Five of the biggest issues of the rugby league off-season by: Paul Malone

Paul Malone analyses five of the biggest issues of the rugby league off-season.
Drugs

Australian Rugby League Commission chairman John Grant said last week he expects the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority to deliver a final report into the possible use of banned substances by NRL players "reasonably soon".

A well-placed source told The Courier-Mail: "The first round of interviews has been done, but ASADA still has some work to do.

"All sorts of conversations have to be had yet."

The ARL Commission is not reliant on the ASADA investigation and can call from submissions from the NRL integrity unit set up earlier this year after the February claims of the Australian Crime Commission.

But the better-resourced ASADA investigators are more likely to provide claims which would lead to infraction notices being issues against players.

If players are served notice by the NRL, they would be summoned to an NRL anti-doping panel to argue why they should not be suspended.

Any guilty verdicts could be challenged, as happens in other sports, at the Court of Arbitration for Sport while a player served a suspension.

In the background, there is also the process of the Sandor Earl case. Earl confessed to ASADA in August he had numerous injections of the peptide CJC-1295 in 2010 when at Penrith.

The nightmare scenario for the game is for charges to be laid against players involved in the World Cup, which starts next Saturday.

ASADA has conducted interviews with many 2011 Sharks players, one of them being Paul Gallen, vice-captain of the Australian World Cup team.

"You never get ahead of yourself in this business, so it’s about playing football with the team we’ve picked," Australian coach Tim Sheens said.

"If something happens, we’ll consider what happens at that point. The team’s job is to go out there and win football games."

Rebuilding the Broncos

As Brisbane look to rebound from their worst season, the main game could eventually become about the 2015 campaign rather than the 2014 one.

Cam Smith returned from a family holiday last week to say the happiness of his family, not the size of his last contract, would determine if he moves to the Broncos.

This can only be read as a promising sign for the Broncos, even if Melbourne insists he plays the 2014 season at the Storm

Melbourne say they want to have a decision from Smith by the start of the premiership in March.

"If you were picking one player for a team, he’d be Cam," Broncos legend Darren Lockyer said.

"If he is not at the Broncos in 2014, but is in 2015, you could see the premiership window being open for him at the Broncos in 2015 off the back of a solid season for the boys.

"He isn’t an X-factor like Greg Inglis and Billy Slater, but he guarantees the game plan you have practised all week is implemented during a game and the Broncos probably lacked that at time."

The end game for the Anthony Milford standoff between Canberra is hard to predict.

Any move by Milford to Brisbane for next year could not be publicly unresolved until November 1 and the Raiders are fighting hard to convince the Logan product to stay.

"No (recent development) from our point of view. It’s a matter for the club, the player and his management and we are spectators on the sideline," Broncos chief executive Paul White said.

Star recruit Ben Barba hopes to resume training before Christmas from his ankle injury.

Martin Kennedy, a Roosters forward who did not make their grand final side, is one Bronco who will want a good pre-season as will Todd Lowrie, the workhorse backrower joining his fifth NRL club.

Daniel Vidot, announced this week as a recruit, would be more than handy if he re-finds his Raiders form from three seasons ago, but is only 23.

The World Cup

The 2008 final win by New Zealand in Brisbane has been a five-year itch for seasoned Australian Test players in the interim.

That blow to professional and national pride will hopefully guide the 24 players, 13 Queenslanders and 11 New South Welshmen, through the tour without reviving feelings from the past two especially contentious Origin series.

Every day, NSW captain Paul Gallen will see in the breakfast room and on the team bus the Queensland forward Nate Myles, who he punched twice in Origin I and later accused of leg twisting in defence and also leading with his head to injure opponents when taking the ball up.

Myles is a phlegmatic character off the field and is most unlikely to be a figure of agitation over that or Gallen’s many incendiary comments at Origin time.

"It gets boring hearing Queensland always talking about themselves and saying how they are passionate and how they hate us," Gallen said a week before Origin I.

"Well, I feel the same way — times 1000."

Last year, Gallen complained about how Maroons among the Test players broke into Queensland’s Origin victory song following a Test win over the Kiwis in Townsville.

Gallen said this week that the Australian World Cup would be "one unit".

"Nate and I had half-a-dozen drinks together at the Dally Ms," Gallen said.

In any case, the addition of Sonny Bill Williams to the Kiwi side will concentrate the minds of Australia’s players nicely.

Referees

Twelve months ago, Daniel Anderson took the role of getting more improvement out of referees than Peter Louis, Robert Finch, Bill Harrigan, Stuart Raper and everyone else before him had managed over the years.

Rugby league people rarely seem happier than when they are blowing up about referees, but it was a particularly messy season.

It included referee inaction in Origin I, which led to a crackdown on all punching in the game, and a seven-tackle try fiasco in Cronulla’s win over North Queensland in a finals series with many controversies.

This week, it’s reported that Anderson, a former Eels coach, is set to change jobs and take up a role general manager of football at Parramatta.

Next!

Competitions structure and salary cap

Queensland NRL club bosses would have fallen off their chairs on grand final night when they heard an aside on Channel 9 commentary that reserve grade would be in place next season.

Some Sydney clubs want to formalise state league affiliations to the point where all NRL clubs have players turn out for one feeder club only.

The Cowboys place their lower grade players at two Intrust Super Cup clubs, for instance.

The Broncos feed five clubs and would have to be convinced there is a better way to bring players along, as would, most certainly, the QRL.

Dual registration of players could be back on the table.

Decisions on competitions structures would be made by the ARL Commission, but some at the NRL believe the state leagues are more effective in grooming first graders than their own under-20 league.

"Our existing feeder model has served us well in terms of supporting the clubs with financial support and playing talent. Players can go and play for their area or club of origin and it’s important in Queensland," Broncos chief executive White said.

"If you look at the Queensland Cup as a competition, it’s at the upper end of second-tier competitions for national sport anywhere and it’s good for the clubs involved.

"Any change contemplated needs to be very much understood and thought through. All views need to be expressed and we have had no discussions about our current system."

NRL clubs have been consulted on salary conditions for next year.

Changes need to be made for payments surrounding lower grade competitions to prevent a recurrence of how a Penrith player was unable to be played at NRL level this year.

Caps at overseas competitions will be studied more closely than before.

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