Eels Blogs

Dear Mr. Shane Mattiske,
Acting Chief Executive Officer, 
National Rugby League

I’m writing this to you as a lover of Rugby League and a supporter of the Parramatta Eels.

Firstly, let me say this. No club has more reason to care about the adherence to a salary cap than the Parramatta Eels. For all of us that bleed Blue & Gold, the 2009 grand final will be a scar that will never heal.

So let’s forget such nonsense as allowing us to ‘cheat’ the salary cap for a year to allow us to sign Israel Folau. We don’t want that.

We don’t want you to set a precedent for us. However, myself and all other supporters can not see how you are doing anything but setting a precedent by not allowing Israel Folau to sign with our club.

As a supporter, we’re confused by the news that the NRL is now able to arbitrarily set a valuation on a player.

I’ve looked all over the NRL site. I’ve Googled. I’ve Bing’d. And yet I can’t find anywhere relating to this ability of the NRL to set its own valuation for a player. If this is the case then I urge you to update the NRL’s salary cap explainer which can be found on your website.

What is confusing to Parramatta supporters is how other clubs have been allowed to sign players on salaries at well-under market value; Mark Gasnier and Darren Lockyer come to mind? Again, we don’t want a precedent. We just wanted to be treated the same as other clubs have in the past in similar situations.

If there is a salary cap clause which allows the NRL to be judge and jury over what a player’s value is, I can only assume that there is some kind of table or guidelines as to how a player is valued. If so, I’m sure all Rugby League fans would appreciate that you make that public and transparent and it also be included on your website.

In that table, is there a row for former League players who have been unsuccessfully playing AFL for the past two years? And do the guidelines take into account that a player returning to the sport, is unlikely to have the same physique or strenth that they left the sport in and surely that would greatly affect their valuation. Or that they have missed a significant portion of the off-season, further exacerbating these issues.

The fact is signing Israel Folau for next season is a significant risk for our club. How much of a risk is open for debate. We Parramatta fans have already discussed it at length and we all have different opinions. And that is why it would seem unreasonable to the supporters of our game, that any person be allowed to arbitrarily set a value on any player. In Australia's democratic, capitalist society value is always a matter for the market to decide.

Last year, I was approached by a lady wanting to return to the workforce. I told her that I only had a graduate position and she was overqualified and I wasn’t in a position to pay her what she was worth. She told me that she understood after not having worked for a period of time she was going to have to make initial sacrifices to get back into her chosen field and she was happy to take a graduate salary. She is now a senior manager in my business.

That happens every day, everywhere. People make choices to accept positions that represent short-term sacrifice because they can see the longer-term value. Isn’t that what Israel Folau is asking of the NRL? The chance to return to the game he loves, at a short-term sacrifice because he can envision the longer-term return. How can not allowing such a thing be anything other than a restraint of trade?

In the NRL’s strategic plan where it lays out its values and under the heading of 'Courage' there is a bullet-point prescribing the NRL to “put the game ahead of individual needs”. I live in North-Western Sydney - it is area where both soccer and AFL are growing apace. My eldest son, despite my protestation plays soccer, after tossing up between the round ball game and AFL. I got in early with my middle son, and last year he started playing League at five. But he is the only one in his circle of friends that does so. Our game is not just under threat in its heartland, it is losing the battle.

My Rugby League-playing five-year old said to me this week: “Dad, why won’t they let Izzy play with us, if that’s what he wants”.

All I could say to him was “I don’t know son. I honestly don’t know”.

There is another item in the Strategic Plan’s values page under teamwork that calls for “honesty and trust”. When a supporter sees that other clubs have been treated differently and when there is almost zero transparency as to how puzzling decisions are being made, it makes it impossible to build trust. And without trust, there is no belief. And without belief there is no passion. And without passion, well it’s just not Rugby League.

Yours sincerely,
Phil Sim