Rugby League - A News Ltd War Plan (2010)

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We have spent a lot of time and effort undermining the integrity of Rugby League, yet still the fans flock to the game in droves. We need to take things to a whole new level. Here within is a revised strategy to annihilate the game. The reason for this strategy is mentioned below and we'd appreciate all your efforts in helping us achieve this.

Phase 1 – Gain Trust

We need to start the year with fluffy pieces talking about how anxious everyone is about the upcoming exciting season. Get the public on our side.

Plenty of nothing stories about average quality players who we’d never bother wasting our time with and how they are doing great things to help the games image. We really need to drive these nothing stories into the public hard. They’ll think everyone in the NRL are angels and heroes. Build up their hopes and expectations for all players.

Phase 2 – Attack strong points

Every code has bad boys and good guys. We’ve spent a lot of time creating the bad boys and last year we began work on tarnishing the image of
the good guys. We’ve done some good pre-season work in building up the image of the codes good guys. We need to fabricate anything at all that could be semi-legitimate to destroy the good guys. Some of our targets and ideas for each of these players are:

Jarryd Hayne – we’ll work on a strategy which accuses him of downloading child pornography. There’s no chance Hayne would ever do this which would be more shocking to the public.

Benji Marshall – There is a plan to launch a string of similar attacks on Marshall, based on him knowingly spreading sexually transmitted diseases to schoolgirls because he thinks it’s fun.

Jamie Soward – He’s young and trouble free. Time to fix that. We’ll frame him as a drug mule and hopefully get him caught in Indonesia. If we do this correctly, we should be able to get to the airport at the same time he’s due to come through customs. If we are running a bit scarce after these three big attacks, we can link other players to Soward to try and have a whole team all but shut down.

Phase 3 – Divide and Conquer

With the code reeling from these huge attacks, we will have to ensure any indiscretions in the other codes are completely ignored and quickly forgotten. We need to put as much effort as possible on these attacks. We’ve also got an idea to link the Gold Coast Titans to some international drug dealers, to help pay players wages. When the time is right we’ll do a review of ALL the indiscretions in the NRL since 1999. Hell, we’ll even get a documentary on TV, possibly even an investigation via Four Corners or 60 Minutes.

While the game is at its lowest point ever, this is when we’ll unleash our grand idea. As previously stated, the exact details have yet to be confirmed, but the general idea is to give the NRL such a bad image that no one will want to televise it, advertise it or sponsor it.

Phase 4 – Superleague Mark II

We will relaunch Superleague. We will come across as the games saviour when everyone else had abandoned it. The NRL will have no option but to hand it over. Once we have secured ownership of the code, we will begin Phase 1 all over again, however this time, we won’t progress beyond that point. Once we have the public support back, we’ll float the NRL on the stock exchange and give 51% of the shares to News Ltd, and run a campaign allowing the fans to take an ownership in the game. We’ll let all the fans fight over 10% of the shares and sell the remaining 39% to PBL.

Phase 5 – Cashing In

Once the share price peaks and the world economy looks set to crash again, we’ll dump our 51%, and with any luck, sell them to PBL. Then we’ll revisit Phase 2.

Finally, in conjunction with this scheme, we would like to announce the position of NRL Chief Editor as Rebecca Wilson. Please feel free to drop by and give her any ideas you have that sound believable that could assist in our operation.

Kind Regards,
News Ltd Board of Directors.