Sports Insider: Australia’s NRL is failing international rugby league

The NRL is dropping the ball on the season-ending Pacific Championships tournament. Fast-tracking expansion to a 20-team club competition, including a second New Zealand franchise, is the solution; Why the current New Zealand Rugby board shouldn’t be able to sign off a new Sky rights deal; And that Johnny Sexton sledge.

OPINION

This Sunday night’s National Rugby League grand final in Sydney is such a lip-smacking contest, it won’t matter who wins between the Melbourne Storm and the Penrith Panthers.

The NRL’s seeming conquest of all before it rolls on.

The Australian overlords will be patting themselves on the back, whichever team triumphs, as they look back at a season that has busted all records – including becoming Australia’s most-watched TV sport.

But there will be one group of the code’s fans who will be the losers after Sunday – international rugby league fans, including followers of the Kiwis.

Stand by for a rash of elite players declaring themselves unavailable for the Pacific Championships, which debuted last year and was won in spectacular fashion by the Kiwis with a stunning 30-0 shutout of world champions Australia in Hamilton.

Some will be legitimate... the best player in the game, Nathan Cleary, is carrying a busted shoulder into the grand final and nobody expect Kangaroos coach Mal Meninga to select the Panthers superstar in Australia’s squad for the tournament, kicking off on October 18.

Others who feel strong bonds to their culture, including Cleary’s clubmate and Kiwis captain James Fisher-Harris, will drag their bodies through a defence of the championship in the November 10 final.

But inevitably there will be a welter of stars from this weekend’s grand final and the preceding club season who will be mysteriously declared in need of off-season medical treatment and therefore declared unavailable for their national teams.

The club-before-country drama has already surfaced again in Australia in grand final week after Newcastle Knights superstar Kalyn Ponga, supported by his club, ruled himself out of Kangaroos selection.

Meninga and the NRL’s all powerful chairman Peter V’landys hit the roof, and given NRL contracts require all players to be available for test selection, Ponga had to do a backflip and declare he will turn up for a medical if selected and will play if he passes it (hmmm – what chance he will conveniently fail?).

V’landys was lauded in several quarters for defending test footy. The NRL is also the owner and originator of the Pacific Championships (the NZRL holds commercial rights for games played in Aotearoa), so can’t be accused of totally neglecting the international game.

But that won’t stop a brace of club-driven withdrawals of multiple NRL stars from the Australian, Kiwi and Tongan squads that form the top tier of the championship.

Will we see all the Storm stars, such as New Zealanders Jahrome Hughes, Will Warbrick and Alec McDonald, declared available – and their other match-winners, Australian stars like Cameron Munster, Harry Grant and Xavier Coates?

Likewise for Penrith, who have Australian, Kiwi and Tongan contenders all over their squads but with battered players who badly need a rest.

Mate Ma’a Tonga have a host of standout NRL players, including Manly enforcer Haumole Olakau’atu and the Storm’s indestructible former Warrior Eli Katoa. But their availability will inevitably be secretly decided by their club behind closed doors, despite the NRL contract requirements.

The end result is the squads for the Pacific Championships will not be as strong as they should be (it needs Samoa back in there as well) and therefore fans will be robbed of seeing the best in the game wearing their national colours.

Some clubs will play ball. The Warriors, for example, will benefit from some of their emerging young stars being selected for the Kiwis and Tonga, knowing many will come back better players for the experience.

Other, more cynical clubs will lean on their stars, impressing upon them the upside of a decent rest and proper off-season being in the best interests of the club that’s paying them.

Solution: Shorten club season by fast-tracking expansion

There is a simple solution to this dilemma.

The reality is the season is too long and too cluttered with the NRL throwing more and more new toys out there for fans.

We’ve seen the season-starting All-Stars game and the Las Vegas season kickoff added, alongside State of Origin within the NRL calendar and then the Pacific Championships tacked on to the end last year.

It means the season starts in February and ends in the middle of November. That’s madness in the toughest collision sport on the planet.

The club schedule and overall season needs to be shortened so that the Origin series and particularly the Pacific Championships are not diluted due to the relentless physical battering the modern player takes for his club.

This is entirely achievable if the NRL fast-tracked its ambition for a 20-team club premiership, currently set to be in place by 2030.

A dual conference format with 10 teams in each division allows for that opportunity with less games per regular season but still guaranteeing an explosive finals series.

Instead of 24 matches a season plus finals, the conference system used so successfully in American sport would reduce the regular season schedule to 18 games, while still allowing for home and away clashes.

That’s six weeks saved, reducing the game’s physical impact on club squads while also boosting player availability for Origin and test rugby league, which could still be played in a mid- or end-of-season window.

It’s why V’landys and the NRL should bring forward their expansion timetable by three years for introduction by 2027 at the latest.

A fast-tracked second New Zealand club franchise, the Perth-based Bears team and a team representing Papua New Guinea takes us from 17 teams to 20 and boosts test rugby.

Get on with it, NRL.

Spare me and your new book Johnny

Johnny Sexton garnered himself a tidal wave of publicity this week for his new book after lifting the lid on his obvious disdain for the All Blacks.

The Irish first five-eighths went into vivid detail of the bitter verbal spat he had with Reiko Ioane at the end of his side’s World Cup quarter-final loss last year which, quite frankly, he brought upon himself by behaving like a prat in New Zealand earlier that same season.

