Newcastle Knights and the NRL's return under a…

Newcastle Knights and the NRL's return under a COVID-19 spotlight

IF all goes according to plan, the National Rugby League will resume on Thursday, May 28.

Ten weeks will have passed since the season was suspended after round two on March 23 with the Newcastle Knights, one of six undefeated teams, in second place.

With outspoken Australian Rugby League chairman Peter V'landys firmly in charge of the game, the NRL has settled its differences with its broadcast partners.

All clubs resume training this week, and the players have taken a 20 per cent wage cut.

CORONAVIRUS ROUNDUP

New Knights coach Adam O'Brien has impressed in the short time he's been in charge, and he recognises the trust imbued in the sport and its players.

Horse racing - where Mr V'landys is incidentally chief executive of Racing NSW - has continued through the epidemic, but without crowds.

League ground seats will also be empty, but the image of 12 rugby league players jammed together in a scrum every few minutes is surely the very antithesis of social distancing.

Such contradictions aside, a successful return of the NRL will ease the way for other sports, amateur as well as professional, to end their hiatus.

For all codes, their futures lie with a set of 15 principles on the resumption of sport endorsed last Friday by the National Cabinet.

The cabinet met again yesterday, and with 1 million Australians out of a job and Treasury putting the economic cost of the virus at $4 billion a week, Prime Minister Scott Morrison spoke afterwards about flattening the unemployment curve by getting people back to work.

GATHERING GONE WRONG: One of the photos that emerged last week with NRL players Josh Ado-Carr of the Melbourne Storm and Newcastle Knight Tyronne Roberts-Davis visiting Souths star Lattrell Mitchell and friends near Taree. Ado-Carr was also photographed shooting a rifle. A day later, Penrith star Nathan Cleary features in videos and stills taken on Anzac Day, where he and a group of girls enjoy themselves innocently enough, but still in breach of coronavirus social distancing restrictions. All have been fined, and Mitchell and Ado-Carr have been summonsed to court over alleged firearms offences.

Mr Morrison did not mince words.

He said there "will be" further outbreaks. Case numbers "will" rise.

Unavoidably, coronavirus will hang over every aspect of "normal" life for a considerable time to come.

This means professional sport, both as mass entertainment and as a means of employment, will only be an affordable diversion as long as our COVID-19 cases are manageably low.

Rugby league's reputation is such that good behaviour can seem the exception rather than the rule.

In a climate where everybody else is living a no-frills existence, misbehaving footballers will find little mood for public sympathy if there are repeats of last week's shooting, camping and cuddling faux pars.

With almost all the world's sporting codes on hold, the return of the NRL will be very closely watched, and not just on these shores.

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