Does the NRL need a draft?
Over the past year support has been growing for an NRL Rookie Draft.
Shane Richardson has been quoted as saying he thinks “it is the only way forward”. I found myself feeling staunchly against the idea and wanted to explore the concept a little further.
Benefits
The key claimed benefits that I can see for a rookie draft are;
- Centralised funding of juniors
- Evening of the playing field in access to junior talent
- Evening out the competition
- Increased media exposure and publicity of rugby league
Centralised funding of juniors
Rugby League currently has a structure where NRL clubs run their own youth development. Clubs scout, recruit and train their own junior teams from Under-16s and up with the primary intent of developing talent for their NYC and NRL rosters down the line.
Obviously an NRL Rookie Draft would cause chaos to this system. Clubs aren’t in the business of developing players that will simply up and leave the minute they hit a certain age. As a result, the only way the draft idea could go ahead would be if the NRL took over funding junior development. Is this a good idea though?
NRL clubs presently have a vested interest in developing their talent. This means there is a potential payoff or reward in spending more. If the NRL takes over with a centralised funding model, what is their incentive to spend heavily on development? I understand that developing juniors is expensive and many NRL clubs may not feel the incentives are there under the current salary-cap model. But why change the entire system rather than a few tweaks to the long-serving player allowance and second tier cap?
Some may argue that as the NRL has a vested interest in putting on a quality product, it would have incentive to spend on player development under the centralised model. Whilst it is true that better players can aid creating a better product, I find it hard to believe the slight increases in performance that may be gained be investing extra funds in youth development would yield dividends for the NRL. Where an NRL club may be willing to spend extra for a competitive advantage over rivals, the incentive just isn’t there for the NRL to keep increasing a centralised spending pool.
The major US Sports all have a draft model, but that is done under a completely different economic environment. In the US the collegiate and even high school systems are extremely well funded and have their own vested interests in developing talent. Michigan Stadium at the University of Michigan is the second largest stadium in the world and has a capacity well exceeding 100,000. There is no need for the NFL to stump up funding for junior development, and like the current club funded model in the NRL, colleges act as the vested interests that will spend top dollar on player development.
Evening of the playing field in access to junior talent
An argument could be made that with a Rookie Draft the access to junior talent would be more evenly spread. As it stands Parramatta and Penrith have access to the largest junior rugby league nurseries and best access to sign young developing talent. Teams such as the Roosters may be heavily supported but struggle with geography and demographics of the area not affording them the same luxury.
If talent is centrally developed, and then farmed out to clubs via a draft, all clubs would have equal access. I do not disagree with this point but I do feel it is being oversold. Being a Manly fan myself my examples may be limited but Brett & Glenn Stewart were juniors from the Illawarra area and came to join the Sea Eagles after they were scouted and offered deals. Daly Cherry-Evans hails from Queensland, but was signed on to play with Manly in the NYC before developing into the star that he is today. Just because there isn’t the strong junior base in your area doesn’t mean a club can’t be competitive in securing and developing young talent.
The next issue this raises, is what if a player does not want to go to the club that drafts him? Is the player stuck for a fixed term? How long before he can leave? What if a player has a family reason for wanting to remain in Sydney, but is drafted by the NZ Warriors? What about all the poor kiwi kids expected to move country at a young age to work for a relative pittance an NRL club somewhere in Australia? All of these questions become a lot more problematic when the NRL can’t pay the wages of an American sports team where players can afford to ship their families with them, or doesn’t have a trading system like the AFL where players can be sent home in return for other picks or players.
If the system isn’t broken, what are we trying to fix?
Evening out the competition
The notion that a draft would help even out talent across the NRL is simply ludicrous. More even like the AFL, where the bottom team over the last four years has averaged 2.5 wins per season? More even like the NBA, where the bottom team went 16-66 in a race to tank to the bottom? The Minnesota Timberwolves have been in the lottery (had high picks) for 11 straight years. A whole lot of good high picks have done them.
The NRL is currently the most competitive and even sporting competition I am aware of in the world. A Rookie Draft would have little to no impact to this.
Leaving aside the major issue of teams intentionally losing matches to improve their draft position, others willing to put in much more research than myself have shown that high draft picks have a poor correlation with future success. Out of the last 25 NBA drafts, only one player drafted first overall has gone on to win a championship with the team that selected him (Tim Duncan).
The unrestricted free agency model of the NRL is a strength, not a weakness. Players including outright stars frequently change clubs. As a result the fortunes of teams are always rising or falling and it is rare for a club to be out of the finals for more than a couple of years in a row.
