Since the beginning there has raged a great battle between rugby league’s two warring tribes; the jocks and the nerds. But with the season just about to get underway, have the nerds already won?

History shows for a long time now, it has been the jocks’ job to give the nerds a hard time.

This has traditionally been a fairly simple task, mostly due to the fact every single person involved in the top flight of rugby league has been a former footy player of some description.

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The CEO. The board members. The marketing staff. The TV hosts. Doris the tea lady at RL HQ probably played on the wing for Newtown for a couple of games in the late70s… or was at least married to the bloke who did.

Anyone from outside this sphere was kept in their place – not through atomic wedgies or nipple-crippples, but instead through exclusion and a simple label.

“Not a rugby league person.”

I.e. Nerds. Nevillies. Nuffies.

Quite simply if you had not gone through the ritual hazing of packing your head into a few hundred scrums and playing up like a second-hand lawn mower on the road, then don’t bother commentating or trying to get on the board because what the bloody hell would you know, boy-o?!

As rugby league has grown as a sport, the need for nerds in the game has become increasingly apparent, and more and more began to trickle into the code.



Medical staff. Non-player media types. And, most importantly, the money men.

Like the jock that suddenly realises he needs to raise his marks to a C- so he doesn’t have to repeat year 12, rugby league has found itself sitting in the library at lunchtime, hitting the cheque-books with its adopted nerd study buddies.

And in 2014, NRL CEO Dave Smith is king of the NRL nerds.

After a tough initiation period, where he did everything bar pee his pants on the first day at work, Smith is now the toast of the town after announcing a $50 million dollar profit for the 2013 season.

While it can be debated the new TV rights deal was responsible for the bulk of this, Smith’s outline at the NRL AGM regarding future investments in the game would have even had Dragons coach Steve Price cracking a smile yesterday. Quite a feat.

So, does this mean Smith and Todd ‘Gilbert’ Greenberg can now walk through the quadrangle confident of not having someone throw an apple core at their head?

Ahh, no.

With Smith the figurehead of a new commission that has banned the shoulder charge, relegated fighting to freak show status and coldly dealt with players and coaches who have brought the game into disrepute, the nerds will always have a few jocks that loudly refuse to get along with a former banker with a funny accent.



But if the cash registers keep on ringing, will anyone really be listening to them?