringing any substantial revenue to the table, there'll always be the underlying threat of another revolution until finally one day, probably on some relatively small symbolic issue, it'll happen.

While the elite club game generates the overwhelming majority of revenue, that's where the power lies and one way or another the governance of the code will eventually reflect that. Whether we accept that now and avoid future conflict or instead put a system in place that fails to accept that reality and then find ourselves revisiting the question again in a decade - either way the ultimate result is going to end up the same. The only question is how many years we drag out the fight and how much collateral damage that fight causes.

Leigh.

 

[East Coast Tiger]

The ARL clubs already control half the NRL board and the SL clubs made their bed when they signed up to News Ltd.

The commission should run the NRL and NYC and that's it. The clubs can have 100% control of that. But they do not and should not own and control all of RL in this country. The revenue in the game is derived from the fact that non-NRL football continues to produce players to play at an elite level, despite almost no assistance from NRL clubs.

 

[Loudstrat]

Three's the contradiction though Quidgey. "Independent" means no dependence - in this instance each member is not dependent on the support of a club, or a number of clubs. What is being proposed is a commission of appointees by the clubs and other stakeholders of the ONE competition which wields the financial power.

And this power comes at the exclusion of all other comps and stakeholders.

Juniors for instance - a few clubs have, through goodwill, ploughed much money and resources into junior development. This is a disparity among the NRL clubs which even the existing structure cannot correct. To remove the existing structure that supplies reources to juniors where it is lacking will rely on increasing goodwill from clubs who are already bickering of lack of finds for themselves.

Then there are other areas - mainly in the country - who rely on an ever dwindling resource that is controlled by the ARL and it's subsiduaries. By removing the ARL, who feeds them?

Example - I would guess that the wage paid to Jarryd Hayne for example would run one of the CRL groups. One of the commissions selling points is to remunerate elite players in line with market forces - those that tempt the likes of SBW and cutie. What is going to remunerate bush footy?

 

[East Coast Tiger]

Even if we do get paid what we should from TV rights and so on, which is part of the eed for a commission, a club-run game will take it all and the players will then demand it goes to them. And it won't go largely to the struggling players either, it will go to the very elite ones. So the likes of Thurston will get big pay rises when they threaten to go to union while the areas of the game outside the NRL that need an injection won't get anything.

 

[skeepe]

Even if we do get paid what we should from TV rights and so on, which is part of the eed for a commission, a club-run game will take it all and the players will then demand it goes to them. And it won't go largely to the struggling players either, it will go to the very elite ones. So the likes of Thurston will get big pay rises when they threaten to go to union while the areas of the game outside the NRL that need an injection won't get anything.

You have absolutely no proof that any of this will happen. None.

Nothing but a baseless scare campaign.

 

[East Coast Tiger]

No. We'll find out about this when it's too late. Just like all the sh*tty things we found out about the 1997 deal after we'd already given the game to News. You can gaurantee that the bulk of any more money that comes into the game will go to the elite players. The RLPA will say "we've got X more money so the salary cap must go up by Y". It's just like a few years ago when the amount of money Origin makes for the ARL was heavily publicised. The player put their hand straight out. Fortunately the ARL didn't give them all of it citing the need for expenditure on grassroots football. Will a club-run commission take the same attitude. Considering the current attitude towards development I'd say not.

 

[Loudstrat]

You have absolutely no proof that any of this will happen. None.

Nothing but a baseless scare campaign.

I can just see a club like the Roosters knocking back Thurston for a $700k per season contract, saying "We can only offer you $600k because we need to give Group 9 $100k for the good of the game"

You have no proof that it WILL NOT happen. Here's an example:

Up here in Group 3 we get pretty good service - especially from the Knights, but also other clubs. In recent years we've had the Origin side in camp at Forster, we've had Cronulla, Penrith, Easta and Parra play trials (with one W. Mason being particularly generous with his time for autograph hunters). Danny Bedurus has run coaching clinics for kids. Souths have had players up here with the RL road train. Parra have had minor players up here doing promotions.

