D-Day in the NRL funding crisis arrives at 10am Tuesday, when three representatives of the clubs will meet with chief executive Andrew Abdo and ask, ‘Show us the money … If you can’t afford to give us an annual grant per club of $5m above the salary cap, tell us why not?’
At issue is not so much the percentage share of the revenue cake each of the stakeholders receive, but its size.
In a rare show of unity between the clubs and the Rugby League Players Association, Abdo will be asked why the amount of distributable revenue of $574.4m is not $100m a year more, in the light of the AFL’s recently struck $4.5 billion TV deal and the need to fund a 17th NRL club in the Dolphins.
High on the agenda of both the NRL clubs and the RLPA is the confidential pay-TV deal ARLC chair Peter V’landys negotiated with Foxtel during the Covid pandemic.
The club representatives – South Sydney’s Blake Solly, Canberra’s Don Furner and Melbourne’s Justin Rodski – have messages of support from many of the NRL clubs, despite media comment that only the Rabbitohs and Panthers are rebelling against the current administration.
There was also a show of unity from several clubs at an extraordinary general meeting of the NSWRL last Friday when a motion to sack four directors of the NSWRL, moved by representatives of Cronulla and Canterbury, failed. The meeting lasted 17 minutes.
High stakes: Representatives of NRL clubs will meet with CEO Andrew Abdo on Tuesday morning.Credit:Dean Sewell
The meeting re-affirmed a previous vote in February, at which Cronulla CEO Dino Mezzatesta was prevented from standing for election to the NSWRL board over a conflict-of-interest issue.
Roosters chair Nick Politis and Canterbury’s Dr George Peponis resigned from the NSWRL board in protest at Mezzatesta’s exclusion.
On Friday, an initial vote to remove directors Geoff Gerard and Kevin Greene failed 22-12 and a subsequent vote to remove two further directors did not proceed because the Cronulla and Canterbury delegates allowed the motion to lapse.
Insofar as Sydney has 20 voting delegates and the country areas have 18, a significant number of representatives of city clubs voted against the proposal. (Four delegates either abstained or failed to lodge proxies.)
Nick Politis and George Peponis resigned from the NSWRL board after Dino Mezzatesta was barred from standing for election.
The vote effectively restored the status quo, with country-based members dominating a board led by Newcastle’s Jock Anderson.
To be fair, second-tier clubs such as Newtown, North Sydney, Mounties and Illawarra also voted, with some opposed to a proposal mooted by the ARLC to create a national reserve-grade competition, which would relegate these clubs to a third tier.
However, the once-unanimous support for the ARLC leadership from all 17 NRL clubs has clearly been shattered, as reflected by the funding issue and Sydney clubs supporting Friday’s vote.
Under the ARLC constitution, the NSWRL has only one vote but the NRL clubs have one each, meaning that a significant number of Sydney clubs demonstrated on Friday that they were prepared to challenge the game’s bosses.
Coincidentally, the ARLC’s appeal against a Supreme Court judgment not to order fresh NSWRL board elections was also heard on Friday morning, with the legal action perplexing the NSWRL’s Anderson.
“There’s been $250,000 spent on legal fees on this election,” he said. “At one stage, we offered to pay half if they withdrew the appeal, but we didn’t get an answer.
“That quarter of a million dollars could be going to bush football, which, everyone says, has a lot of problems.”
While the ARLC will be keen to placate the NRL clubs, a settlement with the RLPA is a long way off.
RLPA chief executive Clint Newton has flown to England for the World Cup at the same time as V’landys and Abdo have chosen to cancel their planned trip to the tournament.
Any chance of a settlement with the players, who have submitted a log of claims outside of money, was never going to be achieved over a pint in an English pub.
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