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Out of curiosity I just looked up how much the NRL players make in Australia and I can't say I was shocked, but I was a little suprised. The top 10 players all make right around one million per season ($750k US) give or take $100k, with the average salary being in the $370k range ($290k US). By contrast the top 10 American football players in the NFL who all happen to be quarterbacks make from $45 million ($65 million AUD) to $30 million ($43 million AUD) per year, with the leauge average being $860K ($1.2 million AUD) and the league minimum for rookies $435k ($627k AUD).

I can understand why American football players are willing to risk life and limb to play a very violent and dangerous game for the opportunity to make millions, or possibly tens of millions over their careers. But it looks like the Aussies do it more for the love of the game.  You'd think the league would do more to help them if they were to get seriously injured or become disabled from playing their sport. Even though the players should certainly know what they're getting into when they sign up, it'd just be the right thing to do.

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Although our sports wont ever reach the money levels American sports do getting paid more than the leader of the country to run around in tight shorts and cuddle other men is a lot of motivation for some. Some players have used that motivation to break into the NFL where they get paid more as rookies than many of our top players do but the majority are in it for the sport. They started playing as a kid, they played through teenage years, they played into the seniors and they kept going.

No one goes out there to be injured and no one thinks they are going to have a career ending injury in their 20's. There is guys out there with three and four knee reconstructions still playing and thinking they'll finish out their career in their late 30's and be set for the rest of their life. Maybe they are stupid, maybe naive, maybe they know what they are risking but the pay off is still large enough, and well above the 'average' workers pay rate to be an incentive.

Besides if our players got paid the sort of stupid money American players get there would be even more cases of it being pissed up against a wall on high class hookers, low class hookers, blow and grog.

41 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

 You'd think the league would do more to help them if they were to get seriously injured or become disabled from playing their sport. Even though the players should certainly know what they're getting into when they sign up, it'd just be the right thing to do.

TBF both leagues do look after their players. They usually have full medical for life, all injuries are paid for by the clubs, and therefore the leagues. On going medical is usually paid for. They are transitioned into retirement. They are often offered jobs into retirement and their retirement package through the leagues alone is very healthy, not to mention how much they can improve it by being money wise.

Where the leagues fall down is things like future injuries that don't manifest until after the player has retired. There is research by both leagues and independent bodies into things like the effect of multiple concussions on a player in his 50's, or 60's, but those studies are also being done outside of sports which gives the leagues some where else to remove blame from them. It's also the fact that the leagues will, and have done before now, try their best to get out of paying future claims that didn't arise immediately after playing. These cases often end in court and many, apart from the big ones, don't make the news, which is the way the leagues want it. But it would be unfair to suggest they don't care, anyone who plays an officially sanctioned AFL or Rugby League match (probably all codes) is covered for injuries sustained as a part o the game and that goes from the 5yr old kid playing on a Saturday morning to the senior player getting paid $500K.

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21 hours ago, Thatguy said:

Yes, but...

RU is paying some degree of attention, RL has its head up its arse. I am guilty of loving the sport but the big hits are part and parcel of the spectacle and for some men will be disastrous to their longer term well being. RL needed to set up a fund for research, and for compensation years ago but they didn't.

Ok so not much happening in Australia re this. In England the subject is not going away but again not much is happening. I would say things will change if there's enough of these stories and press and enough people want it. A big study might also push it too especially if it gets enough support.  Maybe some of the heavy hits will be outlawed and other parts of the game will come to fore and there will be more points scored. Maybe just maybe the team hug at the start will be as physical as it gets😂

 

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1 hour ago, blaaacdoommmmfan said:

Maybe just maybe the team hug at the start will be as physical as it gets😂

 

Aweeeee but hugging and patting each other on the bum is what rugby is all about.

I don't get anywhere near as much NRL news as thatguy (because I'm a Mexican and those northerners hate that our team is better than theirs), but I reckon we might get one major story a year on head injuries. It will come about because of an ex player having issues, or a new case study, but it will rarely be instigated by the NRL. The AFL is even worse, they virtually drop a 'no comment' on anything the media digs up until they can't avoid it.

Other sports are falling into line with head and other serious injury protection though. As of this summer's cricket season (or the 23/24 I can't remember which), all batsmen who take the field from juniors to the senior ranks in all games will be required to wear a sanctioned helmet which has to include some kind of face protection. I'm not sure if the rule applies to the international players, but it's definitely coming in at a grass roots level. 

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22 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

I can understand why American football players are willing to risk life and limb to play a very violent and dangerous game for the opportunity to make millions, or possibly tens of millions over their careers. But it looks like the Aussies do it more for the love of the game.