4 years ago Manly brought their entire first grade squad up for school visits. My kids school copped King and the Stewart brothers, while Beaver and the bigger stars went elsewhere. (My young bloke won a footy signed by Snake - bastard - I grounded him for a month!). Anyway, Manly approach Group 3 about playing a composite Group 3 side in a trial the following year. Group 3 jumped at the chance.

Then Manly demanded they pay their accommodation bill - $7000. Group 3 could not afford that, so it never went ahead.

Despite the goodwill, Manly's tight arsed millionaire owners couldn't come up with $7k for a bush footy comp that would have reaped huge benefits from that game.

That's the attitude that will run the game. And there will be no CRL/NSWRL/ARL to provide the base running costs that they do now.

 

[The Observer]

Anyway, Manly approach Group 3 about playing a composite Group 3 side in a trial the following year. Group 3 jumped at the chance.

Then Manly demanded they pay their accommodation bill - $7000. Group 3 could not afford that, so it never went ahead.

Despite the goodwill, Manly's tight arsed millionaire owners couldn't come up with $7k for a bush footy comp that would have reaped huge benefits from that game.

That's the attitude that will run the game. And there will be no CRL/NSWRL/ARL to provide the base running costs that they do now.

Manly could have billeted the players to families in the Group 3 region, and saved themselves the accomodation bill. This would have really given the game in the region a boost. Its been done elsewhere, e.g. by the All Blacks before their RWC 1987 win:

on the way to world cup victory in 87 the All Blacks management went so far as to billet players on farms around Pirinoa in Wairarapa.

For more, go to:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/opinion/3179278/Cup-organisers-thank-God-for-country-boys

 

[East Coast Tiger]

I can just see a club like the Roosters knocking back Thurston for a $700k per season contract, saying "We can only offer you $600k because we need to give Group 9 $100k for the good of the game"

You have no proof that it WILL NOT happen. Here's an example:

Up here in Group 3 we get pretty good service - especially from the Knights, but also other clubs. In recent years we've had the Origin side in camp at Forster, we've had Cronulla, Penrith, Easta and Parra play trials (with one W. Mason being particularly generous with his time for autograph hunters). Danny Bedurus has run coaching clinics for kids. Souths have had players up here with the RL road train. Parra have had minor players up here doing promotions.

4 years ago Manly brought their entire first grade squad up for school visits. My kids school copped King and the Stewart brothers, while Beaver and the bigger stars went elsewhere. (My young bloke won a footy signed by Snake - bastard - I grounded him for a month!). Anyway, Manly approach Group 3 about playing a composite Group 3 side in a trial the following year. Group 3 jumped at the chance.

Then Manly demanded they pay their accommodation bill - $7000. Group 3 could not afford that, so it never went ahead.

Despite the goodwill, Manly's tight arsed millionaire owners couldn't come up with $7k for a bush footy comp that would have reaped huge benefits from that game.

That's the attitude that will run the game. And there will be no CRL/NSWRL/ARL to provide the base running costs that they do now.

Hey stop whinging. In the Group 4 and 19 region we haven't had a trial game for 10 years. The only game we got was Wests Tigers v Group 4 as their wram up for the WCC and that's only because they didn't care where they were sent and Gunnedah had missed out on a Country Carnivla game when that concept was scrapped and Gallop visited Gunnedah so the NRL sent them there. If you're west of the divide (or even west of the coast) you have little chance of getting a trial game while the coastal areas get one every year. There are trial games in Sydney and Brisbane every year, that's right bang in the middle of the cities that already get proper games all season, while we miss out. This area produced players like Jamie Lyon, Tom Learoyd, Alan Tongue, Preston Campbell and in the past the likes of Noel Cleal, Dallas Donnelly, John O'Neill, Scott Gourley, Nathan Blacklock and even Chris Mortimer was a local junior. It's not as if the area can't produce NRL players. But the NRL clubs still don't give a toss. Even when one Sydney club was offered a trial in Tamwoth that would cover their flights, accomodation and other costs they still couldn't be bothered. So it's not even a money issue all the time. They just couldn't be arsed. But they'd happily take any more money that came in via a better TV deal and we still wouldn't see any benefit.

