It's true that the NRL has suffered a major player drain in recent years, with established stars such as Trent Barrett, Matt King, Michael Monaghan and a plethora of lesser lights being drawn into English Super League. Now the French rugby union clubs have dipped their toes in the water - making more of a splash than they perhaps deserve - with last year's signing of Craig Gower being followed in swift succession by Luke Rooney, Mark Gasnier and Sonny Bill Williams.

Only Williams has chosen to go in breach of an existing NRL contract - a departure that raises questions both of legal remedies and disloyalty to his teammates - but the issue of stars being sucked out of the game remains a live problem for the NRL, with roughly one third of players coming off contract every year.

Greg Inglis, Billy Slater and Johnathan Thurston would enliven any back line - in either code. Willie Mason made only limited impact in this year's State of Origin series but still has appeal as a likeable sort of battering ram. But, even if they all went, would the sky have fallen? And would they have let down "the game"?

Second question first and, to answer, let's ask Jersey Flegg - captain of the first Eastern Suburbs side, a key architect of the game's establishment and long-time administrator.

"When the game was founded in 1908, its first principle was that the players must come first. If a player can better himself or his family by going overseas, then he must be allowed to do so," then-ARL president Flegg pronounced in 1947, a quote uncovered by league historian Sean Fagan.

In fact, a host of Flegg's teammates in that first season didn't front up again. Disillusioned? No, not at all. Players such as Pat "Nimmo" Walsh, George Anlezark and Albert Rosenfeld knew there was money in England and chose to mine the riches when they went on the first Kangaroos tour, rather than return to support the fledgling code, Fagan argues.

"There is a story of the first Kangaroos that they got stuck in England; that's rubbish. A lot of them went on that tour with the exact purpose of not coming back," Fagan said.

One hundred years ago, rugby league was established on the principle that players should be rewarded for their efforts, and should be able to seek that reward wherever it was most plentiful. It is more than passing strange when the rebel becomes reactionary. But this, too, has happened before with league Immortal Clive Churchill a victim of the code ignoring its original principles as voiced by Flegg.

Churchill, the Test captain, was working as a retail salesman for £9 a week (with football roughly doubling his weekly income), when he was offered a £10,000 deal to play for Workington Town in England - and barred by the international transfer ban introduced to stem the tide.

"It was an El Dorado of undreamt wealth … The sum of £10,000 in those days was a fabulous fortune. Only a tycoon of big commerce or a highly rated artist could have commanded a fee of that dimension," Churchill wrote in his 1962 autobiography, They Called Me The Little Master .

Churchill was bitter, calling his treatment a denial of the natural right of a man "to better himself in life".

But back to the first question, would the sky fall if too many stars fall? Manly co-owner Max Delmege wishes the NRL would wave Williams goodbye and not waste money on a legal pursuit. "Whoever we lose, I believe can be replaced," he says.

Nor has the sky fallen in the past. Fagan argues that more of the elite rugby league players were overseas in the late 1940s than there are today - players of the ilk of Brian Bevan, Arthur Clues, Pat Devery, Lionel Cooper, Harry Bath, Keith Gittoes and Johnny Hunter.

"There was definitely more elite players overseas in the late '40s," he said. "No one in the rugby world community bemoaned them for going; they all saw it as part of the natural order and something they were entitled to do."

Another league historian, Ian Heads, concurs. "They lost some marvellous players - the Bevans and Baths. They built great careers but the gaps were all filled here. Rumours of rugby league's demise were greatly exaggerated."