Imagine the look, then, on the 84-year-old's face when he stepped off the plane to learn that Channel Nine had usurped News' Fox Sports in hatching a $925 million deal for rugby league from 2018. Give him time: NRL CEO Dave Smith smiles after announcing the latest rights deal with Nine. Credit:Peter Rae For weeks Fox Sports had been bolshie about its bargaining position, bordering on "arrogant". A deal to broadcast all eight matches live per week on the pay-TV network was said to be imminent. A News Corp publication spouted only last week that a $1.7 billion deal would soon be delivered. And now, after NRL chief executive Dave Smith and Nine boss David Gyngell quietly nailed a deal on Sunday night which will see four matches per week shown live on free-to-air? Two decades after Murdoch's Super League tried to hijack the entire code, all for the sake of television "product", it could end up with nothing at all.

That scenario seems unlikely. Uncle Rupert will just need to dig a little deeper. Nine needs rugby league matches to sell advertising dollars. As Gyngell said three years ago when the last deal was done: "I have paid what I have had to pay to keep rugby league on Nine. I'm not happy, but I'd be a lot sadder if I didn't have it." The rise of on-demand, internet streaming media such as Netflix means Fox Sports has genuine competition in trying to secure the remaining rounds. But while Nine wants rugby league, Fox Sports needs it to survive. Without arguably the most watched code on television in the country, especially in the massive market of Sydney, it becomes half a sports network. Without rugby league, how many subscribers would it lose? While Fox Sports execs were privately putting a positive spin on their position on Monday night, they will now have to pay handsomely if they want to spruik "all eight matches live" from 2018, excluding the grand final and State of Origin.

"Someone's head will roll for this," observed one source close to negotiations. As for the fans – remember them? – their eyeballs should be rolling back into their heads in ecstasy. Since Super League, rugby league has been TV's bitch. No longer. Monday's announcement is historic because the game has control of itself again, determining precisely which teams play where and when. All matches will be live from now on, with half of them on free-to-air. Nobody expected that outcome. Players win, too.

Some were overheard complaining that they would play a longer season, unaware of the finer details. The standard season is still 24 matches long, but because the NRL has control of its draw the short turnarounds that coaches and players bemoan will be minimal. Gyngell is also a winner. In an ever-changing media landscape, live sport is king – and his network just secured a sizeable chunk of it until the end of 2022. When Foxtel bought a 15 per cent stake in Ten in June, it furthered the belief that Fox Sports and Ten would try to gazump Nine, forcing it to the brink of financial collapse without any major sport to broadcast. Ten is part-owned by Murdoch's son, Lachlan, and Gyngell's former best mate, James Packer, who he famously brawled in Bondi last year. Arrogance from Fox Sports executives saw negotiations stall. A Roosters tragic, Gyngell saw a gap and shot through it quicker than Roger Tuivasa-Sheck, throwing an offer at Smith that he could not refuse.

Smith snapped it up. He is the biggest winner of all. At the very least, he has shown he isn't spooked by News. For the past year or so, the ball-park asking price for the next television and digital rights deal had been speculated at about $2 billion. Smith has secured almost half of that already, with two years left to run on the current deal, with further jackpots to come. The size of this contract is critical, of course, but the game having control of itself again means more. The last deal was brokered in a war room at League Central, with about 20 powerbrokers eating pizza for hours, trying to get pen to paper. When the deals were done, the real loser was the game, beholden still to the networks.

That was August, 2012. Smith was appointed as NRL chief executive three months later. Since then, the jury has been firmly out about whether the former banker is the right man for the job. He didn't know Cameron Smith was the Australian captain. He reckoned "Benji" Barba was the best player in the game. Smith's legacy was never going to be about how much he knew about footy, or even how much he impressed when the cameras were on, but how much he knew about business. "Rugby league needs somebody to lead it," Smith said at Monday's announcement. "It needs a strong leader and hopefully I've demonstrated I can do that." For how much longer is anyone's guess. Talk about him walking out as soon as the broadcast deal is done has been swirling around for more than a year. But if he is only remembered for one thing, coming up with a game-changing deal will surely be enough.