Very early on Friday morning, having read online in the Herald Shane Richardson’s quotes attacking him for the NRL’s perilous financial position, former ARLC chair John Grant sent an email, strongly disputing the comments of the departing South Sydney football boss.

In doing so, Grant, the code’s inaugural chair and a former Kangaroo, broke a long silence.

Former ARLC chairman John Grant. Credit:Daniel Munoz

He writes: “With the current crisis now upon the game, there are those within it who seek to lay blame and find scapegoats and, clearly, as Chair of the ARL Commission when the 2012 and the current (2018) funding agreements were put in place, I am a target. Specifically, I am accused of having ‘plastic balls’, ‘capitulating’ to the demands of the clubs and ‘saving my job’ by agreeing to club payments of 130 per cent of the salary cap and in doing so, leaving the game with no assets and no reserves that could get it through this crisis. This, categorically, is not the case.”

Grant describes Richardson’s “don’t do it, John” warning at NRL headquarters over acquiescing to the deal as “confusing”, pointing out: “He departed the NRL (as an executive) a year before the current funding agreement was struck, so he could not have been aware of the process that led to the 130 per cent agreement.”