I was one of only three coaches who attended that meeting when a constitution was ratified and office bearers elected. However, the resistance from clubs and the Phillip Street administration was vehement. They preferred players and coaches to be in a master-servant relationship. Despite this, rugby league can boast a number of firsts in Australian sport in terms of industrial muscle. Balmain’s Dennis Tutty was the first sportsperson to win an action before the High Court when it found, in 1971, that the transfer system was an unreasonable restraint of trade. Former international and Labor politician Kevin Ryan, after successfully challenging a proposed draft, won the code’s first collective bargaining agreement. Later, another top forward, Newcastle’s Tony Butterfield, agitated for a more comprehensive CBA, which was only achieved following a player strike of the 2003 Dally M awards. Tony Butterfield was active as a representative of players during and after his playing days. Credit:Dean Osland Despite these challenges and the entrenched undermining of the RLPA by player agents, the organisation has progressed to a point where the current CBA guarantees players 29.5 per cent of total game revenue, consistent with other professional Australian sports.

Today, with elite players earning $1 million, compared to a top salary of $60,000 won by Beetson when he joined Parramatta in 1979, it’s easy to conclude players are far better off. Factor in modern stadiums, business-class airfares to representative matches, an army of medicos, dieticians and wellness officers to cater for diverse needs, and it would be foolhardy to argue otherwise. Yet, reflecting on that part-time era when players also socialised with work mates and training nights were enjoyable – to say nothing of the follow-up schooners at the pub – are today’s professionals really better off? An article in The New Yorker, profiling a brilliant American professor, Elizabeth Anderson, is relevant. She challenges the binary division of the world’s economies into free market and state control, considering “most adults live their working lives under a third thing entirely: private government.” The January 7, 2019 New Yorker says of private government: “What else could you call the modern workplace, where superiors can issue changing orders, control attire, surveil correspondence, demand medical testing, define schedules and monitor communication, such as social media posts?” It makes no mention of professional sport as “private government”, but I can’t think of a better example of the controls on working conditions, as enunciated there, than the NRL. Factor in a salary cap – which also works against the contracted player when he is told to “test the market”, meaning he is shopped away from a club where he was happy – and, of course, there is the new law giving the NRL the power to automatically stand down any player charged with an offence carrying a jail term of 11 or more years.