Forget expansion. Niche is the best thing rugby league has going for it |
Grow or die. The logic of capitalism has, under the rule of Peter V’landys, become the logic of rugby league. It explains everything from the big picture initiatives – expansion into Perth and Port Moresby, the Las Vegas adventure, the ceaseless manufacture of hyperbole – to the small-town brawls like the Parramatta-Zac Lomax affair gone bad.
If rugby league doesn’t grow, it faces extinction. But what if that shibboleth of capitalism is just wrong? What if everything that sustains the National Rugby League’s success is local, tribal, even individual? What if its prosperity depends, ultimately, on satisfying a very particular niche? What if its very localism is what fires the imagination of followers and the young elite players who choose it above other sports? What if the endless-growth narrative is an empty ego trip? If we recognised........