Nice article about rugby league in the Guardian
I like to cover a range of topics, and today we’re moving back to rugby league. This article, courtesy of Guardian write Andy Wilson, regarding the move at the end of this season of Chris Ashton from Wigan Warriors Rugby League to Northampton Rugby Union. It makes for very interesting reading:
It seems unlikely that Chris Ashton will have read a column in The Australian newspaper by Wayne Bennett, the long-serving and hugely respected coach of the Brisbane Broncos, before making the decision to leave 
Wigan and double his money in rugby union with Northampton later this year. But as British rugby league clubs confront the growing threat of losing talented young players to union, they could do much worse than post Bennett’s latest words of wisdom on their dressing room walls.
“Life’s experience has taught me that if you’re not happy - no matter what money they give you - it’s not worth it,” he wrote, in reference to the protracted recent contract negotiations of two of the biggest names in southern hemisphere rugby, Lote Tuqiri and Sonny Bill Williams. “Lots of people make bucketloads of money but are terribly unhappy with their lives and themselves. What makes you happy is being in good organisations and being there for the right reasons. The greater the money, the greater the expectation. No one’s a miracle man every weekend.”
Wayne Bennett
Ashton’s move to union may, of course, work out wonderfully well. In the 2011 World Cup he could be playing in an England back line with Chev Walker and Karl Pryce, the other young league players who left for Bath and Gloucester respectively last autumn. But for all the pace and ability that make him such a depressing loss for league, it is wildly premature to expect Ashton to become the next Jason Robinson.
Wigan’s coach, Brian Noble, describes the 19-year-old as a work in progress: significantly, last autumn he signed Michael Withers, a veteran Australian who had given him such good service at full-back in their years together with Bradford, to underline his reservations about Ashton’s vulnerability in defence. Noble wanted to nurture Ashton slowly, and even to take him out of the firing line occasionally, with the aim of maximising his potential for next year’s league World Cup.
Now the teenager will have to go through that development process in an alien code, where the supporters and his new team-mates know exactly what he is earning, and may therefore be less willing to indulge his occasional errors than his fellow Wiganers have previously been. That is why Noble, and his chairman Maurice Lindsay, genuinely believe Ashton is making a big mistake.
One man who clearly disagrees with that is Andy Clarke, Ashton’s agent, whose role in the move to Northampton highlights arguably its most worrying aspect for rugby league. Clarke - the elder brother of the former Wigan captain and chief executive Phil - has discovered that there is money to be made from league players switching to union. He brokered the deal that took Andy Farrell to Saracens two years ago, and was also involved in the negotiations over two possible moves to union for a third Wigan player, Kris Radlinski, before he decided to stay in league.
Clarke is following the trail blazed by David McKnight, who negotiated Robinson’s move to Sale and Henry Paul’s from Bradford to Gloucester back in 2000, and re-emerged last autumn in the deal that steered Pryce along the same path from Yorkshire to the south-west.
Walker’s move from Leeds to Bath was smoothed by David Howes, formerly the Rugby Football League’s media and marketing executive, offering further evidence of just how close to home the threat to league can lie. And the fact that McKnight is now understood to be acting for Lesley Vainikolo lends credence to the rumours that Bradford’s Volcano will join Pryce at Gloucester later this year.
There will be plenty more opportunists where these agents came from, eager to steer players from the Super League’s tight salary cap to the looser version which operates in union’s Premiership - and able to offer their clients the possibility of the sort of leap in national profile that Ashton has enjoyed over the last fortnight since he was linked with Northampton.
But with that extra cash and greater profile comes greater pressure, with the treatment Farrell endured after England’s recent defeat in Dublin offering Ashton an indication of what he might expect should things go wrong. He is taking a brave gamble, even for ?f140,000 a year. As Wayne Bennett suggests, there must be more to a fulfilling rugby career than a bundle of cash.
I’m a firm believer in the philosophy that there are more important things than money in life. Sure, I like to have it and have spent enough of it on my new car, but it’s not the be-all and end-all. With regards to your job, it’s much more important to have a job you like doing than a job you don’t, but which pays well. I’m never going to become a millionnaire teaching English or dive instructing, but they are jobs I love so I’m happy to do them.
Just some food for thought before the weekend.
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