The NRL and Rugby League Players Association have settled on an in-principle collective bargaining agreement (CBA), ending a months-long dispute between the warring parties.
It will be a matter of days before the league’s first billion-dollar CBA, which lasts until 2027 and covers men’s and women’s players, is ready to be implemented.
But the players’ union confirmed to AAP that negotiations had been finalised after a series of crisis talks over the last 48 hours that ended in a handshake agreement late on Thursday.
All industrial action taken by the players, including the game-day media boycott announced last month, has been lifted immediately.
The possibility had also been floated of a boycott of the prestigious Dally M Awards, but any further action is off the table.
After more than a month refusing to speak to the media on game days, players resumed their usual commitments starting from Thursday night’s clash between Manly and Penrith at Brookvale Oval.
“This has taken a long time to get done and the players have stood their ground,” said RLPA general president and Manly skipper Daly Cherry-Evans.
“As always, we’ve used the RLPA to help us and it’s prevailed with what we believe is a great deal for the game, for the players, past, present and future.
“It’s exciting times.”
The deal comes after 20 months of tension between the RLPA and NRL, which intensified in November when the new CBA became due.
The parties had resolved their financial differences last year, with the NRL proposing an increase in player payments of 37 per cent, with $1.35 billion to be designated to players between 2023 and 2027.
But in the nine months since the November deadline, the parties had remained at loggerheads over issues including access to and ownership of player data, allocation of funds to the RLPA’s programs and the length of the season.
The previous CBA could only roll over until October 31 this year, leading to fears the dispute could stretch into the upcoming finals series and potentially leave the league without an agreement for the first time since 2003.
Aside from their media boycott, players taped over the NRL logo on their jerseys in round 22, and released a video titled Stand With Us hoping to garner support from fans as the stoush reached boiling point.
This week’s crisis talks were attended by NRL chief executive Andrew Abdo, his RLPA counterpart Clint Newton, several players, Australian Rugby League Commission chairman Peter V’landys, and players’ union representatives Tim Lythe and Deirdre Anderson.
© AAP 2023
