League Express editor MARTYN SADLER examines the media coverage of new rugby union star Joseph Aukuso-Suaali’i.
This is a slightly modified version of a piece that appeared in his ‘Talking Rugby League’ column in this week’s League Express.
For the last few weeks we’ve seen rugby union writers writing continuously about Joseph Aukuso-Suaali’i and the clamour of publicity was magnified when he made his international debut for Australia against England at Twickenham a week last Saturday.
Suaali’i made his debut only a few weeks after he had completed his commitments with Sydney Roosters in the NRL and I suspect he became the first rugby union player to make his senior debut in a major Test match.
Previous to playing at Twickenham, his last rugby union game was played when he was a schoolboy.
To my mind his promotion straight into the Australian national side revealed the poverty of the playing resources available to the Australian rugby union coach Joe Schmidt.
But that wasn’t how the rugby union media viewed it.
To them, a new star was born and we were told that Suaali’i will single-handedly rescue the sport of rugby union in Australia, where it has fallen to a distinct fourth place in the rankings of the football codes, behind the NRL, the AFL and football’s A-League.
To carry such a big responsibility is surely a heavy burden to put on a young man’s shoulders.
But to read the reports, you would have thought that Suaali’i strode above the contest against England and clearly stood head and shoulders over every other player on the field.
Contrast that with his Rugby League career.
When he played for the Roosters he was undoubtedly a good player, but certainly not a great one. He played just a few minutes in his only State of Origin match before being shown a red card for an illegal tackle on Reece Walsh and although he wanted to play at fullback for the Roosters, he couldn’t displace James Tedesco from that position.
And it’s particularly interesting to see his personal statistics from his international rugby union debut.
Those numbers were as follows:
Carries 7 (for 8 metres, making 1.14m per carry)
Offloads 4
Defenders beaten 0
Line breaks 0
Try assists 1
Tackles completed 4
Tackles missed 4
To quote someone posting on The Roar website: “Without being harsh, the numbers are a sobering read, and frankly much less exciting than the highlight clips.”
In fact I’ll go further than that and suggest that statistics like that would soon have seen Suaali’i being demoted from first grade in the NRL.
But such is the influence of rugby union with the mainstream media that facts like that don’t concern them.
Having said all that, I can’t imagine that the NRL would be happy if more of their star players were pursued by rugby union.
So in order to protect its position, should the NRL adopt the marquee player rule?
After Suaali’i’s apparent success, I see that more Rugby League players are now being eyed up for code switches, with Dominic Young being touted as the most likely convert.
There is no doubt that Dominic would be a sensational rugby union player and I wouldn’t be too surprised to find him following in Suaali’i’s footsteps.
But I would hate to see it happen and I wonder whether, in order to counter the leak of NRL players to the other code, the NRL clubs should adopt the same sort of marquee player rule that we have in Super League, so that players like Dominic could be paid what they are worth.
If that doesn’t happen, it would be great to see a British club swooping to sign him as a marquee player. I would love to see him playing regularly in Super League.
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