It must be the off-season if we’re talking about NRL clubs pillaging rugby union’s stocks.
Wasn’t Rugby Australia the one drawing up hit-lists and threatening to plunder NRL clubs not that long ago? Didn’t chairman Hamish McLennan declare he had Penrith superstar Nathan Cleary firmly in his sights, presumably through the lens of his monocle?
Oh. That all happened in April, you say. It’s hard to keep up.
This week, Roosters chairman Nick Politis and coach Trent Robinson met with NSW and Wallabies winger Mark Nawaqanitawase to talk about jumping ship. It wouldn’t be a particularly big jump given RA’s headquarters at Moore Park is about a five-iron from the Nick Politis Centre of Excellence beneath Allianz Stadium.
The Roosters will need a winger in 2025 — which is when Nawaqanitawase becomes available — but you sense giving RA a black eye after it snatched Joseph Suaalii from them earlier in the year is greater motivation.
Making the story sexier is the NRL raising the possibility of granting salary cap relief to those clubs who poach rugby union talent.
Salary cap exemptions would make Mark Nawaqanitawase and Max Jorgensen even more attractive to NRL clubs.Credit: Getty Images
This is signature rugby league: an idea is floated, it gets reported, it gets debated and voilà! It’s suddenly set in stone, when it is not.
NRL chief executive Andrew Abdo confirmed no such concessions have been introduced, nor was there any detail about what such concessions could look like.
Most people forget rugby league has played this card before: from 1990 to 1996, clubs were given a total exemption if they signed rugby union talent.
According to former ARL boss John Quayle, the exemptions were introduced because the competition was expanding to 20 teams. The AFL was exploring new markets, so rugby league had to move.
Players signed from rugby union were exempt for two years before their contract value was counted under the club’s salary cap, which was $1.8 million in 1995. (It was $12.1 million in 2023).
In 1995, more than a dozen rugby union players joined the ARL premiership, including Wallabies Darren Junee (Roosters) and Garrick Morgan (South Queensland Crushers). The biggest name was All Blacks star John Kirwan, who signed with the fledgling Auckland Warriors.
The Roosters also secured Wallabies outside back Peter Jorgensen, which is ironic because the player Politis really wants to snatch from rugby now is Jorgensen’s very talented 19-year-old son, Max, who also comes off contract at the end of next year.
Landing big-name rugby union internationals has been problematic for NRL clubs, as Herald colleague Iain Payten reported in 2015.
In 1995, Canterbury supremo Peter “Bullfrog” Moore had two enormous fishes on the line: All Blacks monster Jonah Lomu and Springboks legend Joost van der Westhuizen.
Moore wanted van der Westhuizen to replace Terry Lamb, who was nearing the end of this career, and he travelled to Cape Town for a meeting a few days after the Rugby World Cup.
In a penthouse suite of one of the city’s finest hotels, Moore offered a staggering two-year contract worth $1 million. Normally, that would take up a quarter of the cap, but it was exempt because van der Westhuizen would be converting from rugby.
The deal was scuppered when South African rugby officials got wind of the meeting.
Another time, Moore sat in front of Lomu and his family at Canterbury Leagues Club. He wrote an offer on a piece of paper and excused himself to the bathroom, content that he was about to land the biggest name in world rugby.
When he returned, Lomu had moved the decimal point on the figure scribbled on the piece of paper — he wanted far more than the Bulldogs could afford, even with the exemption.
ARL Commission chairman Peter V’landys and Rugby Australia chairman Hamish McLennan.Credit: Getty
Both codes had good reason to raid each other during the 1990s: rugby union was going professional and suddenly flush with broadcast money, while rugby league was on the brink of the Super League War.
Those days are long gone. It doesn’t make sense for the NRL to pick at the carcass of rugby union right now. Neither do salary cap concessions in a competition where which the difference between the haves and have-nots is widening.
V’landys is determined to devour rugby union because he considers it to be a competitor.
But why? Now that private equity is off the table for RA, and the code stumbles along following the Eddie Jones catastrophe, is it really a serious threat to rugby league?
Many NRL clubs already have their claws in GPS schools, cherry-picking the best talent that comes along, although there are exceptions.