If a Draft model were to go ahead in Rugby League, at what age do we list players for draft? With the impending death of the NYC, do all players become draft eligible at 17? 18? If the intention of the draft is to even the competition, there are very few players who are going to be ready for first grade a that age let alone capable of changing the fortunes of a struggling team. Front-rowers typically don’t mature until their mid-20s. What club is going to draft a player who won’t play first grade for half a decade? And if the argument is ‘clubs with foresight will’ then the very notion of a draft to help teams at the bottom of the ladder improve is bullshit. I might sound as credible as an old man yelling ‘get off my lawn’ at this point, but if something isn’t broken, what are we trying to fix?
Increased media exposure and publicity of rugby league
And now I think we get to the real reason an NRL Draft may happen. Despite all evidence that it does little in the short to medium term to help struggling teams improve, I won’t be surprised to see an NRL Draft come into play in the next decade. Because a Draft costs money.
An NRL Draft is something that will generate enormous media and fan interest in the game. The wall to wall media coverage that could be expected in the lead up is a massive advertising free kick without the need to spend a cent. The idea is that fans will be buzzing discussing the top picks in the coming draft and it will keep rugby league as the key topic around the water-cooler into the off season (assuming that is when the draft is held). There is one problem with this idea though: fans won’t know the players.
The major reason that the drafts for US sports is such huge entertainment is that fans already know the players. The NBA has a rule that players must be one year removed from high-school before being eligible to enter the draft. This essentially means players spend a year in college basketball, in itself a multi-billion dollar industry, televised for fans around the globe. Players like the recently drafted Anthony Davis are household names before they even become eligible for the NBA. There are websites such as draftexpress.com devoted to scouting and statistical and video breakdowns of propects. As a result fans have a reason to be excited when their team has a high pick. It essentially means the right to a player they already know and love.
In the NRL given the coming death of the NYC (itself only televised one game a week) fans will be relying on scouting reports from media outlets like the Telegraph for a summary of a potential draftees strengths and weaknesses. Excuse me if that doesn’t give me cause for enthusiasm.
Problems with the NRL Draft
An NRL Draft has many flaws though, which I will list again below for simplicity. It fits along the lines of other recent NRL ‘improvements’, including the ‘no-punch’ rule (which has seen an increase in niggling and grub tactics as players like Luke Brooks don’t fear repercussion) and a poor interpretation of the shoulder charge (which regularly sees players merely bracing themselves against bigger men like Konrad Hurrell penalised).
- Incentivising clubs to tank (and associated costs)
- Forcing players to move away from family at a young age (for poor wages)
- Little incentive to increase development spend
- NRL players are rarely ready to contribute when younger than 20
- Less than anticipated fan interest in the draft (stemming from not knowing the players)
- No tangible increase in the closeness of the competition
Ryan
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The system is broken. I agree that a rookie draft by itself is not the answer, but I believe it should be part of a larger overhaul of the entire player contracting & movement system that the NRL currently uses.
1) The NRL is a cartel of 16 clubs and 2 state organisations. It is in the collective interest of the entire league for an appropriate level of funding for grass roots development. But it’s not just about the funding, it’s also about junior development being centrally managed, which will result in millions in savings from overlapping administration from the various clubs, particularly in Sydney.
2) Yes, currently clubs have more or less equal access to young talent, but the cost of recruiting, and worse still retaining promising but unproven young talent to a club with more cap space is exploding. I am a Parramatta fan, and we’ve just been dealt with the blow that we are losing Junior Paulo to the Raiders for a motzah that we couldn’t responsibly match. He’s played less than 50 NRL games, but the Raiders happen to have more cap space than we do ATM, so we lose him, despite the millions we spend on junior development that uncovered him. A rookie draft with a rookie salary scale, similar to the NBA & NFL and Restricted Free Agency would ensure this sort of thing wouldn’t happen.
3) Nowhere has anybody said that a draft would even out the competition, certainly not within a single season. Obviously every team has a cyclic pattern of success, most fans understand this. And no, a draft doesn’t guarantee that every team will be successful, quality management decisions still play a significant part in a club’s success, as does pure, dumb luck, but what it does do is it distributes the best young talent based on need, not on salary cap space.
4) Again, no one is suggesting that drafting a 19 year old is going to change a club’s fortunes overnight. To suggest that club’s wouldn’t be interested in drafting a young player for that is stupid. If that were the case, club’s would never sign any young player. But if a club has, say for argument’s sake 3 draft picks every year, over a 3 year period they would draft potentially 1 future superstar, 2 rep players, 2 very good players & 3 tradesman. That is the basis for a quality team in 3-5 years time, which is how teams look to build their rosters now. The only difference is that struggling teams wouldn’t have to pay overs to secure unproven talent.
The system is broken, and is in dire need of an overhaul.