Wayne Bennett talks NRL and Salaries
NRL News Rugby League
Here at NRL News we usually put forward unique articles and NRL updates, however we saw such a good article by Wayne Bennett in the Australian News Paper - we just had to publish it. Please read on, as it puts todays NRL Rugby League Salaries into perspective.
In the NRL right now, kids love Sonny Bill Williams. He's all of 21 and he even has has his own website. He's a giant in stature and in real life. At 191cm, he's half a centimetre taller than Muhammad Ali and 2kg heavier than Ali's preferred fighting weight of 100kg.
Sonny Bill, an amazing footballer. Wonderful footwork, one of the biggest hitters - his tackles are jaw dropping, great skill levels, blinding speed and the uncanny ability to offload no matter how many defenders are hanging off him. At this point of his career he runs the ball as well as any player in the game.
BUT.
Sonny Bill Williams isn't a creator or team orchestrator like Andrew Johns or Darren Lockyer or Benji Marshall, or even the way Brad Fittler did for the Roosters. He's not the main man, the one guy that can turn a team into a winning machine.
I've coached players in previous decades similar to Sonny Bill, but I wouldn't have won a game if I had a team full of them - silly as it sounds.
At one end of the foodchain, players like Sonny Bill need to be complemented by key players, the creatives, and by the nitty-gritty, so-called unfashionable players at the other end.
I have nothing but praise for Sonny Bill, yet disdain and scorn for the picture painted, admittedly by others, that he was not happy to be re-signing with the Bulldogs for $500,000 a season.
This is wrong. It's wrong for the game and it's wrong for the fans. It's wrong for the unfashionable player who's running through brickwalls and making four tackles in a row yet lucky to be on a fifth of the cash.
It's wrong for the father of five who's on $40,000 a year and trying to get his clan to the footy to give them something to cheer about.
And it's wrong for the club. Canterbury is a wonderful club and has been for a long time.
The issue is not about whether or not he should be well paid; it's how we as a game go about it and when we go about it. It's about not leaving people, fans in particular, feeling cheated.
You only have to look at rugby union and Lote Tuqiri pushing his teammate in the back. That's not Lote. I know him better than most. This is what it was: Months of protracted talks about his future exploding in a very public moment of sheer frustration.
I can tell you from experience that a player cannot perform when he is under this kind of pressure.
He's juggling his club, his manager, his family and his emotions.
They are all telling him different things. He's going to do this one minute, and that the next, depending on which meeting he's just come from.
Players from other clubs, wonderful players, I've seen them play shockers for weeks in a row and I'm sitting there wondering why. Then I pick up the paper and read they're renegotiating. This is where the fan loses as well.
The player manager comes in saying he wants this and this and there's five other clubs who'll pay it if you don't. That's the starting point.
At the Broncos, we are no chance of signing Lote Tuqiri.
Salary cap aside, I believe if he genuinely wanted to play rugby league again, he'd want to play for us again.
When Lote went to rugby union, certain league administrators said there were plenty of Lote Tuqiris that we'd soon find another. That was six years ago. If you see another just like him, please let me know.
They don't make too many Lote Tuqiris, just as they don't make too many Sonny Bill Williams or Mark Gasniers or Matt Giteaus.
In Melbourne for a recent trial game, I remember seeing all my players at the airport reading the one newspaper over one another's shoulders. You rarely see them do that. The story was about Sonny Bill and his manager saying he was worth $1 million. A season.
You can offer him, say, $750,000, but the trick is how you keep the other 24 players around him and stay under the $4 million salary cap.
Without them, it's going to be the hardest $750,000 ever earned. No fun at all.
Life's experience has taught me if you're not happy - no matter what money they give you - it's not worth it.
Lots of people make bucketloads of money but are terribly unhappy with their lives and themselves.
What makes you happy is being in good organisations and being there for the right reasons.
The greater the money, the greater the expectation.
No one's a miracle man every weekend.
