NRL 360 host Paul Kent has blasted Rugby Australia chairman Hamish McLennan over feedback after the 15-man sport signed Joseph Suaalii.
It was revealed final weekend that the 19-year-old prodigy had signed a $4.8m three-year cope with Rugby Australia for after the 2024 NRL season with a view of taking part in the British and Irish Lions in 2025 and Rugby World Cup in 2027.
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But on Monday evening, Bulldogs supremo and Channel 9 commentator Phil Gould mentioned Suaalii ought to go now.
“Every time he scores a try. Every time he does something in our game, people are going to refer to the fact that he’s going to rugby,” Gould mentioned on 100% Footy.
“Why do we need that? Go now. Don’t let the door hit you on the arse on the way out. Go. Go now. Gone. He’s made his decision. You sign a contract for rugby 18 months before his league contract ends.
It also came after Suaalii’s Roosters teammate and well-known larrikin Brandon Smith quipped: “Go over and get that easy money then come back to the real sport.”
Similarly Australian Rugby League Commission chairman Peter V’landys mentioned: “It’s hard to blame Joseph for going to rugby and considering it as his future when he is going to be paid twice the money for doing half the work.”
But McLennan hit again, blasting the NRL’s feedback as “thuggish”.
“Here is a young man who is bettering himself, who has freakish talent and came from rugby originally and the leaders of that code are turning on him and Isaac Moses [Suaalii’s agent]. It is quite thuggish behaviour in my opinion,” McLennan instructed Nine newspapers.
McLennan additional stirred the pot, saying one other excessive profile NRL participant had reached out.
“The genie is out of the bottle,” McLennan mentioned. “He wants the international exposure, the big stadiums and the international events.
“At rugby we are more pro-player. Longer careers, greater life experience, more focused on player welfare and more fun.”
If McLennan was trying to proceed to the code warfare, he received simply what he needed on Wednesday evening as Kent took purpose on the rugby boss.
“He’s the chairman, I’ve never heard of him before last week but I’ll tell you what, he’s got a bit of an issue this bloke,” Kent mentioned.
“He’s driven by ego and he continues to talk about rugby league like … all this bulls**t the rugby people carry on about, ‘good on you playing an Eastern seaboard game — we travel the world’. Well good luck to you.
“The fact is, this is where we live. If you lived overseas, go and play rugby union, it’s the biggest code over there.
“But this whole Suaalii is leveraging rugby league’s popularity, so don’t try to s**tpot rugby league and call it a small game. The fact is the athletes are better. As Trent Robinson said today, of any rugby code, league or union, anywhere in the world, this is the premier competition — that’s the fact. That’s why they come here and that’s why they admire the way these guys play football.
“And he tries to get a little publicity off rugby league, I just think the sooner he can shut up the better for everybody.
“He called rugby league people thugs today because they weren’t happy with the way this deal was done. He was the one who did the little clandestine deal and didn’t want rugby league people to know what was going on. Come on, grow up and be a man about it.”
While rugby union has taken a success in recent times in Australia with the Wallabies at present ranked seventh on the earth, having not received a Bledisloe Cup since 2002, World Cup since 1999 and handled dramas such because the Israel Folau scandal, it’s nonetheless a preferred worldwide sport.
The Australian authorities’s Smart Traveller web site has the Rugby World Cup because the third greatest sporting occasion on the earth, behind solely the FIFA World Cup and Olympic Games.
Source: www.news.com.au
