The National Rugby League players have been "asked to sacrifice some of their privacy in return for the richest deal in rugby league history," according to Brent Read of THE AUSTRALIAN. The offer document sent to the Rugby League Players Association on Friday "included provisions for the NRL to gain access to financial records and phone accounts in the event that there was a reasonable suspicion of an integrity issue." In return for nearly A$1B ($792.8M) in pay and entitlements over the next five years, the players "will be asked to become more transparent than at any other point in the game’s history." The NRL "already has the right to demand personal information as part of salary cap investigations." The NRL "wants to widen those powers" to give the integrity unit the "ability to do the same whenever there is a sense of something untoward." The RLPA’s "reluctance to hastily accept the NRL offer has attracted criticism in some quarters" but it is understood integrity is one of the areas where the union is "searching for more detail before taking the offer to the players." The union held a board meeting on Sunday but it "appears unlikely it will take the NRL pay deal to a mass meeting of players" in Sydney on Monday. The "more likely scenario" is that the RLPA will vote to continue negotiations with the NRL as it "looks to reach a deal more palatable for the players over coming weeks" (THE AUSTRALIAN, 8/21).
