NRL: The NRL's seven deadly sins

Sonny Bill Williams could have been one of the sport's legendary names. Photo / Dean Purcell

The NRL is good. Very good. It's exciting, intense and unpredictable. But the recent travails of the Sharks confirms the game's seedy side. Michael Brown looks at the NRL's seven deadly sins.

LUST

Sex and league are regular bedfellows.

The sins range from Sonny Bill Williams' fumble in a toilet cubicle with model Candice Falzon to the Sharks' group sex romp in Christchurch in 2002 and charges laid against Manly's Brett Stewart earlier this year after an alleged sexual assault of a 17-year-old in a stairwell.

The sexual objectification of women is the dark not-so-secret-any-more underbelly of the game.

It is not exclusively a rugby league problem but barely a month goes by, let alone a year, when some sordid allegation isn't brought up.

Players are lionised and some fans want a 'taste' of their success.

There seems to be a commitment to clean up the game, following the Four Corners documentary and the public ruination of Matthew Johns, but it remains to be seen if anything actually changes.

There have been wake-up calls in the past - 10 sexual assault allegations have been levelled in the past decade - but few seemed to take notice. Maybe it will take the conviction of a player to change things.

Then again, old habits die hard.

GREED

In the professional world, money talks and a player walks.

Players invariably sell themselves to the highest bidder, meaning loyalty is a rare commodity and one-club players even more exceptional.

It's hard to blame players because they don't, on a global scale, earn that much. The NRL average is $160,000 a season - and the average player lasts three years in the competition - which pales in comparison to many other professional sportsmen.

Clubs have often been guided by greed. How else can you explain the various salary cap breaches over the years? Everyone rorted the system.

No one talked about it, until the Bulldogs (2003) were exposed and the Warriors (2006) owned up to it.

Doubts still exist about a handful of clubs and how they can fit so many stars into the A$4.2 million salary cap but there's little doubt it's better managed and policed.

The closeness and unpredictability of the competition is a symptom of that.

Five clubs have been fined for breaking the cap this season. Apparently these stemmed from either second-tier salary breaches or misinterpretations of the guidelines.

Surely ignorance of the rules is no defence.

SLOTH

There are many players whose talents are not fulfilled. Some have their career cruelly cut down by injury, like Matthew Johns (we're talking rugby league here, not television) and Ben Ikin.

Others, though, waste what they have. Todd Carney is a case in point. The former Canberra halfback fell off the rails, again, this year when he went on a drunken rampage and damaged property, receiving a 12-month suspended jail sentence.

He had already been sacked by the Raiders and deregistered by the NRL after a series of driving and drunken offences which included a high-speed police chase through Canberra and allegations of urinating on someone at a nightclub.

Carney is undoubtedly a talented player, one of the best around. But who would know now?

Likewise, Reni Maitua's career is hanging by a thread after failing a drugs test.

His record sheet is hardly clean - he has a conviction for drink driving and the Bulldogs finally cut him in 2008 after he failed to turn up to training once too often (sometimes he turned up drunk or hung over).

Maitua is a member of the so-called Bra Boys, a surfing gang tainted by violence against both police and public. He might be spending more time with them if his B sample also comes back positive.

Sonny Bill Williams is another who never fulfilled his potential in rugby league when he walked out on the Bulldogs last year to play rugby in France, gaining the tag of "most hated person in Australia".

He could turn out to be an excellent rugby union player but, for league fans, the tragedy is that we will never know how good he could have been in the 13-man code.

WRATH

State of Origin and biff went hand in hand for years. Former NSW coach Tommy Raudonikis entered into folklore for his cattle dog call (players broke from a scrum with fists flying, resulting in two particularly infamous all-in-brawls).

Television replays and the modern judiciary mean players can't get away with much these days.

But it doesn't mean nastiness is extinct.

Just last week, Sharks captain Paul Gallen was fined $10,000 for racially abusing Dragons prop Mickey Paea. Gallen reportedly disputes the claim, saying he called him a "f***ing c***" rather than a "black c***".

Well, that's all right, then.

Referees are also on the receiving end of anger from players, coaches and fans.

Coaches are skilled at knowing just how far they can go in criticising the whistle blowers without incurring censure and fines.

Ricky Stuart crossed that line, though, when he abused Ashley Klein after the World Cup final, costing him the Kangaroos job.

Some fans also take it too far. A Wests Tigers fan faces a life ban after his tackle last week of referee Jared Maxwell and last month Bulldogs fans clashed with police at their game with Souths.

GLUTTONY

One of the good things to emerge from the Super League war was the need to rationalise. The game was eating itself with so many teams. Sponsors and fanbases were too thinly spread, crowd attendances were down and many teams found themselves in financial trouble.

Sanity prevailed when the NRL was created in 1998, with an agreement to reduce the 20 teams who took part that year to 14 in 2000. It had to be done. Bigger is not always better.

But that 14 became 15 when Souths won their bitter court battle to rejoin the competition in 2002 and 15 became 16 when the Gold Coast Titans entered the NRL in 2007. The Titans, in particular, have been one of the success stories of recent times with strong crowds and a decent team. It seems only a matter of time before more clubs are added.

NRL boss David Gallop hinted at expansion earlier this year when the new TV deal is thrashed out in 2013 with the Central Coast, Perth, Adelaide, Wellington and a second team in Brisbane possible destinations.

That's all very well but something has to give. And that is Sydney.

Nine teams in the Harbour City is unsustainable. They're all competing for the same corporate dollar and an increasingly clouded fan base.

Merge, relocate or die is the distinctly unsexy catch phrase being bandied about. Sydney clubs, though, are generally too greedy to heed the warnings. History, they say, is more important than the future.

In reality, Sydney clubs are holding the game back. They blame the NSW Government, and its poker machine tax, for their financial troubles.

They are holding back the earning capacity of players because they can't afford to stump up more cash, prompting many like Mark Gasnier and Sonny Bill Williams to look overseas.

They are holding back the game's exposure on a national level by refusing to contemplate relocation.

The NRL has dangled the tasty carrot of at least $9 million to relocate to the Central Coast but, as yet, there are no takers.

Surely Cronulla's debts of $10 million should be a warning to all.

ENVY

There are few teams as envied (and hated) as Manly.

It stems from 1979, when they raided Western Suburbs of players like John Dorahy, Les Boyd and David Gillespie. It was a classic case of the rich getting richer and the poor getting more of a complex.

It led to the moniker of Silvertails (Manly) and Fibros (Wests).

That resentment still exists and even last year many Sydneysiders couldn't bring themselves to support the Sea Eagles in the grand final against Melbourne.

New Zealanders aren't immune to the tall-poppy syndrome. In fact, we have turned it into a national pastime.

PRIDE

Egoes are rife in rugby league.

The sin ranges from Russell Crowe's belief he can run the NRL better than David Gallop and his theatrical thumbs-down routine a la Gladiator; to Willie Mason forging another player's signature; to Phil Gould's insistence he knows more about the game than anyone else; and Stuart's pig-headedness.

Braggadocio is not a particularly appealing characteristic but an all too common one in professional sport in general. It doesn't help that players have their egos stroked by eager fans and sycophants.

It was Abraham Lincoln who said, "what kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself".

Too often there's a bad smell around rugby league.