Anthony Watmough’s injury payout saga is a painful result for the permanent injury insurance scheme
Paul Kent, The Daily Telegraph
October 7, 2016 7:27pm
Subscriber only
ANTHONY Watmough might be about to head back into pre-season training.
Not for now, but next year. Training will require daily krill oil tablets and some Pain Away, as endorsed by Rabs, to ease the ache.
Watmough has promised friends that if returning to the NRL in 2018 is the only way he’ll get his final year’s payments then that is what he is prepared to do. Hopefully he won’t have the walking frame by then.
Once again the NRL’s desire to be all things to all people has got it in trouble. A permanent injury insurance scheme seemed like the feel-good idea when first suggested, even though some of the better club chief executives like Canberra’s Don Furner said the idea had a thousand hairs on it.
Anthony Watmough’s injury payout saga is a painful result for the permanent injury insurance scheme.
Forget it Donny, too much good news to sell on this one.
The first high-profile case was Watmough, which got pushed through extraordinarily quick compared to other cases and had the convenient effect of getting Parramatta below the salary cap in time to keep competing for this year’s title.
Everyone’s a winner!
Until they’re not.
It began turning bad for the Eels when insurers QBE rejected the claim, stating that Watmough’s injury was pre-existing.
Everybody knew that, of course. When Parramatta first tabled a four-year deal to Watmough he took the offer back to Manly to see what they might offer in return and Sea Eagles coach Geoff Toovey suddenly felt faint.
Toovey knew Watmough’s knee was like a baldy tyre and believed there was no way it was going to last four seasons. So all Manly would offer, being as fair as they could, was a two-year deal. Watmough took the four at Parramatta and his knee lasted 17 games.
The NRL allowed it to happen. While the official line from headquarters was the risk was all on Parramatta, and ended badly, there was little consideration for Toovey or other clubs who would soon see their ageing players offered extraordinary deals to leave, offers clubs with sensible approaches to the cap have no choice but to reject.
Toovey lost one of his core group of players, the small pebble down the mountainside that became a landslide. Watmough’s departure made it easier for others to leave later. It cost him his job.
Parramatta gave Watmough a medical only after he arrived, which sort of misses the point, but found his knee injury was chronic and pre-existing, information the insurers used to later reject the claim.
The insurance rejection first seems a way of restoring natural order. What it really means is only the rich clubs will now be prepared to take the punt.
Parramatta can’t make that deal. The club is currently under administration after years of mismanagement and the guy running the place, Max Donnelly, is so square he is divisible by four. Donnelly is extremely frustrated that the NRL has allowed the scheme to be written into contracts.
“I know it doesn’t go on the cap but somebody has still got to write a cheque,” he said.
He can’t figure out how the policy is between the insurance company and the player and yet the club ends up paying.
“I’m pissed off with the insurance company,” he said.
Donnelly spoke to his lawyers after QBE rejected Watmough’s claim and was told Parramatta has no obligation.
Anthony Watmough’s injury payout saga is a painful result for the permanent injury insurance scheme, writes Paul Kent. pic mark Evans
Watmough told the club they were going against the obligations of the contract, but also the rules of the Collective Bargaining Agreement.
A source within Parramatta said the wording of the player contract and CBA was so poorly constructed it is not even a consideration.
The Eels believe they are in safe territory. The option clause in Watmough’s contract says he must inform the club by May 2017 if he is going to take up the final season of his contract. Given the Eels have terminated his contract and will pay out all of this season and next, where he will not play a game, it seems fair.
“If he thinks he’s good he can turn up,” said Donnelly, who sounded tired of it all.
“I’ll tell you what,” he added, “I can’t wait for Bernie Gurr to turn up.”
The Eels have learned their lesson, though.
Next year’s recruits have had medicals after round 20 to make sure they are fit. When one of those players went down injured a couple of rounds after the medical it opened a whole new concern. Does that injury now count as pre-existing?
Nobody can find an answer. The game has about 13 months to figure it out. That’s when Watmough is due at training.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sp...e/news-story/526e7f367b69524d8dbb9a200587014e
