It must be at least seven minutes since the game has torn itself apart over expansion. Sighs of relief all round then as along comes another Eric Perez venture to help fill the mud-slinging void. Perez’s latest attempt to launch a successful professional rugby league club takes him to Cornwall. The south west county has the appeal of being an awful lot closer to most semi-professional rugby league clubs than either Toronto or Ottawa, but is not quite close enough to the M62 for everyone.
In the most predictable thing to happen in rugby league since Saints won another Grand Final a stream of dissenters including journalists who should know better came forward to explain to us exactly how far Cornwall is from West Yorkshire. Some of them even added helpful maps to save those contemplating the trip the bother of getting on the route planner. Cost was offered as another prohibitive factor as well as the timeless classic scenario of part-time players having to get up half an hour before go to bed - python style - and do a day’s work after such epic, Bagginsian travel. Why does every semi-pro rugby league player have to get up at dawn for work? Is it contractual?
What about player welfare, they screamed? Which is a reasonable enough question on the face of it until you consider that those asking it are the same people who don’t think their front row enforcer should have been sin-binned for cracking the opposing winger around the head because ‘the game’s gone’. Last time I checked my route planner Cornwall was in the UK so it would seem a stretch to expect the national governing body to veto Cornwall’s involvement on grounds of geography. The issue here is Perez, and the well earned scepticism around weather he could launch a banger on Bonfire night much less a professional rugby league club. There is apparently a meeting of Championship and League One clubs going on as I write. Cornwall’s involvement will no doubt be on the agenda. Don’t expect any grown up decisions to be taken.
Another creating problems without realistic solutions is Wigan legend and serial meat pie grabber Martin Offiah. The self-proclaimed greatest try scorer in the game’s history (Brian Bevan, anyone?) was busy this week bemoaning the limitations of the salary cap. According to Offiah the big problem with the modern game - like there’s only one - is that players aren’t paid enough lolly.
This view may or may not be connected to Offiah’s current activities as a player agent. He took it a stage further when he suggested that players are paid so poorly that it is now too much of an effort for wealthy people to even bother to watch. Why would you want to watch players who might be getting paid less than you are, asks Martin? The logic of this escapes me somewhat. If had £10 less than Jeff Bezos I would still spend some of it on watching Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook and Matty Lees give away another six again. I neither know nor care what they earn.
There might be a serious point to be made about the cap but this is not it. Nor is it Offiah’s other assertion that we would be better off having one star-studded team winning everything like in his day because at least then you would have a high standard from that team. Has he looked at the recent roll of honour in Super League? One team does win everything but it hasn’t turned Jack Welsby into a household name. The cap may have driven down standards but its main flaw is that it doesn’t appear to have created the unpredictability that it was created for. We are 25 years in to Super League and there are still only four names on the trophy. There is a debate to be had about whether we really want the kind of unpredictability and parity seen in competitions like the NFL where winning a championship is largely a matter of hanging around and waiting your turn.
If the game is less attractive and the players less well known then that is at least as much down to coaching and rule changes as it is the salary cap. Coaches have figured out that the most direct route to winning things with a 10metre offside line is to use your wingers as battering rams and pass the ball only when absolutely necessary. The introduction of six again only adds to the feeling that what we need for ‘entertainment’ is for everything to happen as quickly as possible with fewer of those pesky stoppage thingies. Skill and variety have become luxuries we no longer have the patience for.
No doubt Offiah would point out it wasn’t like that in his day.
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