SBW: Farce or Revolutionary?

Sonny Bill Williams at Roosters HQ

Sonny Bill Williams has received a lifetime worth of both criticism and praise over his career to date and pretty much all of it, both good and bad, was deserved. He is a rare breed of athlete, seemingly created by whatever deity you believe in to dominate whichever sport he chooses to participate.

No one can doubt that Sonny Bill is a fantastic football player, both in rugby league or rugby union and I would imagine that if he had chosen to play any other sport as a child he would have been able to reach great heights in that as well. However, whether it was due to his personality or due to the influence of others, Sonny Bill has had controversy follow him wherever he goes.

This past week’s boxing match against Francois Botha is the latest in a line of incidents that make Sonny Bill and his manager Khoder Nasser look spectacularly dodgy and honestly they don’t seem to care.

You see, Sonny Bill Williams is a mercenary. He is a gun for hire. Sure he is in team sports, but he isn’t really a member of any team but his own and that is a decision that someone with his natural gifts is able to make. People will cater to Williams’ demands because when he actually plays for them he is so good at what he does. He only signs one year contracts and doesn’t hide the fact that he might leave to go do something else as soon as that one year is up.

In fact, he is already talking about playing for New Zealand in the Rugby 7’s at the 2016 Olympics. Although perhaps someone should tell him that you don’t get paid for competing in the Olympics.

The fact that Williams’ camp pulled the stunt they pulled by removing the last two rounds of his fight against Botha doesn’t actually surprise me. Partly because at this point nothing that happens in boxing would surprise me and partly because Nasser and Williams stopped playing by others people’s rules long ago.

After  getting away with walking out from a binding contract with the Bulldogs several years ago, besides the public backlash of course, Williams and Nasser realised they could get away with pretty much anything, because there is always going to be another door opening as they burn the bridges behind them.

Whether Williams ever goes back to boxing is unknown, as Williams was already suggesting that it might be his last fight and given how that turned out I can’t imagine too many people will be willing to pay to watch him fight again unless it’s against a much bigger name opponent.

Khoder Nasser and his stable of Williams, Anthony Mundine and Quade Cooper are a group that we haven’t really seen the likes of before in the sports world. The best comparison I can come up with for them is the nWo from the old WCW days in professional wrestling. A group of bad guys, simply out for themselves, but talented enough to do it and become the next big thing in sport. Of course in this comparison Khoder Nasser would be Eric Bischoff.

Williams now has reported for duty at Roosters training for the 2013 season and Roosters fan are excited. Also excited are the NRL and Channel 9 who are promoting the opening match of the season between the Roosters and Rabbitohs as if only one player is playing. As long as he can stay on the field I am sure that Williams will have a great season for the Roosters and their fans will adore him.

But who knows how many seasons he will play for them and if you were another club in the NRL or Super Rugby would you consider it worth your while to invest such a huge chunk of your salary cap in a player who you might only get for one year?

The flip side to this is that in some ways Sonny Bill Williams is a revolutionary. We all admit that nowadays sports is first and foremost a business and with a limited career span it is only fair that an athlete tries to make as much money as they can in that time. Not every athlete can do this the way Sonny Bill has, but given he is so talented that he will always have new opportunities, it is financially smart of him to play his cards in this manner.

It would not surprise me to see more of the top athletes in the future following this model of one year, mercenary style contracts. Some may only do so in a single sport, but some like Williams will be able to move from sport to sport and from league to league, offering their services as long as they are the ones willing to pay the most for the privilege.

Soccer manager Pep Guardiola is already a fan of the one year contract, more for personal reasons than financial ones, but much like Williams he is talented enough and in demand enough that he can continue doing so for many years to come.

Of course there are huge risks with this strategy. Williams has been plagued by injury in the past and all it takes is one injury to shut a lot of those open doors. A long term contract provides security and it admittedly takes a lot of balls to live the life of an athlete without that security. So for that, I actually commend Sonny Bill.

There are areas in which I respect Sonny Bill Williams. He is a tremendous athlete and football player and by all accounts he trains hard and does everything he can to be the best he can be. But for the most part, I am ready to boo as loudly as I’ve ever booed when he takes the field for the Roosters on March 7 and I’m sure he won’t even notice.

By now he has heard all the booing and hating and I don’t think he cares one iota, because Sonny Bill Williams is playing for Sonny Bill Williams and so far he is winning.

I Wish I Still Loved Rugby Union

Once upon a time rugby union was my favourite code of football. It was the only type of football I played in high school (very poorly admittedly) and the Wallabies winning the 1999 World Cup, along with the amazing Bledisloe/Tri-Nations victories in that era, remain some of my favourite moments as a sports fan.

In recent years however I have found myself slowly drifting away from the sport. I still watch some Wallabies games, I still watch the occasional Waratahs game and of course I follow the World Cup. But besides the spectacle that is the World Cup every four years, to me rugby has been falling further and further behind other sports. Hardcore rugby fans might not like this article but based on the statistics related to Super Rugby ratings on Foxtel, as well as diminishing crowd numbers, at least for the Australian teams, I clearly am not alone.

The Wallabies do still draw a crowd and have sold out the upcoming 3^rd Test against Wales here in Sydney, but rugby certainly is nowhere near where it used to be and in my opinion it’s because the game itself has dramatically regressed.

As rugby became a faster game with better athletes and better goal kickers, the amount of penalties at the ruck seemed to increase and has lead to the game basically being played between the 22s, with penalty kicking becoming the primary way to score. As soon as a team crosses halfway, they are happy to pick and drive until the opposition inevitably infringes and they get a shot at goal from distance. Try scoring on the other hand seems to be a secondary luxury. Hell, even George Gregan who began his career as an exciting player, started to stand around trying to talk the referee into giving a penalty rather than delivering quick ball to his backline for an attacking move. By the end of his career I despised Gregan.

Obviously this is a huge problem as what fans want, particularly casual fans, is attacking football with teams looking to score tries rather than chip away with shots at goal. But as the rules currently stand, there is no incentive for the teams to do so and thus I think it’s once again time to make some changes to rugby’s rules to encourage more attractive football.

The main change is to reduce the value of penalty shots from 3 to 2. This would mean it would take four successful penalty goals to beat one converted try. Teams would have to weigh up if they are better off kicking for touch, getting field position and going for 7 rather than settling for 2 and I think they’d become inclined to go for 7. I’m happy to leave field goals as 3, as they are difficult to execute and occur during open play, however if others think they should be reduced too I would be fine with it.

In conjunction with the scoring change, I’d start making a lot of infringements, particularly at scrums, only short arm penalties rather than full arm penalties. They already have started doing this in Super Rugby and it should be explored more and extended across all forms. Along with this, scrums should only be allowed to pack once. If the referee sees a problem, then he should call a short arm penalty straight away. The amount of game time lost to referees acting as scrum coaches is unbearable.

Some rugby purists might take issue with this, but honestly it’s not like rugby rules haven’t been changed a lot already. It wasn’t long ago that tries were increased from 4 to 5 and it also wasn’t that long ago where lifting in lineouts was illegal. The game needs to adapt or die and if some people can’t see that right now it is doing the latter, than they really won’t see it coming when the sport has serious financial problems in the future due to revenues drying up, at least in Australia.

Rugby will never lose its hardcore fan base, but that’s true for every sport and in that sense the hardcore fans actually don’t matter. What matters are the rest of us who should be rugby fans but no longer have the level of interest we used to. What matters are the kids who are growing up following only rugby league rather than both league and union.

I desperately want rugby to survive and I want to care about it as much as I once did, but until changes are made to make it entertaining again, I’m afraid it’s just too difficult to watch.