DID someone say ‘strike'? Don't worry, someone will very soon.

Like a person with no sense of balance on a bender, rugby league keeps tripping over its own feet. It can't even figure out which controversy to concentrate on from one day to the next.

Like, is today about clubs pulling players out of the Four Nations because of the delays in kicking off the Independent Commission?

Or is it about the players demanding an increase in, well, almost everything when the Rugby League Players Association met a delegation of clubs in Sydney?

Take your pick. Neither make for particularly heart-warming reading. Both stances are not just regrettable but worthy of varying levels of condemnation.

Colleague Danny Weidler must have got his mail from somewhere about clubs preventing players from representing their countries in October and November.

Whichever CEO told Danny that sounded like a good idea obviously knows stuff-all about his job, the nature of players and the game as a whole.

Firstly, can you imagine the reaction from the playing group when its boss tells them ‘you can't get a Test cap, go away with your mates for a month and cop some handy pocket money into the bargain - because I'm taking a stand on principle?!?

Please.

And just imagining that a couple of clubs go through with it and the television companies who have bought the rights to the tournament ask for some of their money back, the crowds are dismal and England wins ... wow, what a great result for the future of rugby league in Australasia. That'll show them!

Braindead beyond words.

The frustrating thing about the RLPA boss Dave Garnsey's demands for players with more than 300 first-grade games to be exempt from the cap, the cap itself to rise to at least $4.5 million, the marquee player allowance to increase to $450,000, the minimum wage to be increased from $55,000 to $70,000, loyalty payments to be paid to players for their services to the game and State of Origin wages to be increased to $25,000 per game ... (takes a breath) .... is the timing.

David, when we get an Independent Commission, a new television deal and streamlined administration, what are you going to demand then? Gold-plated jockstraps? No training? Hummers for everyone?

The RLPA has been shown the NRL's books. Is it too much to ask, when announcing its demands, for the association to say where it wants the money to come from?

And one final question: how many more columns can this correspondent write about rugby league being a great game held back by greed and short sightedness before people stop reading this far?