Quote: fleabag "That's an interesting point !
Legends like Alex Murphy argue that Rugby players are well paid (well the one's at the top are) but the amounts doled out to footie players is obscene. Mind you, they charge £70 to watch a match at some footie games. You can't take families to the footie (even if I wanted).
That's way out of the pockets of most ordinary people.'"
I think that's a short-sighted view from Alex Murphy to be honest. Rugby League players are, like most footballers, not public school boys with a sure route into the family business or papa's chums' investment bank, like a certain other sport we know. A RL player's career is generally even shorter than a footballer's. After their career is over they need to find employment for the next 30 years of their lives.
A top-level footballer (or even a copule of tiers down these days) at least should have a decent pension built up from his wages (unless he's deliberatly frittered it away of course).
By the time I was 35 I had 12 years experience of electronics engineering, so changing job at that age was easy for me. That's not the case for some poor guy whose experience is mostly knocking the sh*t out of other poor guys!
I'm not suggesting paying the guys £100,000 a week would be a good idea though, and I'm not sure the TV money would quite stretch that far!