![]() ![]() Suddenly, the NRL’s best forward, Payne Haas is considering his own $1.6m deal. This disruption to the NRL’s supremacy is exactly what McLennan wants and what V’landys fears. That fat contract made Suaalii – still just 19 years old – the best paid footballer in Australia and there has been a frenzy between players, administrators, agents and fans ever since. ![]() So when Jones resumed the reins with another home World Cup in 2027 on the horizon, the code poaching began afresh and, in March, union prodigy Joseph Suaalii was snatched back from the Sydney Roosters to rejoin the 15-man game from 2025 for $1.6m a year. skip past newsletter promotionīefore this new Jones era, the Wallabies squad already boasted ex-NRL stars Tom Wright and Suliasi Vunivalu and, consistently their best player, ex-Storm flyer Marika Koroibete. In the 2000s, Israel Folau and Karmichael Hunt blazed an NRL to union trail, via the AFL. Since rugby went professional in 1995, the fiscal playing field has levelled. Garrick Morgan and Andrew Leeds in the 1990s. ![]() Brett Papworth, Michael O’Connor and Ricky Stuart in the 1980s. Ray Price, Russell Fairfax and Wally Lewis in the 1970s. Trevor Allan and Rex Mossop in the 1950s. ![]() Since 1907 when rugby union prince Dally Messenger defected to the new rugby league, the 13-man game has had irresistible pull for its once-amateur rivals. In his first stint as Australian coach (2001-05), Jones lured three NRL guns – Wendell Sailor, Mat Rogers and Lote Tuquiri – to join the Wallabies for the 2003 World Cup at home (and was a whisker from securing Andrew Johns, then the NRL’s greatest player, in 2005).Īlthough that hybrid Wallabies side was defeated in the final by a late England drop goal, the raid on the NRL was a win over a code that had long picked the ripest cherries from the cream of rugby union’s talent pool for much of the previous century. Wendell Sailor runs in a try for the Wallabies against Wales in 2003. But with the Wallabies No 7 in the world, it is star players Jones needs most. NRL veteran Brett Hodgson is Jones’s new national defence coach. Manly Sea Eagles coach, Anthony Seibold, was on his staff in England and AFL coach Stuart Dew was one of his pupils. He believes in cross-pollinating skill sets from each code to create a feral football alchemy. Jones was born in AFL-loyal Tasmania, played Sydney rugby union and loves rugby league. McLennan first lit the fuse by appointing Eddie Jones as Wallabies head coach in January. This peak in the four-year World Cup cycle is one of the few times rugby union can threaten the NRL and AFL for public interest in Australia. For players it’s an opportunity to take their talents and training truly global. It translates into lots of money flooding in from sponsors, governments and broadcasters and a billion people watching (the 2019 edition in Japan drew 857 million viewers, a 26% rise on 2015). His concern is the game’s true currency: the players.Īustralia hosting the 2027 Rugby World Cup means another major sports circus is coming to town. That’s small change to V’landys, who posted a $62.9m surplus in 2022. McLennan is on a war footing, bullish after posting an $8.2m surplus this year – a $35m turnaround on a $27.1m deficit of two years ago. For the past few months Peter V’landys, chair of the Australian Rugby League Commission and Hamish McLennan, chair of the Australian Rugby Union, have been waging a bizarre war in the media. ![]()
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