I hope the NRL continues to "bungle" scheduling the way it allegedly has this weekend. I have my heart set on "embarrassment" that continues way into the future.

The idea that if premium regular season games are not on free-to-air television, the sport suffers is something out of the 1980s, when you got a live match of a Saturday afternoon on the ABC and an evening one-hour packaged highlights of one Sunday match on Seven.

The entire reason pay television pays so much money for rights is that it wants situations like this Saturday when Melbourne face Cronulla for the minor premiership on Fox Sports. It is trying to sell subscriptions, it wants people to feel like they are missing out and to put their hands in their pockets.

Rugby league has taken that money. It has given seven million dollars per club of it to the players. The game lives, day to day, on that money. It can't then whinge that a company that paid for good games has somehow got a good game.