Roy Masters
Roy Masters is a Rugby League Columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald
Rugby League
NRL plans for worst on drugs
Roy Masters Defaulted grand final and internal draft to reinforce ranks of any club stripped of players.
NRL considers nightmare scenario
Roy Masters A defaulted grand final and an internal draft to reinforce the ranks of any club stripped of players because of doping sanctions are among the contingency plans the NRL has drawn up in response to...
League
Pet peeve: NRL clubs make mockery of memberships
Roy Masters Rugby league has an ignoble history of creative counting - fictitious crowd figures, salary cap manipulation, exaggerating injury tallies, even miscounting tackles.
Roy Masters
Men of dollars, and sense, required
Roy Masters It has taken rugby league more than 100 years to reach prudent adulthood. On Wednesday night, the NRL season launch at Sydney's Star casino is also a celebration of the code's new status as a...
Roy Masters
A bittersweet victory for the players' coach
Roy Masters Twice in the jubilant Storm dressing room, the coach Craig Bellamy confessed to a strange emptiness.
Roy Masters
Conspiracy theorists still looking for strings
Roy Masters Despite a new commission running the game, conspiracy theories about Sydney's rule of the game persist, particularly outside the New South Wales capital.
Coaches, not subterfuge, are the finals X-factor
Roy Masters 'They obviously want an all-Sydney club grand final,'' one NRL club official texted immediately after the Sea Eagles' controversial victory against the Cowboys a week ago.
Not one or two? Your chances are limited
Roy Masters Finishing first or second on the premiership ladder is a colossal advantage under the new finals system.
Dessie's midnight visit pays dividends
Roy Masters A midnight visit to Belmore exactly a year ago convinced Manly's premiership coach Des Hasler he should switch to the Bulldogs.
Rugby League
Why Demetriou should be ARL's target
Roy Masters Now that the AFL's No.2 man, Gillon McLachlan, has knocked back the job as chief executive of the ARL Commission, rugby league should pursue the rival code's No.
War looms over top job
Roy Masters ANOTHER rugby league civil war is on the distant horizon unless the ARL Commission appoints a football person as its chief executive.
Loyal servant's departure won't be lamented by all
Roy Masters Less than a week ago, a TV network boss asked me bluntly: ''Who runs rugby league?'' He was seeking answers to the powerbrokers with whom he should negotiate the upcoming broadcast rights.
Out of favour, out of friends
Roy Masters God so loved the world, he didn't send a committee. He sent himself.
The more things change, the less they stay the same in three decades
Roy Masters David Gallop has held the NRL's top job for a decade but there has been a revolving door in clubland, with a record number of club chief executives and coaches exiting in the past two years.
Roy Masters
Greek bean counters could learn a thing or two from leaguenomics
Roy Masters The wily Wall Street bankers and inventive Greek politicians who flouted the laws of economics would be confounded by the rugby league price mechanism.
