By STEVE MASCORD
AS this month dawned, a couple of unrelated events really reinforced to me how behind-the-times our thinking as a sport can be.
While watching the Parramatta-Warriors NRL game on TV, a Facebook update told me that my Sydney Morning Herald colleague Andrew Webster was off to the NBA finals in the US as a guest of ESPN.
Then, a few minutes later, Eels five-eighth Clint Gutherson scored the winning try at a sparsely populated ANZ Stadium and began high-kicking in the in-goal for no apparent reason.
Gutherson had seen someone on television do it that morning – in an NBA game.
I’m not going to rant again about the infiltration of American sports into our heartlands. Well, I am kind of … but with a point.
Cultural imperialism doesn’t happen on its own. American sports don’t just sit back and watch as they take over the world by osmosis.
They get out there and make it happen. They fly in foreign journalists (and I stress Andrew went with ESPN, and would not be swayed in his writing regardless of who paid), they give them one-on-one access to their stars, they open foreign offices.
What do we do? We fight over our TV rights money to such an extent there are threats that players will boycott our World Cup.
No doubt, when our kids or their kids grow up following American sports and rugby league is reduce to being a local yokel game followed only by old people and the poorest of the poor, we’ll blame uncle Sam.
We’ll say Major League Baseball is a cultural leviathan like Coca-Cola and we never stood a chance. But that will be rewriting history; because we did stand a chance.
We stand a chance now, as the amazing positive publicity the Toronto Wolfpack have been attracting in their home market so amply demonstrates.
Instead of bickering over how many seats each Sydney paper gets at our big events, why aren’t we flying in the Andrew Websters of New York and Los Angeles?
You can think of globalisation as a monster, or you can think of it merely as a shrinking of distances, a rationalisation and streamlining of the market and markets.
But however you view it, you’re either on board or you’re not. And we’re not. If globalisation is the Paris Accord, rugby league is Donald Trump.
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YOUR correspondent has written elsewhere about the futility of a rumoured strike by NRL players during the World Cup.
As most Bondi Beat readers would be all too aware, the World Cup is not run by the NRL and a player boycott would only hurt all the small countries who rely on the RLIF for grants.
Or would it?
A reader pointed out that when former NRL CEO David Smith secured the 2017 World Cup, he had to guarantee a minimum profit to beat out a bid from South Africa.
If the World Cup tanks because the top players are missing, it actually might hit the NRL in the hip pocket after all.
But don’t the players want the NRL’s money in their pockets?
LAST month we reported on the first home game for the Toronto Wolfpack and it’s pleasing to see that they crowds have stayed at a good level and so has the local publicity.
If you’re in London of a weekend and fancy catching one of their games, you can head to the Maple Leaf Bar in Covent Garden where there is an agreement to show them on some, if not all, of the big screens.(continued below)
In early June that’s where Mr and Mrs Bondi Beat watched the spirited game against Coventry in the company of South Pacific rugby league expert Joanna Lester, Try Tag Rugby boss Phill Browne and Rebecca Argyle – the sister of Wolfpack owner David Argyle.
Sure, we had to tell them to switch the channel after the Champions League soccer final – and someone complained that they wanted to watch the presentation.
But in the end, a grand night was had by all … until news filtered through of a terrorist attack across town at London Bridge.
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IT was a nice touch from Jackson Hastings, the Manly utility, after the London attacks.
Television captured Hastings with the words “London” and “Nan” written on his wrist strapping during the match against Canberra.
He explained that his late grandmother was English and he also wanted to display solidarity with his friends who play in Super League.
“I just wanted to let anyone who may have seen it know that I was thinking of them,” he told the Daily Telegraph.
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THE good thing about this column no longer appearing in Rugby League World is that I can get away with gratuitous self-promotion.
And there’s a fair bit to get through.
Last month in this column we gave you the first chance to buy my first book Touchstones. Copies are due back from the printer in Australia on June 8, just a few days from now.
The publisher in Oz, Stoke Hill, will then be posting copies out to those who supported the project on Kickstarter and those have pre-ordered. The banner at the top of this page, and also the box here, allow you to pre-order for $35 including postage to any Australian address.
If you live in the UK, I’ll ask you to hang tight for a little while longer while we finalise our UK publishing deal. When that’s done, things should be turned around pretty quickly.
If you wish to order the book from the US, there is a link here
The second thing that has been taking up a lot of my time is very exciting. If you’re a fan of international rugby league you will probably be frustrated at how hard it is to get hole of national team jerseys and other merch.
In conjunction with my good friend Phill Browne, I will be soon launching an online shop specialising in international rugby league gear.
Phill and I have been talking about this for two years and have finally got off our butts to do something, meeting with business advisers and talking to national governing bodies about doing deals with their official manufacturers and making sure they get something out of it two.
When you buy a jersey from us, you will be helping rugby league in an developing region.
Initially, we will be releasing one jersey a month. Which country would you like us to feature first? Put your answer in the comments section below.
