The Wests Tigers board should let Lachie Galvin go on Monday.
Not immediately, but at the end of the season, releasing him from the final year of his contract. Cut the cord, move on.
The board won’t want to be seen as weak, as capitulating, but for stability, it has to happen.
With Galvin already threatening legal action for bullying, and his camp on record with their thoughts Benji Marshall can’t coach, it’s untenable.
CEO Shane Richardson has said to anyone who will listen Marshall is the future of the club.
If he is, their immediate future can’t lie with a teenager, talented but largely untested, who doesn’t rate him.
Wests Tigers Lachlan Galvin.Credit: Renee Nowytarger
As the club competes for a spot in the eight for the first time since 2011, inevitable missteps and poor performances along the way, such as last week’s 64-0 shellacking by Melbourne, will be linked to Galvin and his thoughts on Marshall’s ability.
And the “bullying”.
And if the board does say see you later to Lachie, it’s then over to the NRL to end the madness which caused this in the first place.
Peter V’landys and his hierarchy must take the Galvin situation for what it is, the inevitable product of a player contract system which is wide open to manipulation, even greed.
Allowing players to negotiate with other clubs from November 1 the year before their current deals end is the worst rule in Australian sport, if not world sport.
It effectively means deals end at that time. Keeping a player who signs, or in Galvin’s case indicates he will sign, with another club leaves a player on your books for a full season, even two, who wants out.
While players can negotiate, then sign, with another club 12 months early, the rule drives wild speculation – media and player-agent driven – a full two years out from the end of a deal.
It hands far too much power to managers who can feed stories in the modern clickbait-driven media era, causing unending speculation which pressures coaches and clubs into moves not always in their best interests.
And leaves fans, the heartbeat of the game, totally out of the equation. Like it or lump it.
It can work, as it did with Villiame Kikau, Stephen Crichton and Jarome Luai before their exits from the Panthers, but that says more about that club and the playing culture through their premiership run than it does about the workability of a shockingly flawed system.
Successful exits … Stephen Crichton and Villiame Kikau.Credit: Getty Images
With Perth and PNG entering in 2027 and 2028 respectively, there will be a need to sign about 80 players.
Then there is the prospect of a heavy spike to the salary cap, currently at $11.25m, when the new TV rights deal kicks in for the start of the 2028 season.
With V’landys openly talking about a $3bn five-year deal, up from the current $2bn, player agents are in a lather about future riches for their stars and themselves.
The combination of those two factors will see player movement, and speculation about movement, in warp-speed overdrive.
The obstacle to change has been the Rugby League Player’s Association, which says players need that amount of lead time to change clubs so they can facilitate moves across town or to other cities.
That’s embarrassing.
In the real world, people change jobs or are transferred all the time. Remarkably, they are able to move themselves and their families and get on with life.
Many people commute for periods of time and make it work. It may not always be easy, but it’s life.
Every year NRL players do it when it suits them. They leave clubs and even end up in the UK to play Super League and manage to survive the strain.
The key to it all will be a salary cap increase and the power it will give the NRL to drive change.
While V’landys is highly unlikely to get his $3bn, the rights will go up and the cap will rise.
Several factors will temper negotiations. DAZN’s ownership of Foxtel makes it an unknown at the negotiating table, interest from Amazon or Netflix or any global streamer is a pipe dream and not evidence-based, Seven will only play a nuisance role and Nine (publisher of this masthead) isn’t as cashed up as NRL heavies believe after the sale of real estate giant Domain.
That money has gone to shareholders, not the company coffers to throw at sport and programming like confetti.
The NRL also has to accept the location of its new teams are not ideal, cost-wise.
We’re talking outside broadcast costs of up to $300,000 per match out of Perth and Port Moresby.
That will dent any offer at the negotiating table as every cent spent has to be paired with revenue which can be written against it. Commercial broadcasters don’t survive by handing out freebies.
All that said, there will be more money and when the cap rises, it’s time to tell the RLPA the increase is conditional on the November 1 rule ending, replaced by a sustainable player market window.
It’s then up to the players and their agents to accept the rule without selfishly heading to the Federal Court and arguing it is a restraint of trade, as Terry Hill did in the 1990s, causing this chaos for a generation.
Michael Chammas and Andrew “Joey” Johns dissect the upcoming NRL round, plus the latest footy news, results and analysis. Sign up for the Sin Bin newsletter.