It's all relative, isn't it? KK  is right that the payments to NRL players will never match NFL - it's the size of the market etc, but also, as far as I can gather, US football teams are privately owned and the ridiculous pay levels are all part of the big money no holds barred dog-eat-dogism culture of US capitalism. Some of our NRL teams are privately owned, but the sport in the end is 'owned' by a complex structure that limits to a degree corporate control and most clubs are just that.

When I were a lad many RL players had jobs outside football - tradies, garbage collectors and coppers were the most common occupations - and the game was only semi-professional for most. A million bucks a year is a decent reward for the effort and the danger, but they must love the game too. 

Longer term, RL would not be worth watching without the big hits, and unless there is found a means to triage out those most susceptible to brain damage then the sport has no future. I accept this.

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NRL/AFL etc also have a salary cap which stops multi-millionaires buying the clubs and either using them as a cash cow or stacking them with million dollar players the less funded teams can't afford.

As a Mexican who really had no choice but to follow VFL as a kid my favourite team was Richmond, back then you could be part of the team, be amongst them and get to know all the players. At the time of his debut in '68 an up and coming player  by the name of Rex Hunt was a footballer on Saturday and a cop who rose to the rank of Senior Sargent during his football career. He retired as a footballer before he retired as a cop, he then became a commentator and a fishing expert having one of our first ever dedicated fishing shows on TV. I met him with all three hats on and he was by far a bigger c**t as a fisherman than he was as a cop or a footballer.

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I wasn't suggesting that the US pay scale for professional sports was something to aspire to or to be admired, it's sheer insanity. Doesn't really seem that long ago to me when the first professional athletes were just beginning to break the million dollar mark, probably sometime in the 80's. Just looked it up, it was Dave Parker, a baseball player, a "slugger" who got a 5 year $5 million contract in 1978 to play for the Pittsburgh Pirates making him the first pro athlete in the states to make $1 million a year. And it just spiraled out of control from there.

You're correct that all of our sports franchises are privately owned here. I can understand the players' union's positioin which is that the owners are making absolutely stupid money hand over fist and it's only fair that the players should get their fair share. But ticket prices for most pro sports are well into the hundreds of dollars per seat, with maybe only baseball having some seats available under $100 way up in the nosebleed section somewhere. And that's only possible since they have 81 home games to make their money while basketball teams have only 41 and football has just 8 home games. An NFL team carries 53 players on its roster with an average anual payroll of $188 million. I don't know but if the players weren't making so god damned many tens of millions maybe the teams wouldn't have to charge so much for a ticket. And forget about the merch, even the shirts and jerseys they sell at the stadiums cost from $100 to $300 each, a plastic cup of draught beer is $10 a pop (but teams sell the food & beverage concessions to outside companies who bid for the privilege) you almost have to be rich to be able to afford to take your family to a game.

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I've often thought ticket prices in the US must be cheap because of how big the crowds are for everything. I know there is a shitload more people in the US but so much of what we see here on TV seems to be played to sell out arenas week in an week out. Everything from football, to wrestling, to monster trucks always seem to have massive crowds at every event.

For AFL a big game might get 60-80K people, and the grand final can seat 120K but gets called a sell out by about 95K, although the game by game average is only about 36K, (9 games every weekend) Rugby League crowds aren't that big and average about 16.5K (8 games every weekend). It is only $27 a ticket to AFL, NRL is a little cheaper from what I can find.

I have no idea what the price of food and drinks are like these days but even back as far as the 80's it always cost about 50-60% more to buy a product in the venue than at a supermarket. Most merch is also astronomical, there is some cheaper stuff, jumpers down to $50-60, or a scarf, but some teams have their 'official' jersey prices up around the $130 mark.

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I prefer to watch them on TV in the comfort of my own home anyway. I did go to one NFL game to see my NY Giants play about 30 years back, and that was only because I had a friend whose father had season tickets and they had an extra seat one time so they invited me to come along, didn't cost me anything. But fuck it was cold up there, at a certain time in the afternoon once the late autumn sun fell down behind the top edge of the stadium wall we were freezing our fucking asses off even though we had bundled up pretty well beforehand. Couldn't really pay attention to the game in the 4th quarter because all I could think was "fuck it's cold."

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19 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Average price of an NFL ticket is $465 US, that'd be $677 AUD. And yes we pack stadiums here regardless because there are a fucking lot of us Yankee bastards.

Fuck me dead. That kind of price is insane. The price for an NRL game varies depending on which ground and which seats of course. Some of the most fun I've had at the footie though has been in the cheapest seats -  benches or stand up only - in suburban grounds of enemy teams. It's fun to bang up against the bozos and bogans that make up most of an NRL crowd and most are friendly past the expected banter. It's fun to hear the enemy supporters whinging about the refs, the coach and the bludgers on their team just like we do. At the end of the game the sherbets will be kicking in so you need to take care of who you tease if you value your font teeth.

