| Winging it for the lucre | | Print | |
| Thursday, 23 July 2009 14:32 | |||
The FinktankThe Finktank is more of what you've come to expect from Jesse Fink, The World Game's enfant terrible, but with a bent on the big issues in sport. No sport, no personality, no subject, is off limits. 22 July 2009 | 11:00 - By Jesse Fink Sports stars should be making the most of their talents, not just making the most money. So Craig Wing has decided to play crummy club rugby in Japan. Good for him. A dozen games a season for some faceless corporation and he pockets $1.4 million in the process. Souths have let him go, already weighed down by the burden of paying him too much.Who can blame him? The guy, clearly, is something of a mercenary and such trifles as actually being the best player he can be – whether it be rugby union or rugby league – don't appear to be any sort of priority. If they were, he'd be sticking it out in the NRL with Souths or another club or following the path of NRL players before him such as Lote Toqiri, Wendell Sailor and Mat Rogers and giving the Wallabies a red-hot go. But Wing probably left that option, potentially far more lucrative than anything on offer in Japan, hanging for too long. I disagree with Spiro Zavos, for example, that this detour could set up the player for "one of the Australian Super Rugby franchises, perhaps the new 15th team in Melbourne… if this happens and he plays well there is the outside chance of his selection in the Wallaby squad to contest the 2011 Rugby World Cup." Fat chance. Japan is a dead-end. In fact Wing's true objective, according to the press coverage of the past 24 hours, is to turn out for the Land of the Rising Sun at Test level. He wouldn't look out of place. Nice tan. Eurasian features by way of his Filipino heritage. Squint a little and you could mistake Wing for a local. Wing has opted to turn out for a mob called NTT Communications in the Japanese Top Challenge Two competition, the second division, where he will be paid $60,000 a game. Former Wallaby Mark Gerrard will be a teammate. "At this stage in my career I am eager to travel and see the world and taste the experience of playing professional sport in another country with a different culture," Wing explained. "I am sure there will be some lonely times and some tough times but I will be a better person for it." Really? Would he be saying the same things if he hadn't been so burned by his investments? Wing has apparently come a cropper in a string of real-estate and stock market splurges – which can happen to the best of us – but looked a gift horse in the mouth when he failed to commit to a cushy $100,000-a-year third-party gig with Sydney real estate agent John McGrath that required him to complete handful of hours a week of promo work. According to reports, he turned up to McGrath's Rushcutters Bay offices for the first two weeks and then went AWOL. He also signed a "long-term contract" with pay-TV operator Foxtel in 2008 to be its "NRL ambassador" and the PR guff of the time promised "he wouldn't be flying off into the sunset any time soon". So much for that. Every person is entitled to want to make the most money they can from their abilities and so provide for themselves and their family, but equally I am of the view that every person owes it to themselves to make the most of their talent and not squander it for the wrong reasons. Easy money is one of them. Wing is far from past it. He might not be the young pup he was when he burst on to the scene in 1998, but he's still got plenty to offer the NRL. In the first State of Origin of 2009, Wing was NSW's star turn. He missed the second match through injury and played a minor cameo in the third off the bench at dummy half. At a time when Australian rugby league is in crisis the game needs it stars to stand by and stick with it through thick and thin. So far, players such as Billy Slater, Greg Inglis and Jarryd Hayne have done just that, resisting the lure of club rugby. The sport has been good to them, as it has to Wing. The difference between them is the latter, true to his name, has now taken flight. The landing will be as soft as the option he took.
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