 

[Moffo]

f**k off qld boganz

 

[MacDougall]

Hey stop whinging. In the Group 4 and 19 region we haven't had a trial game for 10 years. The only game we got was Wests Tigers v Group 4 as their wram up for the WCC and that's only because they didn't care where they were sent and Gunnedah had missed out on a Country Carnivla game when that concept was scrapped and Gallop visited Gunnedah so the NRL sent them there. If you're west of the divide (or even west of the coast) you have little chance of getting a trial game while the coastal areas get one every year. There are trial games in Sydney and Brisbane every year, that's right bang in the middle of the cities that already get proper games all season, while we miss out. This area produced players like Jamie Lyon, Tom Learoyd, Alan Tongue, Preston Campbell and in the past the likes of Noel Cleal, Dallas Donnelly, John O'Neill, Scott Gourley, Nathan Blacklock and even Chris Mortimer was a local junior. It's not as if the area can't produce NRL players. But the NRL clubs still don't give a toss. Even when one Sydney club was offered a trial in Tamwoth that would cover their flights, accomodation and other costs they still couldn't be bothered. So it's not even a money issue all the time. They just couldn't be arsed. But they'd happily take any more money that came in via a better TV deal and we still wouldn't see any benefit.

Well if Group 4 had have given the Tigers a better warmup they might have won!

 

[Desert Qlder]

I can just see a club like the Roosters knocking back Thurston for a $700k per season contract, saying "We can only offer you $600k because we need to give Group 9 $100k for the good of the game"

You have no proof that it WILL NOT happen. Here's an example:

Up here in Group 3 we get pretty good service - especially from the Knights, but also other clubs. In recent years we've had the Origin side in camp at Forster, we've had Cronulla, Penrith, Easta and Parra play trials (with one W. Mason being particularly generous with his time for autograph hunters). Danny Bedurus has run coaching clinics for kids. Souths have had players up here with the RL road train. Parra have had minor players up here doing promotions.

4 years ago Manly brought their entire first grade squad up for school visits. My kids school copped King and the Stewart brothers, while Beaver and the bigger stars went elsewhere. (My young bloke won a footy signed by Snake - bastard - I grounded him for a month!). Anyway, Manly approach Group 3 about playing a composite Group 3 side in a trial the following year. Group 3 jumped at the chance.

Then Manly demanded they pay their accommodation bill - $7000. Group 3 could not afford that, so it never went ahead.

Despite the goodwill, Manly's tight arsed millionaire owners couldn't come up with $7k for a bush footy comp that would have reaped huge benefits from that game.

That's the attitude that will run the game. And there will be no CRL/NSWRL/ARL to provide the base running costs that they do now.

Seems to me that both you and Ross Livermore are advocating the same position.

 

[1 Eyed TEZZA]

Its a bloody annoying situation the games in. I wonder, would the clubs comprimise and allow the ARL or the state bodies to have their votes and nominees? Im sure they would but its News Ltd that wont allow it.

All a bunch of stubborn people, therse no way around it, someones gotta give.

 

[Desert Qlder]

All posters to this thread make valid arguments.

I want the IC so badly, but the simple fact remains - NRL Clubs can not have all the power. Compromise needs to be made.

The usual suspects can make the QRL out to be the bad guys they are well within their right to seek such a compromise.

 

[Noa]

Well that's the ultimate danger of the game the establishment are playing. The figure Searle put on it the other day was "96 per cent of the revenue is derived by the elite aspects of the game". Now presumably the "elite aspects" would include Origin and Tests but the club competition would still be by far the biggest component of that revenue. Yet the clubs currently have no say, let alone anything like a majority say. That's a very precarious political situation. And especially so as we approach a milestone at the end of 2012 where all club agreements, television and sponsorship contracts - in fact everything that ties the clubs to the existing structure - will come to a nice clean end simultaneously.

United as a block, the clubs are perhaps the most powerful part of our game after the paying customer. Players come and go but for the majority of fans, their identification with Rugby League *is* the elite club competition. And it shows in the balance of revenue. If you don't explicitly recognise the power that gives the clubs with a substantial say in how things are done, then they could just take the club comp to their own Commission and leave everyone else to come begging. Those holding out in the current process need to very careful. Because if they give too little and the clubs don't like it then they really could be left with nothing.

