Not trying to put you on blast Hard Yards but this isn't a master stroke, this is face-saving PR spin after the embarrassment of ****ing up something any competent administrator would have had sorted out months ago.
The NRL is a goldmine. It makes money hand over fist. PVL's stewardship is not the reason for that as he bent over & took it in exchange for good press on the last tv rights deal, and the only things you could point to as a profitable aspect of his stewardship is... rampant cost cutting, including neglecting grassroots footy via slashing funding to state government bodies. Country clubs have been struggling and folding and he's been far more concerned with building the ARLC's property portfolio... directing $1 million towards "grassroots footy" needs to be understood in the context of 1. PVL having spent $600 million on real estate acquisitions since he took over 2. Him not giving any actual explanation for what "the grassroots" means in this case... I'll believe "grassroots clubs" are seeing a single red cent when we see it, would not rule out that "Grassroots" is the name of a 5 star resort him & his mates will visit on their next junket and 3. Ensuring adequate funding & support for junior/grassroots footy is literally part of his job already and he's been doing a **** job of it, it's like bragging about making your child dinner; you're their parent, you're supposed to do that, and it's a particularly bad thing to brag about if you haven't been doing it every day.
When PVL has his horse racing hat on you better believe he's got musical entertainment for the higher class of clientele there. He has incompetently handled the showpiece day and now he's feeding us all a line to save face. It's exactly like when a politician tries to distract from their own failures by paying lip service to our brave diggers or something like that.
