Oz rugby league in trouble

News will break in Australia in a matter of days that former schoolboy international rugby union player and League International, Matt Rogers, is to switch back from rugby league. This will come as a bitter blow to many of the league games supporters. It follows on the news earlier in the year that probably the highest profile League international, Wendell Sailor, will switch to union at the end of the current playing season.

At a time when eight of the 12 Rugby League clubs in the National Rugby League (NRL) competition are facing financial problems, and crowd numbers down, the second of the "two rugbies" can ill afford further adverse publicity.

However the question which arises is for how long News Limited (Rupert Murdoch) will continue to prop up the NRL for its product to be available on cable/pay TV?

Ever since the "super league war" in 1995, and the eventual successful court action taken by the Australian Rugby League (ARL) against Super League, the game has lurched from bad to worse in the eyes of supporters. In an attempt to bring sanity back to the most popular football in Australia's eastern states, the NRL was formed to bring the warring parties together. Unfortunately for thousands of fans, clubs were merged with previous bitter enemies, and the move to a smaller competition has failed to recapture the fans. In fact numbers are down seven percent over the same time in 2000 at the end of Round 12 in 2001.

An analysis done by a leading newspaper in Sydney has reported that "the biggest decline in support is for joint venture outfit Northern Eagles, who are down 38 percent on crowds from last year -- a whopping 6,096 fewer fans on average every Saturday."

The four clubs to show increases are Canterbury Bankstown Bulldogs, Parramatta Eels, Penrith Panthers and Sydney City Roosters. These are four of the ten Sydney clubs that were there before the super league war in 1995. The remainder have been the subject of merged attempts (Manly, Norths, Balmain, Wests, and St George) or in the case of the Cronulla Sharks, remained static.

The overall attendance is down from 1.23 million to 1.14 million over the 12-month period.

The financial position of the merged clubs has failed, and a part of the reason for this is the amounts paid to players.

The Chairman of the Northern Eagles (merged Manly and Norths), Ian Thomson, has warned that player payments are still too high and must be scaled back to sustain the game. He claims that player payments are "outrageous" compared with what they can attract through the gate and that there has to be some reality brought back into player payments. Thomson told a Sydney newspaper that there is a situation where upwards of 60 percent of gross revenue is paid to support the players directly. "...it's madness, absolute madness," he is quoted as having said.

An NRL source rejected Thomson's argument, claiming any move to reduce player payments could result in more players leaving the game to chase the big dollars in England, or switching codes to the Australian Rugby Union.

Each NRL club receives $500,000 as a result of the pay-TV deal, but Thomson said this was not enough to offset the loss in gate takings.

Thomson said the club as yet had not been to the NRL or News Limited looking for a handout, but it had kept both parties informed of the club's financial situation.

The time will arrive when News Limited have to ask how long can this payout continue?

With crowds down, players expecting high salaries, and Rugby union on the trail of key players, the NRL may find the answer in reverting to a strong Sydney Club competition. This would give the chance to boost the development in country regions, and have an invitation contest midway through the season with the other provincial sides from Newcastle, Wollongong, Canberra, Brisbane and North Queensland. The New Zealand connection with the Warriors would lose nothing if it disbanded, as it has been a financial drain from day one!

With 2008 the 100-year centenary of the rugby league game in Australia, the big question is "will it make it?"