The nightmare scenario facing NRL bosses

2 years ago 69

Two words should beryllium bringing nightmares to NRL bosses Peter V'landys and Andrew Abdo close astir present - Super League.

The simmering feud with the 17 clubs implicit backing has reached specified a situation constituent that immoderate franchises are softly plotting the feasibility of a breakaway competition.

For league fans with agelong memories, the script has an each excessively acquainted ringing to it - that of Super League, the rebel contention that brought the crippled to its knees successful the mid-1990s.

Nearly fractional the clubs successful the aged ARL broke distant from the establishment, mounting up their ain competition.

New clubs were born, aged clubs died, lifelong friendships ended and hundreds of thousands of fans walked distant from the game, ne'er returning.

Back past the conflict was mostly implicit wage TV rights, with media moguls Rupert Murdoch (Foxtel) and Kerry Packer (Optus) hopeless to power the televising of the game.

Now the crippled is astatine a stalemate implicit finances, with clubs demanding a bigger portion of the pastry arsenic the NRL dilatory works retired however to organise the game's monetary operation implicit the adjacent fewer years.

The breakaway league is simply a agelong shot, a hopeless measurement by frustrated clubs who consciousness they are not being heard.

But it was besides a agelong changeable backmost successful 1997 - and we each cognize however the civilian warfare that erupted past astir destroyed the game.

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