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The worst case of ducking and trying to hide I ever went to was AFL Collingwood v Hawthorn. It was back in early '92, the year after Collingwood won the premiership and one of their players lost his life drunk (and drugged I think) slamming into the back of a truck. ANZAC weekend match and we find ourselves sitting in the middle of the Collingwood cheer squad, about 2000 people that looked like the guy I posted on the previous page. Right at the end of the minute silence for ANZAC day the fuckwit we were with yells out 'and now let's have a minute silence for <footballer>". I still to this day don't know how the prick got out of that without getting his head kicked in, we wanted to do it ourselves. I think that was the last time I went to a football match, I've been to a few cricket matches since but nothing that resembles football.

 

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I went to a cricket match in Oz while I was there in Jan '17, a "test" against Pakistan I believe it was, day 2 if I'm not mistaken. The Aussies crushed 'em. Went with one of my old forum buddies at the time Carlissimo from Marrickville, (Doc knows him) who has since dipped out of the forum thing because he's a very busy archtect, busy busy busy, no time for time wasters like forumming if he wants to get his work done and meet his deadlines.

Anyway like most Yanks I knew absolutely nothing about cricket going in, maybe less than nothing. Like most Yanks I had always tried comparing it to baseball and that was my mistake, it's not anything whatsoever like baseball even though at first glance you've got one dude who is throwing (bowling) the little ball, and another dude with a stick in his hands who is trying to hit it. Even though his stick looks more like a canoe paddle than a bat. So I'm glad I went, we had the whole day for him to explain all the ins and outs of cricket to me and now I feel like I have a basic understanding of what they're doing out there on the pitch, even if I still don't fully understand all the nuance and finer points of the game.

I love how Doc always goes out of his way to make it quite clear that he's not a bogan or a bozo or a yobbo, he's an educated, refined and cultured gentleman. At least until he gets a few sherbets in him haha.

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Many years ago my dad used to work at the main ground for cricket and football so I did go to a lot of games but since the mid 80's I can probably count the number of games I've gone to on one hand. My niece occasionally plays in exhibition matches for the womens cricket so I've been to a couple of those but nothing else.

The last Doc I knew was the same, came over here from the UK as an engineer, became a doctor when we had a doctor shortage, doctored for 5 years, earning enough to buy into his first farm, then spent the next 20 years buying up properties and completing the educated, refined and cultured gentlemanly look. He was great at doctoring and great at keeping cows alive, but knew SFA outside those two fields, including how to put a gate in straight and drive a tractor. Those who only knew him as a doctor had no idea he could be such an unrefined bloke outside his collar and tie.

 

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1 hour ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

I love how Doc always goes out of his way to make it quite clear that he's not a bogan or a bozo or a yobbo, he's an educated, refined and cultured gentleman. At least until he gets a few sherbets in him haha.

When we went to see Midnight Oil my son pointed out that my speaking voice is very similar to Peter Garrett's. Pete has the accent of a Sydney boy who went to a private school then took up rock and roll. I have the accent of a Westie who got an education...

As for the sherbets, doctors are culturally heavy drinkers here, but even more so in England I discovered, but I am older and wiser now.

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36 minutes ago, Thatguy said:

When we went to see Midnight Oil my son pointed out that my speaking voice is very similar to Peter Garrett's. Pete has the accent of a Sydney boy who went to a private school then took up rock and roll. I have the accent of a Westie who got an education...

As for the sherbets, doctors are culturally heavy drinkers here, but even more so in England I discovered, but I am older and wiser now.

What's a "Westie" Doc? Is that like being from the 'wrong side of the tracks' as we say here in the states? Were you of low birth, destined to be a singlet wearing bogan or tradie with a big ole Mad Macca beer belly but you clawed your way out and never looked back?

 

Seen this in Freo on Sunday : r/perth

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1 hour ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

What's a "Westie" Doc? Is that like being from the 'wrong side of the tracks' as we say here in the states? Were you of low birth, destined to be a singlet wearing bogan or tradie with a big ole Mad Macca beer belly but you clawed your way out and never looked back?

A Westie is a bogan from the outer Western suburbs which are far from the hipster delights of the inner west, the gentrified grooviness of the eastern suburbs, or the entitled arseholery of the north shore (etc etc - there are more tribes than this in Sydney). We actually moved around quite a lot when I was a kid, but I spent my teenage years in a Housing Commission flat ( pubic housing apartment) in a shit hole suburb called Ermington. I was brought up by my widowed mother  - with an older brother -  and we were pretty poor. My mum had little education but she was smart and always reading and so my brother and I did to. My brother went to Uni to study architecture and so I went to Uni too, and - long story (and it is a long story) short - eventually ended up as a doctor, thank you Saint Gough for the window of free Uni education.

So, in summary, the guy in the photo is what I am not, but what I came from.

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On 5/12/2022 at 1:27 AM, Thatguy said:

Yes, but...

