TIME TO TAKE CARE OF THE HEARTLAND
“Queensland is pumping and becoming an AFL state.”
When outgoing AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan made that substantial claim in July last year, it basically amounted to a declaration of war.
A reserved, astute and calmly spoken commentator, McLachlan has often been the yin to the yang of his outspoken NRL counterpart, Peter V’Landys.
So, for him to declare in that same interview that the AFL had “more participants this year in Queensland than the NRL” and that the southern code would be “the biggest sport in that market in Queensland in five to 10 years across most metrics” is the sporting equivalent of storming the beaches.
Make no mistake, the AFL has climbed over the parapets and is running towards the trenches of traditional NRL heartland in the maroon state.
Which makes it all the more confusing to hear that in the heartland there are feelings of being unloved and unwanted by its governing body, to the point where the Queensland Rugby League and the New South Wales Rugby League have remarkably joined forces in launching legal action against the Australian Rugby League Commission, claiming they are being ignored in ongoing funding negotiations.
At a time when the NRL is
focusing its attention on growing the game in prime new international markets and launching its season in Las Vegas, it is a jarring look to see the state bodies crying poor.
In Queensland, in particular, there is a growing sentiment among many local clubs that they are being hung out to dry by the game’s governing body after three pleas for funding were denied across the state in the space of just four months.
The idiom suggests that what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, but what is happening in the heartlands of Queensland Rugby League could have ramifications for generations to come.
In the off-season, while the eyes of the NRL bosses have been dazzled by the glitter and gold of the casinos and gaming machines in Nevada, three impassioned pleas for support across Queensland have fallen on deaf ears.
In November, leaked emails revealed the Australian Rugby League Commission knocked back a funding request for the Western Clydesdales in the Queensland Cup competition.