Don’t hate the players, they are pawns in this rebel league game

Cameron Smith copped a lot of heat when he joined LIV Golf.

The Australian had just won the British Open at St Andrews and was closing in on the No.1 world ranking to go with his first major. The mulleted 29-year-old had already pocketed $14 million in 2022 – enough to be a “very cashed-up bogan from Queensland”, according to his coach Grant Field.

Then, weeks later, the broadly loved working-class larrikin jumped ship from the PGA Tour and became instantly detested. For being a soulless sellout and taking Greg Norman’s $140 million. For accepting Saudi’s blood money and enabling sportswashing. For ensuring he would never reach his full potential. He was the first defector inside the top 10 (and his game hasn’t been the same since).

Smith was loathed by golf traditionalists and human rights organisations. He was not the first, having followed a small cohort – including Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka – across no-man’s land. He was also not alone, announcing his move alongside fellow Australian Marc Leishman. But he was still heckled at tournaments, still made an example of.

The involvement of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund inherently complicates this example, and Smith made his decision as an adult with agency. But it is worth pointing out that Saudi riches are now bankrolling everything from football to boxing and tennis, and it is becoming more and more difficult for an athlete to avoid the influence of a country whose tentacles are already heavily manipulating the global sporting landscape.

It is also tough to place even a “very cashed-up bogan” golfer’s yearning for more time to go fishing and see his family in the same category as Norman’s stubborn obsession to finally realise his and Rupert Murdoch’s failed 1994 World Golf Tour dreams and punish the PGA for crushing them in the first place. Then you consider the PGA which, a year down the line from all its condemnation and indefinite bans, merged with the very body it was fighting.

In life and in sport, responsibility often sits with upper management. So anybody outraged by the thought of Payne Haas defecting to Rugby 360 could probably direct their ire a little further up the chain. The players are but pawns in this rebel league game. Uber-wealthy pawns, yes, but they did not create the beast.

Negative reactions to rebel leagues are no newer than rebel leagues themselves. They are a tale as old as Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket in the 1970s, when Greg Chappell, Rod Marsh, Dennis Lillee, Tony Greig and Viv Richards, among others, felt which way the wind was blowing and broke from the establishment to join the “Packer Circus”. In the 1990s came rugby league’s Super League War and World Rugby Corporation and, of course, there are more.

But it is tough not to remember the rage that buried football’s European Super League 48 hours after 12 of the continent’s top clubs – including Real Madrid, Manchester City and Juventus – announced its launch in 2021. At the time, Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp implored angry fans not to blame the players and revealed he and his squad had learnt they were included in the plan at effectively the same time it became public knowledge.

“I heard we took banners down at Anfield, but I don’t understand that because the players didn’t do anything wrong,” Klopp said. “The boys didn’t do anything wrong apart from not winning all football games. I really want to make sure that everyone knows that.

“FIFA wants a Club World Cup, whenever that should be. That’s about money, nothing else. It happens, it’s not only these [breakaway] clubs.”

The situation with R360 heaps pressure on the individual in a similar vein to Smith and LIV Golf, with the biggest names in rugby and rugby league targeted and some offered deals worth more than $2 million a season. Rugby is clearly concerned, evidenced by the extraordinary joint statement signed by Rugby Australia and seven other leading rugby nations warning players that participation would get them blacklisted for international selection.

The ARL Commission’s position seems unclear. Chairman Peter V’landys has dismissed Mike Tindall’s brainchild as a “competition out of a Corn Flakes box” but, if the more than billion dollars in funding is really there, some NRL stars will be poached whether it’s viable or not.

Haas’ management postponed a meeting with R360 bosses despite them agreeing to a playing fee of at least $US2 million ($3 million), but may yet resume talks. The temptation is understandable for somebody who has two children, supports two of his brothers and wants to provide for his other six siblings.

The desire to provide for your family and set yourself up for life is common among athletes. They may have come from poverty and pursued their sport for the sole purpose of life-changing cash. They may recognise that what comes hard and fast now, could turn to dust in retirement.

You can argue against Cristiano Ronaldo accepting €200 million ($350 million) a year to play in the ethically tainted Saudi Pro League, but it’s tough to dispute the mindset of someone who shared a bedroom with his three siblings, was often hungry and had an alcoholic father.

I, personally, am not fond of Ronaldo. Nor Saudi Arabia’s deplorable human rights record. And I do believe athletes have the capacity to make ethical decisions. Perhaps these could be defined as musings inspired by a general dislike of Greg Norman (and upper management in general). And an excuse to denounce Bob Katter’s suggestion that bored league players (“the idle mind is a devil’s workshop”) should be given rifles and unleashed on national parks to shoot feral animals in the off-season.