Rugby league Immortal Andrew Johns says the game’s top administrators should focus on growing the grassroots level of the sport before trying to expand the NRL any further.
And he wants a greater push to unearth the largely-hidden talent lying dormant in Pacific Island nations.
The Australian Rugby League Commission (ARLC) is hellbent on expanding the NRL competition, and has already handed the Dolphins a licence to become the 17th team in season 2023.
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Immediately following that announcement plans were revealed to add an 18th team as early as the next five years.
Johns is concerned there’s not enough elite talent in the game to uphold the strength of the competition. Already in season 2021 fans were forced to endure a high number of blowout margins, with the NRL’s cream seemingly moving further away from the rest of the league.
In an ideal world Johns says the NRL would only have 12 or 14 competing teams.
But to ensure there’s plenty of top-line talent in the pool to accommodate 18 – or more – Johns wants the ARLC to enact a two-pronged plan.
“If we’re going to expand the game, talking about bringing more teams in, then we need more kids playing at a junior base,” Johns told Wide World of Sports.
“Whether we bring in weight divisions (rather than age groups) or whatever, we need more kids playing at that level, and then naturally the really talented kids will stick at it, eventually they’ll go through the pathways to NRL.
“We need to get more kids, more young boys and girls, into the game, playing the game, staying in the game. How they do that? I think there’s got to be some smart minds.
“Weight divisions is something we could look at in the really young kids. I think we need to have a conversation around that.
“I think the best thing would be talking to parents. Parents will give you an idea of why their kid’s not playing, or why they’re playing but then leaving at a certain age to do other things.”
Dividing junior players into weight rather than age divisions is a tactic that’s long been discussed as a means of making the sport safer for children to play.
A large child can play rugby league against a much smaller child of the same age. It’s feared participation rates are dropping as a result of parents enrolling their kids in sports with less contact.
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The second part of Johns’ plan is to increase the NRL’s footprint in Pacific Island countries such as Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga.
PNG already has a team in the Queensland Cup and the Hunters won that competition in 2017. But the country’s genuine representation in the NRL remains relatively low, with Justin Olam and Xavier Coates flying the flag.
The other island nations – while they don’t have a team competing as high as one of the state Cups – are well represented in the NRL, but Johns believes they remain a relatively untapped resource.
“We need teams and competitions actually in the islands, Samoa and Tonga and Fiji. There would be so much talent over there,” he said.
“That’s a massive growth area. If we can get them in the Pacific Islands playing in a tournament, then it could really build the game over there.
“We’ve seen at a national level Tonga has beaten Australia. If we get the right people in charge and get the sponsorship for these countries, they are going to beat Australia and New Zealand and England all the time.
“It’s just a matter of getting the right structures in place for those countries and the sky’s the limit. Who knows where they can get to.”
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