Manly skipper Daly Cherry Evans has hit back at Phil Gould’s assertion that NRL players get too much time off and called for more annual leave after a long rugby league season.
Post-season international rugby league campaigns add to the schedule for rugby league players, who have a longer season now that the Dolphins have joined the competition, which also includes Origin in the middle of the year.
On Nine’s 100% Footy Gould referred to the return to play and return to train rules around players as “ridiculous” and “silly” and that it was “unbelievable the amount of time they (the players) get off”.
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As of 2021, players who have completed four pre-seasons or fewer received eight weeks break while those above that bracket were privy to 10 weeks.
Speaking at the Prime Minister’s XII camp, Cherry-Evans confirmed the latest stipulations are seven and nine weeks, respectively.
Cherry-Evans believes players deserve even more time away from the game after an arduous rugby league season.
“Our leave is obviously going to make clubs unsettled and unhappy at stages, because they want the best out of us, the clubs are paying the player to provide a service so they’re always going to want to maximise that,” Cherry-Evans told Wide World of Sports.
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“But if you look at where the quality of footy is, how hard it is, how demanding it is on game day, yeah you’ve got to train bloody hard to keep up but you also need some time off when the time’s right … I reckon it should be longer, especially as you get older.
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“I definitely don’t need to be there as long as what the rules say but I’ve got a really good club where they understand that, they’re not pushing me to come back any earlier than what I need to do and even then they’ve probably gone the other way and said I don’t have to come back until later than what my return date is.
“I think it’s a horses for courses sort of thing, I’m really glad we’ve got those minimum standards in there to protect us because it’s a bloody hard job.”