Earlier this week, this was a very angry column.
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Anger at the NRL's the arrogance in its persistent desire to keep playing games, seemingly by virtue of a divine right to do so. Circumstances, and the realisation our great game may never be the same, has tempered it somewhat, but the general thesis was as follows.
Given the measures the government has seen fit to implement elsewhere, how could the game possibly suggest it was right to have 270-plus players a weekend travel around three states, sweating, breathing, spitting on each other - sharing a preventative fist bump - and then going home to their families?
Constant assertions that the health and safety of its players and their families was the "paramount concern" were as empty as the stadiums the players were playing in. It was demonstrably not the case. If it was, they wouldn't be playing. Simple.
In their bullish efforts to see the game continue, ARLC chairman Peter V'landys and NRL CEO Todd Greenberg continued to point to "medical advice" they were receiving.
It was apparently different to that received by just about every other major sporting league in the world. By Monday evening it had all changed at lightning speed, as it has all the way through this crisis.
The game's, thus far anonymous, pandemic and biosecurity expert relayed that nature of that new advice to Sydney Morning Herald chief sports writer Andrew Webster on Wednesday.
"On the balance of it, I'm certain by mid-April you would've been forced to cancel the competition anyway," she said.
"Was it worth preserving it for a couple more weeks, while putting players at a risk that's increasing every single day? They would've been at more risk than if they were at home, laying low and being with their families than travelling around and playing."
Ironically, it's the same view Cameron Smith expressed way back - as it now seems - in round one. As discussed on this page last week, it was a view he was hammered for, publicly and behind closed doors.
It's also a view that directly contradicted to the assertion of V'landys as late as Sunday evening that players were safer than the rest of the community. It certainly ran counter to Greenberg's statement on radio that the government actually wanted the game to keep going.
The most telling aspect of the advice was the inevitability that the competition would be suspended. Why not get a two-week jump on the game's present position?
There's no reason not to take V'landys and Greenberg at their word when they say that the medical advice only called for the suspension of games on Monday afternoon.
However, these matters are never played out simply, there is always a wider PR war raging. On that front, V'landys and Greenberg sought to paint the game as some sort of modern day Phar Lap - a beacon of light for the struggling masses to rally around in testing times.
the NRL then wore a major blow on Sunday when AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan offered the since oft-repeated words:
"Like every organisation in the country, we have to do everything that needs to be done to help slow the spread of this virus. As a national code, we have responsibilities to consider the well-being of the nation."
To that point the AFL had sought to press on in largely the same way, and with the same motivations, before finally admitting defeat.
It amped up the pressure on the NRL, but the killer blow came later that evening when Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced all cafes, pubs, clubs and gyms, among other businesses, would be forced to close down on Monday.
The PM himself has certainly shown how extensively decision-makers can twist and pivot on the vagaries of "medical advice," particularly on schools.
The NRL could have continued to pirouette along the same lines but, but once all the real battlers were forced to start shutting up shop, the narrative was no longer sustainable. It opened up a two-front war the game couldn't win.
The owner of my local café has been operating, and living, under a dark cloud for the best part of a month. So to the wonderful folk who pull beers at my local. The gym to, though admittedly I've spent much more time at the former than the latter.
All are walking into the darkest chapter of uncertainty they've experienced in their lives. How are they going to pay rent, mortgages, put food on the table? Will they ever recover when this is all said and done?
They're tough questions but the overwhelming sentiment, even from those most immediately affected, was that this is necessary in the face of a global pandemic, that the greater good of the collective outweighs the needs of the individual.
It made galling the view that rugby league had some higher order right to press on when small (and some larger) businesses everywhere were forced to stop without any choice in the matter.
Why should those real battlers be asked to wear the economic burden of "flattening the curve" while the NRL continued to pursue its own financial interests unfettered?
For a game that's supposed to have the working people as its beating heart, it was a hypocritical position it couldn't sustain - a code that signs billion-dollar TV deals, that squeezes tax-payer dollars out state governments to knock down and rebuild two stadiums without paying a cent crying poor.
As stated, Monday's announcement was inevitable. The debate to that point was over why the NRL was any different to anyone else. On Tuesday came the sobering reality that it's not.
In a game where fierce debate is the only constant, we need to remember that there are no winners. With clubs shutting up shop, many people who work in the game have stepped out into the same reality faced by the thousands lining the streets outside Centrelink.
It includes plenty of Kickoff's media brethren, many of whom love the game even more than those who play it.
For all that's written above, there is well-placed faith in V'landys to guide the game through this next chapter - and he'll have his work cut out.
Already we're seeing chinks in the "unity" preached by NRL HQ. A flagged approach of divvying out rescue funds equitably rather than equally have gone down like a lead balloon in clubland.
Plenty have players woken up to the reality that pay cuts are on the cards - how big though? You can expect the good faith between the RLPA and the NRL to be tested.
As we've seen, strange times have a way of turning otherwise rational folks into vultures brawling over toilet paper.
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