The current proposal may not be perfect but it at least recognises the political reality of where the power lies. And at the very least that promises a stable future. If you fail to adequately recognise the power of clubs now in the new arrangements then it is going to be a constant shadow over a Commission or any other body administering the game in the future. Whenever the clubs get rolled by those parts of the game not bringing any substantial revenue to the table, there'll always be the underlying threat of another revolution until finally one day, probably on some relatively small symbolic issue, it'll happen.

While the elite club game generates the overwhelming majority of revenue, that's where the power lies and one way or another the governance of the code will eventually reflect that. Whether we accept that now and avoid future conflict or instead put a system in place that fails to accept that reality and then find ourselves revisiting the question again in a decade - either way the ultimate result is going to end up the same. The only question is how many years we drag out the fight and how much collateral damage that fight causes.

Leigh.

Quality post Leigh :thumb.

BTW I think it is ridiculous to suggest that the Commision wouldnt look after the interests of grassroots football. That would be the proverbial cutting off of the nose.

As has been probably been pointed out once they have elected the commision their i.e. clubs job in running the gme is basically finished for a long, long time barring SL2, due to the checks and balances that are being proposed.

 

[East Coast Tiger]

All posters to this thread make valid arguments.

I want the IC so badly, but the simple fact remains - NRL Clubs can not have all the power. Compromise needs to be made.

The usual suspects can make the QRL out to be the bad guys they are well within their right to seek such a compromise.

Pretty much. Everyone wants it badly. That's part of the problem. People want it so badly they'll accept anything that removes News from the equation. Just as people were so desperate for reunification in 1997 that they accepted a situation where News had a stranglehold over the game. Handing the clubs similar power might solve some problems but create others and waiting another 10 or 12 years for another revolution is not much of an option. It has to be done right this time and this proposal isn't right. The good thing about it though is that it's shown how keen News are to bugger off (shame it wasn't like that in 97) so maybe there's something there we can work on while keeping the safeguards for the non-NRL parts of the game that we need.

 

[1 Eyed TEZZA]

It wont be to difficult for it to be safe guarded aslong as the constitution is safe guarded. I.E, ???% of total income/revenue must go towards junior development, or only a certain percentage can go to the NRL and its clubs, the rest must go to other areas. As long as every dollar stays in the game and is evenly spread, im happy.

We then need to consider the IC keeping some money so that it can aqquire assets such as stadiums and other sources of revenue.

 

[East Coast Tiger]

It might not be too hard to safeguard it. But that doesn't mean it will be. Where are these safeguards in the proposal? There aren't any. All we have is Searle saying "don't worry, we'll do the right thing". Well that's not good enough. The best safeguard against a conflict of interest created by total club rule is to not have total club rule at all and allow the people who run the game outside the NRL to do so.

 

[Noa]

. The best safeguard against a conflict of interest created by total club rule is to not have total club rule at all and allow the people who run the game outside the NRL to do so.

Isnt that what the IC is all about though and its seesm to me that is what the clubs are trying to do. Seems to me its comes down to a matter of trust i.e. trust in whether you think they will do the right thing by the game.

Like Leigh said, NOT allowing the clubs more say in the direction of the game is just asking for trouble down the road, after all everything flows down from the top.

 

[East Coast Tiger]

Isnt that what the IC is all about though and its seesm to me that is what the clubs are trying to do. Seems to me its comes down to a matter of trust i.e. trust in whether you think they will do the right thing by the game.

Like Leigh said, NOT allowing the clubs more say in the direction of the game is just asking for trouble down the road, after all everything flows down from the top.

And that attitude is soooooo NRL-centric. People who are involved in grassroots football and care about the international game know how little NRL clubs do for the game at those levels now. Why would they be trusted to do the right thing in the future? It's typical of NRL fans, who don't know or care about the game outside their club, to think the NRL is the be all and end all of the game and to suggest that the rest of the game should be subservient to the NRL. The NRL fails without the rest of the game.