Jorgensen trained with the Roosters last summer and established a strong rapport with Robinson, but he stuck with rugby union because he genuinely loves the sport.
Many still do. It might be on its knees, but rugby is not dying any time soon. There are too many players who want to play rugby because it’s rugby, no matter how many dollars are thrown at them.
The NRL has a current obsession with pinching talent from other codes, whether from rugby union or the fanciful notion that it can turn young Americans who don’t want to play NFL into rugby league superstars.
Rugby league needs to worry about its own backyard — because, if you talk to those at a grassroots level, it’s shrinking.
NBA gives Cleary the red carpet treatment
SPOTTED: Penrith halfback Nathan Cleary courtside at the NBA match between the Philadelphia 76ers and Boston Celtics on Thursday morning AEDT.
Cleary is on holidays in the US and the NBA, we’re told, rolled out the proverbial red carpet for the three-time premiership winner, inviting him to meet some of the players before the match.
It speaks to Cleary’s rising popularity that the NBA would give him primo seats for a match between two powerhouse teams.
There you go. We got through an entire item about him without mentioning his love interest.
Rap battle: Megan pile-on beyond the pale
No athlete on the face of the planet upsets conservative commentators more than US soccer star Megan Rapinoe, whose career ended in the saddest way earlier this week.
Playing for OL Reign in the National Women’s Soccer League Final against Gotham FC, Rapinoe, 38, went to run and tore her Achilles tendon after just four minutes. At the post-match media conference, she joked: “I’m not a religious person or anything and if there was a god, like, this is proof that there isn’t. This is f—ed up. It’s just f—ed up. Six minutes in and I eat my Achilles.”
Megan Rapinoe injured her Achilles in her retirement game. Credit: AP
She said all of this with a smile on her face, laughing, but that didn’t stop legions of critics coming in off the right wing to blast her.
Of course, Sky News’ Piers Morgan led the charge, writing: “I’d say it’s more like definitive proof that God does exist — and shares my view that this arrogant, pink-haired, self-promoting prima donna didn’t deserve the glorious send-off she so desperately craved.”
So said American commentator CJ Pearson: “I don’t know if there’s a human being on Earth nastier than Megan Rapinoe.”
Hmmm. I could name a few.
Rapinoe seems to anger people because she’s the definitive athlete activist, whether she’s shunning a trip to the White House when Donald Trump was president; arguing the rights of trans athletes; or wanting equal pay for female footballers.
She was slammed by Morgan and, of all people, Nick Kygrios as displaying “diabolical arrogance” when a seven-second video emerged of her not engaging with a young fan while signing a soccer ball at the ESPY awards. It proved nothing, but the pile-on was extreme.
You don’t have to agree with Rapinoe but the constant bash-up of her, including some people expressing joy about her suffering an injury, is dreadful stuff.
Channel Seven News report the story thus: “Football icon Megan Rapinoe enrages world with god joke after final game.”
The World should take a Valium. Piers, take two.
THE QUOTE
“This is in breach of the statutory term. I implore the premier to override the decision, which is contrary to any norms of good governance.” — Racing giant John Messara on the Minns Government’s decision to extend the term of Racing NSW chairman Russell Balding out to an unprecedented 14-year-term. This is going to get ugly.
THUMBS UP
Vale Patrick Smith, the legendary sports columnist for The Age and, later, The Australian, who died of a heart attack on Sunday at the age of 71. He was brutally honest, direct and had a sharp turn of phrase. His columns were compulsory reading.
THUMBS DOWN
If the NRL ever needed proof that its player transfer system should be overhauled, it’s the disturbing manner in which the Bulldogs are trying to manage former captain Raymond Faitala-Mariner out of the club with two years remaining on his contract.
It’s a big weekend for … Australian Daniel Ricciardo as Formula 1 racing returns to the streets of Las Vegas for the first time since 1982. If there’s one place that needs cars going a million miles an hour around a tight street circuit with drunken people wandering about at all hours of the day, it’s Sin City.
It’s an even bigger weekend for … At the time of writing, it was unknown if Australia or South Africa would meet India in the ICC World Cup final before 132,000 fans at Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad. Either way, it should be a ripper. ODIs are back, baby!
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