Super League expansion blows up NRL investment: but opens door to breakaway

In the Netherlands, there is a central concept that underlines political culture: polderen.

A polder is an area of land, reclaimed from the sea and enclosed by dykes, protected from rising tides only by the combined efforts of those living on it.

Since the Middle Ages, people knew that only by working together can they stop the water from engulfing their shared home, so much so that wars were stopped so that factions could attend to the dykes.

Thus, the idea of taking collective responsibility, acting towards pragmatic compromise and accommodating opposing world views is one that the Dutch have taken to heart.

It is everywhere in society in the Netherlands – their politics is based on coalitions and slow deliberations, their industrial relations on unions and bosses working together, their foreign policy on the idea that they are small but united in a big, bad world.

Rugby league in the Netherlands is growing well, so perhaps they could convene a meeting to teach the British a little about polderen, because they seem blissfully unaware that the water is lapping around their ankles.

The decision taken to expand Super League from 12 to 14 teams, cutting their diminishing cake an extra two ways, seems one designed to kill any chance of a shared future with their cousins in Australia.

It cements the current British regime under Nigel Wood, which in turn means nothing will happen with the NRL, who, putting it politely, do not treat him as a serious person.

For a pragmatic compromise to take place, it requires parties to realise where they are relative to each other and where the water is coming from.

In the case of the NRL, it is being pushed out of the bath, Archimedes style, as their market saturates. Their cup runneth over.

For Super League, it is like the last giraffe watching Noah depart in the ark. They need friends, quickly.

Rumours of an NRL takeover of Super League have percolated for a long time, informed by an obvious desire to add surety to the sport internationally and a pragmatic need to find someone else to play against.

Australia knows that it has expanded just about as much as it can within the confines of what is, globally speaking, a small marketplace.

Their competition within that market is the AFL, which has a great Australian product but no prospects of an international game, and rugby union, which has a huge international game but a very poor domestic one.

With the Perth Bears secured, Adelaide too difficult and Melbourne happy with one club, they cannot do much more with what they have.

Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and Europe are the places their money can go to make a difference. PNG is underway and NZ is too small to move the needle seriously.

They need a strong England, and the NRL knows it.

They have watched Australia’s most successful national side, the Women’s Cricket team, plateau because they haven’t got anyone else to play against.

The Women have won 90% of fixtures against India and England, the only other teams that matter, and recently won the Ashes with a 16-0 combined score.

The Men are much the same. They’ve won 69% of home Tests in the last decade, and if you took India out of that, it’d be 79%. It’s not good for business.

This is the obvious comparison for the Kangaroos.

They have to have someone to play against, and while they can to some extent find that from New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, there’s no doubt that England is the most important other country, the only side with another domestic competition, a different source of talent and (most importantly) a potential for economic growth.

It’s why the NRL are so annoyed at the RFL being run like a bowling club.

Blake Solly, the CEO of Souths and the man most people think will take over when Peter V’Landys finally calls it a day, used to work at the RFL and knows Wood inside out.

Shane Richardson, who runs the Wests Tigers, was previously in charge at Hull FC and has worked extensively in the British game. He knows Wood very well too.

Institutionally, the NRL remember Wood’s tenure at International Rugby League, which they see as a disaster.

And yet, through all this, they still want in. They’ll indulge a lot of the nonsense that goes on, because they can see what is at stake.

As much as the Super League needs help, the NRL needs the Super League to be a serious proposition beyond NSW and Queensland. There are grounds for a polder.

Australia might get lucky with this latest outburst of self-harm, because the expansion of Super League solves one problem by creating a bigger one, which might ultimately play to the NRL’s advantage.

The larger comp will bring an end to loop fixtures, rightly hated by fans, but exacerbates the biggest problem with the Super League, which is that it is a fundamentally unequal competition and that it doesn’t have enough money to become more equal.

Where the NRL is tighter than it has been in years because of salary cap redistribution, Super League cannot find sufficient teams to pay the whole salary cap.

The talent pool is small and unevenly distributed, which diminishes the product.

On a micro level, individual games are less interesting – who wants to watch any Salford fixture at the moment? – and on a macro level, it makes whole seasons less interesting, because only four teams have ever won the competition.

Remember, rugby league is an extremely weak link sport, meaning you’re only as good as your worst player.

On a roster level, all the data backs this up. The most important players aren’t your best two or three, they’re guys 18-30 on the list, who you can bring in midway through to cover for inevitable injuries and suspensions that come in a tough sport like rugby league.

Wigan, Saints and Leeds produce their own and can fill these in easily. Catalans, Warrington and the Hull clubs are increasingly leaning this way too.

Those filling squads externally rather than internally are doomed to short-term fixes, whereas those who produce can recruit at the top and backfill the bottom. Across decades of competition, this remains the single biggest reason the same guys win.

Eliminating loop fixtures by adding teams splits the talent and the money two more ways.

The cumulative effect of this will be a greater financial push factor to the NRL, which now has 60 more roster slots to fill, and a consolidation of inequity, as those with established production lines will continue backfill talent while those without can’t.

Wigan might not have a player as good as Junior Nsemba if he moves to the NRL, but they’ll have one almost as good, just as they did when Kai Pearce-Paul left and Nsemba came in. If Lachlan Lam joins the new PNG franchise, what do Leigh do?

This talent drain might help the England team – more players in the NRL is always better in that regard – but it won’t help the Super League, which will become an even worse proving ground for Test talent.

The best way to become elite is to play elite people more often. A 10-team Super League, streamlined to enhance competition, might have moved closer to that. A 14-team Super League moves it further away.

This won’t have factored into Super League’s thinking, by the way. As the NRL knows, they’re always looking to the next source of income, which will continue until there isn’t one. Any pretense of building long-term, sustainable growth is for the birds.

The NRL are aware of this because they, despite much kicking and screaming, have learned that the poldermodel works.

They were just as disunited, perhaps more so, once upon a time. They bumbled along, fighting between each other in Sydney suburbs, for decades. It took an almighty external shock – a global pandemic – to bring them to the collective table.

V’Landys likes to sell himself as the one who finally knocked the heads together and got everyone pulling in the same direction, but really, outside circumstances did that for him and he provided good enough leadership for them to unite around.

Now, they can look at Las Vegas and agree that some clubs go this year, others next. They see Magic Round as something that we give up a home game for today, you do it next time. They can invest collectively because the pie has grown for everyone.

If they chose to put that investment in Europe, the most likely way that will happen now will be as a breakaway.

NRL clubs are self-operating, but under licences from the central body – and you can expect Wigan, Warrington and the other big clubs that want to move beyond Wood and his backers to ask for a similar model.

They bring history, authenticity and the supporters, the NRL brings competence, investment and security. Watch the others, currently bald and voting for more combs, ask to be part of it.

Moves like this advance the cause of radically moving away from the established order. The best way to avoid that happening would be to pragmatically sit down with the NRL, work out their mutual interests and move forward from there.

Nigel Wood cannot do this. Actions such as those taken this week make it less likely. The water continues to rise.