THE National Rugby League has been widely applauded for its strong leadership through the COVID-19 pandemic that saw the game continue and thrive in the face of unprecedented challenges.
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In May last year the NRL became the first professional sport to return to the field following the global shutdowns after setting a resumption date that no one believed was possible and then doing everything within their powers to ensure it was.
Peter V'Landys was hailed as the saviour of Australian professional sport and other codes, particularly the AFL, scrambled to follow his lead.
It's disappointing, then, that the NRL has taken a far more muted approach to leadership when it comes to the question of whether unvaccinated players should be allowed to take the field for next year's competition.
On this issue it has been the AFL taking the lead, coming out last week with a clear "no jab, no play" mandate that removed all grey areas.
The NRL's response was that the code would not make it compulsory for players to be vaccinated but they believed the likelihood of unvaccinated players being barred from travelling interstate to play or even being able to boards flights to matches might create something of a ban-by-proxy.
It was an uncharacteristically lily-livered edict from a code that has come to pride itself on being bold and brash in its decision-making.
What the NRL has done is delegate responsibility for its players' health to state governments and airlines instead of making it the code's number one concern.
The NRL has not given detailed reasons for their stance but one consideration must have surely been the high percentage of deeply religious players from a Polynesian background who now play in the NRL and who, as a bloc, have previously expressed concerns about vaccination. That demographic is not prominent among the AFL players.
But failing to take a stronger position has left NRL clubs, in particular, in limbo as the code's leadership has made the problem of players who won't vaccinate the clubs' alone to tackle, unable to move on players who won't get vaccinated but also unlikely to have them available for every match.
It's a case of leading from the rear and it's what no one has come to expect from the NRL.
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