Justin Rodski | Melbourne Storm CEO (30.07.26)
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They've been to PNG. I can be honest, I was going to go with Zach Lomax last weekend, but unfortunately it fell through and this sort of wasn't the right time. They're building a pretty beautiful squad at the moment and I'm not saying I'm going there, but whoever does go over there, I think they're going to be pretty competitive in their first year.
That's Cam Munster from Melbourne Storm, as we well know. So while Simmo has set us up for the Tasmania conversation, this is what's happening in Rugby League at the moment with PNG, the expansion team. The Chief Executive of Melbourne Storm is Justin Rodsky. Justin, great to have you back on the program. Thanks, Gerard.
Yeah, good to be with you.
What is the club's attitude toward Cameron Munster and the prospect of PNG?
Yeah, so we gave him permission, early permission to have talks with P&G. Obviously Cameron's been a stalwart of the club, life member, premiership player and he's obviously weighing up his future beyond his contract next season and as part of that we said to him that if he wanted to explore P&G with his family that he earned the right to do that and he was going to go over there as he said in that quote with Zach Lomax but in the end the that fell through so it's still a live option for him. We've got a contract extension sitting with him that we think is really fair and reasonable and we'd love him to be a one club player and continue playing for us but we also understand the realities of where he's at in his career and he's got a young family and the opportunity to potentially go to an expansion team, particularly P&G when you look at some of the financial benefits that can
come to a player from a tax benefit point of view, we understand that he wants to explore what that could look like.
How do you balance up that's an incredibly mature approach to it with the risk of losing an iconic player?
Yeah, that's the tough challenge, isn't it? When you have someone that's been at the club for such a long period of time, he's been here since he was 17, you know, he's had his family and, you know, become a man through his time at the club. So we have a lot of respect for him. And I think when you get to that point, you need to have a mature conversation about, okay, we understand that this could be a live option for you. We appreciate that that's something you might want to explore. We would love for him to stay and continue his career, but we've just got to balance that with the realities of what expansion teams can mean, particularly when they're given concessions like PNG are.
in the AFL the rules are written for Tasmania that they they must take players so there are going to be players taken from other clubs what's the attitude around the NRL is for this to work a set of players are going to have to leave is is there an acceptance or a resistance to that yeah I'd say it's a bit of both again because you've got Perth Bears coming in next year that
don't have those concessions and potentially are disadvantaged as a result of PNG coming in the following year where you have those concessions. And then if you think about 2029, there's every chance that there's a further 20th team expanded into the competition, most likely from New Zealand. So if that happens over a three-year period, you've got three new teams coming in, that's nearly 100 players that these teams are going to have to pull from somewhere. And you've got to ask, okay, have we got the talent pool, but where are all these players going to come from? So strategically, from a list point of view, in terms of your pathways development, how you're managing your contracts and the length of those contracts is so important right now for the future of your club in the next three to five years, because
I don't know that there's been a competition that has expanded like that, certainly not in Australia, where you've had a successive team coming in over a three-year period. So that's creating a lot of challenges, a lot of headaches, but a lot of important strategic meetings.
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