RLFANS.COM -

Re: Blake Austin On “Long Term Deal”? : Sat Jul 07, 2018 9:41 am

Does anyone else get the feeling that these days, English clubs like us are just used as a "back up plan" by Aussie players' agents, to leverage negotiation power when they are shopping around for NRL clubs, when the players don't particularly want to come and in the back of their minds know that if as a last resort they have to go to England, it's easy enough to get out of the contract and go home if an NRL option appears the next year?

Back in the winter rugby days, when the Aussie and English seasons were at different times, you got top players like Meninga and Blake coming over in their off seasons.

Then in the early days of SL, it became more something that Aussie players would do at the end of their career, to extend their career by a couple of years when they wouldn't be able to get a gig in the NRL any more.

Then for a while in the mid 2000s, when the pound had a very strong exchange rate against the Aussie dollar, SL clubs had financial power relative to the NRL and so for a while England became a credible destination for top Aussie players mid way through their careers, with the likes of Lyon, De Vere, King, Monaghan, Barrett coming over.

But now the value of the pound has dropped, the NRL salary cap is much bigger, we're just a back up option.

The quality of NRL signing has fallen in the past few years but also so has the quality of attitude. Who knows what Blake Austin would be like, he might be great, but when you read these articles in the Aussie press it doesn't exactly fill you with confidence that they are coming for the "glamour" of Warrington, but just one iron in the fire of an agent shopping their client around and if all else fails they can park them over here for a year.