Opinion
With all the feel-goodery about Jarome Luai’s signing with the PNG Chiefs, one small matter has gone largely unacknowledged.
The special federal government tax-free status for Chiefs players, which expands their salary cap by an effective 45 per cent above the rest of the NRL, isn’t just pretend money.
Tax-free status means they are subsidised by you, me, and all Australians, on top of the $600 million we are already donating to set up the club.
It’s also subsidised by Bears fans. And by followers of the AFL who think rugby and rugby league are the same.
And by Australians who hate sport and are getting kicked off the NDIS. And, well, every taxpayer.
Nobody can argue that overseas assistance to our allies doesn’t have a strategic benefit, and the drip-chain of Australian aid to PNG down to millionaire rugby league players’ pockets is a price of doing business.
But overseas aid doesn’t generally interfere with a sports competition in which everyone is passionately trying to beat everyone else.
The NRL talks a good game about putting the fans first, but really, it’s asking fans to make a sacrifice for the greater dividends of helping expansion.
If the Chiefs are spanking your team, it might be well for the league to remember that you are the ones who have made the payment that enables them to do so. A little thank-you note might be in order.
National Roosters League on our screens
The best sight of the weekend was Cody Ramsey, who had lost more than 1300 days of his career to ulcerative colitis, running on for the Roosters.
A big cheer for Ramsey for his persistence and to the club for their show of faith.
Next step for Ramsey should be a spot on a Fox League panel, where he can join fellow Roosters such as Cooper Cronk, Jared Waerea-Hargreaves, Victor Radley, Luke Keary, Braith Anasta, and I’m sure I’m missing a few more.
None of these deals, where a club has friends in TV and players know that joining that club might give them a leg-up in post-career life, contravene NRL salary-cap rules. It’s just a nice head start.
NSW’s Origin disease is back again in ’26
Like the joke about helping someone with directions – “Well, I wouldn’t start from here” – Laurie Daley is starting from the wrong place when trying to pick an Origin fullback.
He made his mistake last year, when James Tedesco was by some distance not just the best fullback in the game but the best player. Instead of recalling Tedesco, Daley chose an out-of-sorts Dylan Edwards, no doubt because the Blues had “moved on” from Tedesco in Michael Maguire’s successful 2024 campaign.
Three games later, the Blues had lost Origin.
Again this year, Tedesco is in outstanding form in a team on a winning streak, but, as if to make Daley’s eyes spin in confusion, Edwards is in superior form to last year.
If it was me, I’d pick the better player (Tedesco, in my opinion). But this is the NSW disease for the whole history of Origin: literally spoilt for choice, faced with two shovels, a coach gets confused when he has to take a pick.
One thing is for sure. If the Blues lose the first match of the series, the selected fullback will be the No.1 scapegoat (another NSW tradition.)
It’s weird, but there is weirder
“Rugby league’s weird at the moment.” You said it, Kalyn Ponga.
After injuring himself back in March, when NRL 2026 was still relatively normal, Ponga came back on Sunday for a 14-try, 80-point farrago that looked more like the NBA than the NRL.
The night before, the Roosters and Broncos had put on 62 points. Two hours after Ponga’s observation, the Sharks and Tigers had given fans another 62.
Weird, but not as weird as what rugby’s Shute Shield has become. On Saturday, Gordon beat the Hunter Wildfires 66-54 after leading 47-28 at half-time.
If the Shute Shield is the NRL’s future, maybe someone should stop and think.
It’s not just children; NRL players also need screen time limits
Congratulations to Phil Gould and others for calling for bans on “fans” who shower NRL participants with disgusting online abuse.
I was thinking about this when watching players sitting in changing rooms scrolling on their mobiles just before their games. It didn’t look particularly professional.
Here’s an idea. Players have copped disgusting offline abuse from fans at grounds since 1908, and deal with it by ignoring it.
How about clubs coach players to stay off social media and give their abusers the silence they deserve?
If you’re thinking of player welfare, if we can do this for under-16-year-olds, can’t we get rugby league players to get off their bloody phones? Especially half an hour before a match?
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Malcolm Knox is a journalist, author and columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald.