RU is paying some degree of attention, RL has its head up its arse. I am guilty of loving the sport but the big hits are part and parcel of the spectacle and for some men will be disastrous to their longer term well being. RL needed to set up a fund for research, and for compensation years ago but they didn't.

WWE stopped the use of getting whacked by steel chairs in the head. Although that was more a decision to make it more suitable for younger fans but does prove things can change. Re rugby I can't remember speaking to anyone who wants the hits taken out of the sport.

Certainly in union I'd like to see all that lying on the ground sped up after a breakdown🥱 apparently once you've played the game or understand the rules you actually like all that. Could be true. When I used to play cricket I enjoyed test matches more. Now Ive stopped I struggle to watch test matches without 😴

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Wrestling is still quite risky. My cousin is a pro wrestler, he's worked with the WWE and in still in contact with wrestlers like Bret Hart to keep the local scene, which is licensed to WWE, going. But the shit they have to go through to put on a show in this country for both legal and health reasons are a bigger thing than the show itself. For something not entirely real, a massive amount of work goes into training and doing their best to insure injuries don't happen when a table breaks under someone's back.

The football codes also do most of this stuff as a part of protecting their players, because in effect every player is an employee and every field is a workplace. Therefore players are covered and clubs and leagues do not want to be sued for negligence. We had a case in Melbourne about 10 years ago where a synthetic turf was not up to scratch and in the pre-season competition several players suffered knee injuries. It was successfully argued that those injuries would not have happened had the turf been real and up to scratch. The AFL quickly got off their arses and stopped all matches at the venue until something could be done because they knew it was a law suit waiting to bite them. The leagues can move like their is a rocket up their arse when it suits them.

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On 5/15/2022 at 8:34 AM, blaaacdoommmmfan said:

Certainly in union I'd like to see all that lying on the ground sped up after a breakdown

Maate, what you want is for RU to be more like RL. Makes sense to me, of course.

Test cricket? Background noise/vision in the summer. Pop your head in and watch a bit when you are too hot or whipping inside to get more beers. Sit down and watch? 😴indeed.

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On 5/16/2022 at 3:43 AM, Thatguy said:

Maate, what you want is for RU to be more like RL. Makes sense to me, of course.

Test cricket? Background noise/vision in the summer. Pop your head in and watch a bit when you are too hot or whipping inside to get more beers. Sit down and watch? 😴indeed.

That's it. I'm more of a rugby league fan. I've watched some NRL stuff years back on TV and I liked it more than union as its faster paced and simpler. Plus 1point for a drop goal is what I like as that encourages going for more tries rather than winning with kicks. 

My best mate has watched some rugby league as he's based up north. He likes watching "classy Cass"Castleford play.  

Not watched much test cricket since it was taken off regular UK TV in 2005 after the ashes win. A few beers watching test cricket was good for sure or a big bag of crisps😋 oddly enough I've probably watched more Australia test cricket than England recently as for a time bt TV package had all the Australia cricket games then the price Went up alot so no more

 

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We have laws to keep Test cricket on free to air TV so it's there if we want it, and so we take it for granted. This won't last forever, of course.

 

I watched a good game of RU last night (Brumbies vs Blues, Brumbies pipped after the 80 minutes by a field goal) and it did not hold my interest as much a regular RL game between a couple of loser clubs.

The loss to a golden point field goal is the worst feeling in the world. It's only one point but it nullifies  >80 minutes of blood sweat and tears.

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Do we really have those laws? I haven't followed the media laws that closely. I know there is all sorts of caveats in the media contracts that state a certain number of football games must be made available to FTA, but I didn't realise test cricket was also included.

I'm not a huge fan of what other channels have done to the cricket. I know things had to change and I'm no fan of channel 9's commentators since we can't have the Bill and Tony tag team any more, but C9 knew how to film cricket. Kerry Packer might have ruined cricket for the traditionalist when he created the World Series but he created a tv experience that was honed over the years and mastered, the other channels just don't have that.

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3 hours ago, Thatguy said:

We have laws to keep Test cricket on free to air TV so it's there if we want it, and so we take it for granted. This won't last forever, of course.

I watched a good game of RU last night (Brumbies vs Blues, Brumbies pipped after the 80 minutes by a field goal) and it did not hold my interest as much a regular RL game between a couple of loser clubs.

The loss to a golden point field goal is the worst feeling in the world. It's only one point but it nullifies  >80 minutes of blood sweat and tears.

Your Brummies should have spent those 80 minutes building a bigger lead then they wouldn't have lost by a point to the Kiwis. My theory is you're just cross because the Blues and the Crusaders are better than all the Aussie clubs put together. Must be because they're sponsored by Black Sabbath.

 

Recap: Blues v Brumbies - Super Rugby Trans-Tasman | Stuff.co.nz

 

N.I.B. Paris Dec 29, 1970

 

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