Quote: Deeeekos "These two countries and their insane pursuit of the insane policy that is "zero covid" will see them not participating in the 2022 world cup and that subsequently won't happen because...reasons.'"
We (in NZ) are not pursuing zero covid.....we never have done. What we did was establish at a very early stage that not one person should die of this horrible pandemic if it could be helped and we shut up shop and closed our borders. Kiwis and essential workers are quarantined on return and other than a couple of scares, we've pretty much done as expected with a death rate of 26 people. Yes, we have been slow to vaccinate, but we will get there....at which stage I expect the government to explore how and when we open up......if you're going to talk about insanity, why not pop outside and clap for your nurses and remember the 130,000 corpses across the UK whilst you consider voting the Tories back in to ensure the nurses your clapping for get little or no pay rise.....
I've said I'm appalled at NZRL doing as they're told, but the reality is without the NRL, league would be dead in NZ. I attended the Wellington Region RL final at th weekend....the crowd was a London Broncoesque few hundred predominantly family and friends of the 2 sides involved.
As for 2022. The NRL will be forced to the table now to confirm payers are released in 2022.....the players union will make sure of that. The Wannabees and All Blacks playing in Europe and America this autumn will only make League look more marginalized and niche....people on RL boards like here live to blame Union for the woes of league, but the reality is we've done it to ourselves.
The tail wags the dog in league and it turns out it's the tail.of a dingo doing the wagging....but this started a long time ago when SL became the only important thing.....even now, the 10 team plans point to the game eventually vanishing as a pro sport inside a decade in the uk