NRL 2017
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Not a great off season for the Board by the looks of things.
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Wouldn't be the NRL without some drama in the offseason. Bit of a worry that the salary cap for 2018 has been sorted yet however could mean the Warriors may be able to throw all their cash at a title?
They'll probably still finish 9th.
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@Sneakdefreak said in NRL 2017:
Wouldn't be the NRL without some drama in the offseason. Bit of a worry that the salary cap for 2018 has been sorted yet however could mean the Warriors may be able to throw all their cash at a title?
> They'll probably still finish 9th.
Oh, Mr Confident I see ....
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Big story coming out of the NRL over the weekend is that Alex MacKinnon, the bloke who had his neck broken in a tackle that paralysed him (and was used by Ch9 in a shit attempt to smear Cameron Smith) is going to sue both the NRL and Jordan McLean for damages.
I'm not all that sure how i feel about this. I feel sorry for the bloke, to have your life so dramatically changed doing what you love is heartbreaking, and i can see how it would be very easy to feel extremely bitter about what happened (as Alex so obviously does).
But, to go after a player in these circumstances, when it amounted to a tackle gone wrong is a huge step. Even bigger is going after the NRL. I can understand how you can make a case against McLean (although i find the car parallel he used misses the mark), but how can he find some way to show the NRL were negligent?
One thing is for certain, this is going to divide the NRL community. There was amount of goodwill built up towards McKinnon after his injury, and during his "recovery". A lot of that was eroded after the 60 Minutes episode. This is going to further muddy things. A huge amount of money was raised for Alex by various charities, and going after more is going to leave a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths.
I would imagine the outcome of the case will have huge ramifications for the NRL, and the players themselves. If players can suddenly become personally liable for the outcomes of actions on the field, where is the line drawn? And at what point do the NRL become liable? I would imagine the only winners here will be the insurance companies, and the lawyers.
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It will be pretty hard to establish that the NRL owed him a duty to prevent injuries like that. Tackles like that happen all the time across multiple sports. More likely to succeed against the other player but even that will be a stretch. I guess they are going after the NRL too because they have deeper pockets. I'd be very surprised if he won that case.
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It's a little sensationalised, because i assume he's just trying to activate insurance claims. But the governing body thing is a big play, and will be very interesting to see the outcome.
Like you i struggle to see how they could be found to be negligent, but courts of law and sports don't operate on the same page, so anything is possible.
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@mariner4life I guess looking at how they have dealt with illegal tackles will show how serious they are at eradicating illegal plays that could end up like this to show the NRL may have been negligent and could have prevented this??
They were saying on the radio (unsure how true) that it costs him pretty much 100k per day to get about?
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@taniwharugby said in NRL 2017:
@mariner4life I guess looking at how they have dealt with illegal tackles will show how serious they are at eradicating illegal plays that could end up like this to show the NRL may have been negligent and could have prevented this??
They were saying on the radio (unsure how true) that it costs him pretty much 100k per day to get about?
That's at odds with the information freely available on the web:
Estimates indicate the lifetime cost for each case of paraplegia is about $5 million and that for quadriplegia, is about $9.5 million. It is also indicated that 40% of these costs will be borne by the individual.The economic cost of spinal cord injury and traumatic brain injury in Australia, The Victorian Neurotrauma Initiative, Report by Access Economics Pty Limited, Australia, June 2009, P.16.