Sexton recounts Ioane’s colourful tongue-lashing in rather pious style, rather than admitting the Irish had been master sledgers on their Kiwi tour (remember Peter Mahoney’s “you’re a s*** Richie McCaw” insult levelled at Sam Cane?)

But the now-retired Sexton reveals his tissue-thin hide in the book.

“I couldn’t bring myself to watch the quarter-final back. I don’t think I ever will. I don’t need to. I’ve mentally replayed every second, over and over,” he wrote.

Well, he must have eyes in the back of his head because TV replays clearly show he has his back to the action when the game ends with a penalty, followed by the exchange with Ioane.

Yet he describes the dying seconds in great detail, betraying (like the player who claims to never read the newspapers) that he had obviously watched replays.

“It finishes the same way every time. Rónan Kelleher still ploughs into Brodie Retallick and Sam Whitelock. Whitelock goes in for the poach, clearly without releasing, but somehow Wayne Barnes awards him the penalty, even though it has all happened under his nose – and it’s all over.”

And another jaundiced line...

“I know I’m biased. And I know that South Africans – and others – will tell me to look in the record books. But it wouldn’t be the first time that the best side in a sports tournament didn’t end up winning it.”

Spare me.

Current board should not be allowed involvement in NZR’s new broadcasting deal

Amid an interminable governance war, the current New Zealand Rugby (NZR) board is facing an inconvenient question at an appropriate time.

A new board is scheduled to be in place by December 11 but currently there is an important broadcasting negotiation under way between NZR and Sky TV for rights from the end of 2025.

Sky is NZR’s most lucrative revenue stream with the current deal worth more than $100 million a year. But it is also of critical material importance as the national body owns 92.5% of the outcome. Silver Lake starts earning a dividend from next year on the 7.5% stake it secured with its $264m dollar investment into NZR.

That’s a cool $20m plus on current annual revenues of $270m, so NZR needs to secure an increase from Sky to $109m a year just to keep pace with current financial commitments.

Despite the material importance to NZR of the new contract, the negotiation is seemingly being led the boss of the separate company formed with Silver Lake, officially coined NZ Rugby Commercial but commonly referred to as “ComCo”.

ComCo chief executive Craig Fenton will need the approval of the NZR board on such a major deal as the Sky contract given it will likely run for five years.

But what if the broadcasting agreement is negotiated and agreed prior to December 11?

What mandate does this current board have to enter into a long-term rights agreement on behalf of NZR when they are arguably just warming the seats for a new board from mid-December?

It’s inconceivable that the current board, heavily criticised during the governance review and known to be helplessly divided, could approve such a material long term deal when most if not all directors won’t be around to be accountable for its consequences.

The answer is painfully obvious.

The current NZR board should not be allowed to approve any broadcast deal until the new board is in place.

The current board has no mandate and cannot argue otherwise morally or ethically.

Fan’s sad lament

The Oakland Athletics baseball team played their last game in the Californian city on the other side of San Francisco Bay after 57 seasons in Major League Baseball.

A packed house of almost 47,000 filled the club’s ageing but iconic Coliseum ballpark earlier this week for the A’s’ final game before the franchise moves to Las Vegas and a brand new stadium.

It’s been a tough time for Oakland’s sports fans. The A’s are the third professional sports team to quit the city in the past five years, with the NFL’s Raiders also heading to Vegas and the NBA’s Warriors jumping the bay across to San Francisco.

But the departure of the baseball club is hurting the most, with emotional final scenes at the Coliseum.

This heartfelt response from one fan interviewed summed up the feeling in visceral fashion.

It is a sad lament in an age of modern professional sport...

“My dad didn’t know what to do with me, so he brought me here.

“And we used to walk across that BART bridge to games and it was like magic. I watched Dwayne Murphy and Rickey Henderson out there, running the outfield, stealing bases, hat flying off. It was beautiful. And that’s what made me fall in love with baseball.

‌”I had a little brother who was 13 years younger than me, and I didn’t know what to do with him. So what did I do? I brought him here. When I went away to college, I would send him tickets and he would call me for the national anthem.

‌”And then when I had kids, I knew what to do with them: I brought them here. That’s what baseball in Oakland is. This is generations. This is father to son, to brother to child, and you’re ripping that away.

For what? To fill a stadium [in Vegas] with 70% visiting fans? That’s ridiculous.”

Team of the week

Aotearoa’s NRL grand final tribe: There are Kiwi-born or bred players littered across this Sunday’s Australian league showpiece in Sydney. Ten New Zealand-born or raised players by Sports Insider’s count will feature across the men’s and women’s grand finals including Kiwi captain and Warriors-bound James Fisher-Harris.

Springboks: More silverware locked away with the Rugby Championship sealed emphatically against Argentina. The Boks are now rivalling Richie McCaw’s All Blacks as the greatest team of the modern era.

Liam Lawson: Gets his chance in the last six grands prix of this season alongside Alpha Tauri stablemate Yuki Tsunoda in Red Bull’s second team. Impress in those races and the big boss Christian Horner says the young Kiwi could elbow Mexican Sergio Perez out of the top Red Bull team and be paired with world champion Max Verstappen next year.

America’s Cup: The Louis Vuitton challenger final between Luna Rossa and Ineos has been compelling viewing and Italy’s mouthy Aussie skipper James Spithill says Peter Burling and Team New Zealand should be anxious as the well-matched challengers get better and better.