KEY POINTS:
Loyalty has been a word thrown around in rugby league circles for the past 100 years. But increasingly, due to ever larger pay packets, loyalty is being thrown out the window by both players and coaches.
We saw last week Sonny Bill Williams and Willie Mason going head
to head in the verbals ahead of a much-anticipated battle between the Roosters and the Bulldogs because SBW had come out saying he'd lost respect for Mason after Mason encouraged him to re-sign at the Dogs, then promptly left for the Roosters.
Loyalty and professional sport unfortunately do not go hand in hand. In what is a relatively short career, snaring the biggest pay packets is the order of the day.
We're starting to see that increasingly in rugby union where players who could be All Blacks are choosing to take their skills overseas, the best example being Luke McAllister, who signed for Sale when in his absolute prime.
Think America's Cup. Think IPL cricket league. Loyalty, as far as professional sport goes, belongs in yesterday's thinking.
Sportspeople have a short career and they have a duty to themselves and their families to maximise their earnings in that short space of time.
Over the years I've seen how the league system chews people up and spits them out the second they are past their use-by date. What they are left with is injuries that one day will turn arthritic and some warm memories, which do not help pay the heating bills later in life.
Just ask Adam Ritson, who at a young age played for Australia then suffered a career-ending injury - ask him whether or not a player should sign for the highest bidder.
Human nature is such that when given the choice between loyalty and the highest bidder, the highest bidder will win the majority of the time. The best example of that came during the Super League war of 1997 when players were enticed away from the establishment and then were brought back by even bigger pay packets.
If the Australian Rugby League had not started offering more than Super League there would have been no war, it would have been a simple takeover. So even though the majority of the players of the time were getting a good living from league, when the real money came to town everyone was prepared to jump ship.
The NRL clubs' treatment of coaches highlights the lack of loyalty. We're not even mid-season and Nathan Brown, Steve Folkes and Graham Murray are gone for 2009. The clubs are showing there is no loyalty without results.
So whenever I hear talk of loyalty in professional sport I regard it as a joke. Unless both sides are getting exactly what they want from the relationship (namely the players and coaches are maximising their earnings and clubs are winning) then it is quickly shown to be the joke it is.
Everyone is tied to watertight contracts, apparently, until one side or the other wants to throw these out the window.
The Warriors last weekend against Newcastle, while not exactly inspiring confidence, were definitely entertaining and after coming off a 52-6 hiding against Manly they desperately needed to get the two competition points any way they could.
This week, I'm tipping them to get over the Bulldogs who were simply awful against the Roosters last weekend.
