Issue 47

Here we are again, the dawn of another rugby league season in Queensland, all the old suspects are back but joined by the Dolphins in the NRL and the Western Clydesdales in the Host Plus Cup. In essence, it looks like a great season if you are a player or supporter.

Between the 2022 season and the start of 2023, we saw Australia defeat Samoa to win the World Cup and in the women’s version, we saw Australia defeat New Zealand.

In the off-season, we saw the powerful Rugby League Players Association threaten to boycott NRL events unless they got a bigger share of the revenue generated from the game. I’d like the Board of the Players Association and any player who wants to go for a tour to inspect the proliferation of Australian Rules posts around the schools and parks in Queensland.

The grass-roots development of the game is defenceless in the face of these attacks. If the bucket of money has 1000 drops of money and the Players Association wants 700 of them and the rugby league administration wants another 250 it’s obvious that the little bit in the bottom is not going to combat the treasure chest that Australian Rules and soccer (football) is throwing at our prized juniors.

I live in rural Queensland where the banks are closing because big business simply could not care and any farmer or grazier will tell you that the key to their extended farming future is the planting, nurturing and growing the next crop or herd.

When the Dolphins agreed to the terms of their NRL contract to become the 17th team, one of the conditions was that they had to spend $2,000,000 a season on development in their catchment area. I get that but why is that not a condition of every NRL licence, past, present and into the future.

17 clubs, a minimum of $34,000,000 plus what the NRL put in now. If it must come out of the players and officials’ salaries, I’m okay with that too because the end game is the ‘greatest game of all and that’s rugby league’.