Another summer of scandal off the pitch makes way for on-field intrigue lined up early by the league in 2022.
Like a kid grinning through a new year’s school photos with two black eyes, men’s rugby league returns this week for its 115th season. Typically, there is as much conflict off the field as on, with players suiting up for new clubs against old ones, old rivalries resuming and fresh feuds between coaches and clubs in headlines and on sidelines. And before NRL stadium turnstiles can spin, the doors of the courts will be busy with numerous outstanding legal cases involving former and current players, not named in this article, still to be resolved.
But the NRL knows that when you are going through hell it pays to just keep going. Hence, the feel-good stories: the $500,000 fighting fund for flood victims for starters. Then there’s Canberra’s Harley Smith-Shields receiving a hamstring donation from older brother Jesse to save his career and Roosters coach Trent Robinson signing until 2028. League’s fastest man, Tolu Koula – he runs the 100m in 10.58s largely thanks to parents who both represented Tonga at three Olympics – has signed a three-year deal with Manly.
Heartening too was the stance of two of the NRL’s oldest and family-minded clubs, South Sydney and Canterbury-Bankstown, in banning betting promotions from all apparel and match-day promotions in an attempt to nullify its effect on young frans and vulnerable communities. This goes in direct defiance of the NRL who made $40m from gambling last financial year and a code vocal in their desire to cash in on the legalisation of sports betting in the US, where what was a $500bn -a-year black market is now potentially up for grabs.
Smarter still, the NRL crashes through this crossfire fusillade of yin-yang flim-flam with clever TV scheduling. While rugby union and football shunt further into summer for eyeballs, the NRL kick-starts its season first, this Thursday on 10 March. But the AFL is primed for battle. From 16 March, it has 15 of its 18 clubs in marquee Thursday-Friday time slots in the first six weeks (the Sydney and WA derbies are rounds one and three) and they’re taking three 2022 matches to the Northern Territory to combat Origin game two going to Perth’s 60,000-seat Optus stadium on 26 June.
The NRL’s 2022 season opener on Thursday works on all the levels the code loves. Penrith play Manly but it is also class war (silvertails of the north against mountain men from the west) and star power (2021 premiers take on 2021’s premier player Tom Trbojevic). Underpinning it all was supposed to be the state lines shootout between Panthers NSW half Nathan Cleary and Manly’s Queensland half Daly Cherry-Evans, both captains of their clubs and spark plugs for ticket sales for the State of Origin series. That all changed on Tuesday when Cleary’s dodgy shoulder ruled him out, and he will instead make his return in round four for the grand final rematch.
Friday night was to be Adam Reynolds against South Sydney. After a lifetime in the cardinal and myrtle, the little general from Redfern spurned a one-year extension mid-season to accept a fat three-year deal to captain the once-great Brisbane Broncos. The NRL wasted no time in turning 2021’s most acrimonious bust-up into a round one blockbuster. Alas, that box office bonanza went bung last week when our hero/ villain caught Covid. Now the Reynolds-Rabbitohs rematch comes in eight weeks in Sydney.
The NRL likes to keep their powder kegs dry so that’s ample fireworks for round one. In round two they play different ace cards, a move we call the bad blood blind bluff.
“Rivalry round” used to pit old foes against each other in a week of local derbies. Now the coals of ancient grudges between coaches, clubs and players never wink out. Ahead of their round two clash on 18 March, the NRL will be banking on St George coach Anthony Griffin and the Bulldogs’ general manager of football Phil Gould to fire up the old feud they began in 2018 when ‘Hook’ was hooked as Penrith coach by oligarch Gould. In round three, Des Hasler and Trent Barrett, both former coaches of each other’s clubs, will clash.
Of course the spiciest chapter in Russell Crowe’s Book of Feuds is Souths v Easts and the NRL have it slated early, in round three. This year the local grudgefest has real mustard on it after Bunnies star Latrell Mitchell ironed out his old Roosters teammate Joey Manu in a shoulder-high hit late last season. Manu sustained a broken cheekbone that required three plates and 12 screws and Mitchell was walloped with a six-week suspension that cost him a berth in a grand final he might well have won for his club.
It won’t be Mitchell’s big return as originally intended – he’s been given a one-game reprieve for missing All Stars – but the two men, still mates, will face off early in a storyline the NRL know NRL supporters and sports fans will savour. Mate against mate, state against state. The game – and alas, its players – is built on a love of hate.
Story first published on The Guardian