No Room For Compromise - Just A Fight To The Very End
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday August 11, 1995
HONEST rugby league must be laughing its clogs off. Exactly a century since the league schism over the six- shilling "broken time" payments, its sanctimonious southern cousins are ending the 100 years' war in the manic manner.
Union's frenzy for paper money is suddenly operatic, like a ticker-tape carnival.
Who could ever have burst from the closet with such abandon, scattering an ethical birthright to the winds and slavering with such greed, as these shameless shamateurs of rugby union?
All it seems to have taken is a sexy glimpse of a balance-sheet and a nod and a wink from a couple of ruthless Australian TV magnates. The players seem keen to jump into bed, any bed, but of course they want to see the colour of the money in the gentleman's back pocket before he takes off his trousers.
Young men who only a month ago were sterling heroes of the playing field are suddenly seen as narrow-eyed yuppies on the make.
More squabbles were heard behind closed doors in New Zealand this week as players and All Black administrators in turn played hard to get. Francois Pienaar, who accepted the World Cup for his President and 43 million compatriots only seven weeks ago, is now cast as a traitor to his nation's favourite game.
Sean Fitzpatrick, captain of the riveting All Blacks, came cold-eyed out of the scrum this week to say: "If money were the major issue I would have jumped at the $125,000 offer from the New Zealand Rugby Football Union - but there are other issues we have to look at." Sure, Sean, like doubling it for starters.
Alas, England captain Will Carling has been smitten this week with another problem, the urgent need to persuade his wife of less than a year that he is not taking each match as it comes. He has been too busy posturing for the news photographers, Liz Hurley-style, to concern himself with money. He has left the serious stuff to his pit-bull, Brian Moore. Fast out of retirement once the greenbacks began to fly, solicitor-hooker Moore declared on Sunday: "As far as we are concerned, the highest bid for our services is not necessarily the most acceptable. It is not just, 'How much, guv?' " And I suppose you've got to believe him.
I remember when Tony Greig, England's erstwhile cricket captain, had to hand in his seals of office when it was discovered he had taken the Kerry Packer shilling.
"This is far more to do with the future of the game than a question of whether the price is right," Greig said when challenged. "This scheme of Mr Packer's represents an ideal, a vision, a dream for cricket and cricketers."
Really? I asked. "Oh sure," beamed Tony, "but none of us is going ahead with it for peanuts." You bet.
BUT we have been here before; the looming legal wrangle in South Africa will stir memo ries for those of us who sat through the case of Packer v the establishment in the High Court in London all of 18 summers ago.
The case was expected to last a fortnight but it dragged on for almost seven weeks. It was a timeless Test all right, yet the winner was never in doubt once you had twigged the tenor of a couple of Mr Justice Slade's interjections. Poor old Lord's had to pay more than $500,000 in costs as well.
Judge Slade's two most telling observations in that 1977 courtroom were: "It is straining the concept of loyalty too far for the authorities to expect a player to enter into a self-denying ordinance not to play cricket for a private promoter during the winter months merely because the matches promoted could detract from the future profits of the authorities."
And again, said in sadness as he ended his judgment: "You administrators are dedicated lovers of the game who nevertheless find it hard fully to understand the feelings and aspirations of those who seek to make their livings out of it."
Quite so. And as Mr Packer told the judge at one point: "You British, yer Honour, reckon everything can be solved by compromise and diplomacy. But we Australians fight to the very last ditch."
© 1995 Sydney Morning Herald