Mark Nawaqanitawase is just the beginning...

what if this whole Mark noonga Nasi going to rugby league was just scratching the surface of what's to come I've been thinking the wab losing one of their most promising players absolutely sucks especially marim Mar come on he actually had a bit of swagger about him and was one of the only good things to come out of the wab miserable World Cup campaign Aussie rugby fans needed hope and he gave us that rugby league is about to cause some major headaches for Australian rugby and losing Mary Mark is only just the beginning okay let's be honest it was the Muppets running rugby Australia that led us into this hot mess for those of you not from Australia Union and League kind of made peace with each other over the last decade and instead of being seen as Rivals they were kind of working side by side in a sense clubs from both codes would organize opposed and collaborative training sessions with each other when F was banned from rugby the NRL also blacklisted F and so on there was some kind of camaraderie happening this was clearly a deal better for Union mainly because league is so much more popular and if they really wanted to they could make life extremely difficult for Rugby Union most people probably already know that rugby Australia signed Joseph Su Ali on an astronomical contract 1.6 million per year a figure we all know rugby Australia can't really afford to their credit he is a genuine freaking nature and his every chance of being a world beater in rugby now this generated a lot of hype and medor attention but was kind of acceptable as it wasn't the first time a genuine NRL Star had crossed codes in fact we had heard this story so many times before semi rrda Sunny Bill Izzy f ma coretti and they're only the recent examples they all stamped their mark on Rugby globally it's a recruiting strategy Rugby's used and on many occasions has been successful for the most part so while this move was nothing out of the ordinary the staunch attitude of Australian rugby was Peter valis the Australian rugby league chairman spoke about the signing claiming Joseph will get terribly bored and will be paid twice the money for doing half the work in Union ooh shots fired while this definitely was a jab at rugby it's kind of understandable when you've lost one of your key players to a rival code now it's one thing to be happy with a signing and going about it humbly it's another thing to jump on every TV and radio station to straight up antagonize the NRL and that's pretty much what rugby Australia did he had the chairman of rugby Australia claiming there's lots of league players that have reached out to us and expressed his excitement over ing some of the highest profile NRL players to rugby you had documents being linked from rugby Australia labeled The Hit List which were all confirmed as genuine and you even had the waby coach being interviewed on New Zealand Rugby show the breakdown that you guys are really trying to hone in on some more rugby league players yeah we got about three or four they're ready to sign mate big names I can't tell you now but it was kind of entertaining for us fans bud in hindsight probably not the best idea bro why would you start beef with the sport that's already taking it easy on you now I guess while everyone was caught up in the chirping it was pretty easy to forget that League could in essence Union if they wanted to and what many people watching this video might not know is in retaliation Peter valis announced they are considering the idea of reducing the cost of team salary caps if they recruit from rival codes this means you could essentially pay a player $1 million to come over from the Wes and it would be given to your team at a discount against the salary cap in essence if you recruited players from other codes you could have a team with more value and still adhere to the salary cap in my opinion this was definitely a warning shot from Peter valis a message to Hamish mlon and Eddie Jones to ease up now in this situation the smart thing to do would have been to completely stop but this is where I feel egos may have gotten in the way and completely screwed things up because the war of words and public berating would continue think about it you have the person in charge of Rugby Union in Australia you would expect one of the busiest and most challenging jobs you could sign up for openly discussing his eagerness to signing the biggest names in rugby league and how they're open to making the switch probably best described by the raw newspaper as frothing I mean it really got ridiculous calling rugby league scrums lame claiming an arm wrestle at a pub would be harder than a league scrum then offering a $100,000 Stak to have a televised scrum match followed up with a spelling test to just Sledge the intelligence of every rugby league player just ridiculous and not really productive for either code I still can't believe this all happened the epitome of professionalism but it was Bloody funny what your casual fan of rugby might think is it's just the signing of Mark noong Nasi but really it's opened the floodgates for many more signings because that berading continued rugby league have gone on to ratify that decision to give discounts to clubs for signing crosscode Superstar stars and no one will be impacted more than Rugby Union so don't expect it to be just one wabby who leaves the game I expect a host of wallabies and potentially even All Blacks to make this decision as predominantly a rugby union fan who loves both codes a few years ago TJ perinar and Ari sea floated the idea teased the idea of joining the NRL now at the time I thought this would be the coolest thing in the world and it probably still would be there's been so many success stories of league players coming over to Union and car up wouldn't it be interesting to see how a professional Rugby Union player fared in rugby league someone who's going over with not much League experience now I know a lot of my union buddies out there will be saying ugie there's already a ton of players in the NRL with a union background but I mean seriously from a professional Rugby Union level over to rugby league if you're not from Australia there's this common thing that happens really promising rugby league players get signed to private schools to play rugby union which works out for them as they get to go to one of of the best schools and on the side they can usually continue their rugby league Journey now this pool of players heavily gets drained back into the NRL once they finish school it sort of creates trust me I went to one of these schools myself it creates this theory that rugby league are stealing all the union players where really most teenagers have played both games and a lot of the ones who do move back to League started in league first but this massive Heche that this 9 to 10mth period is going to have on Australian rugby in the future is pretty scary and pretty significant to the game already Rugby Union is sort of lacking personality and players that have followed in Australia because it lacks media attention and many players are lost to rugby league or overseas competitions the thing is NRL clubs will be looking to boost their rosters at a discount and it doesn't make sense for them to have a look at AFL NFL or NBL the basketball comp to recruit players they'll all be eyeing off Rugby Union woring signs ahead let me know what you think about this one I really had to take some time to unpack the consequences and now that I have it's pretty clear and it's pretty [Music] grim