Grow or die. The logic of capitalism has, under the rule of Peter V’landys, become the logic of rugby league. It explains everything from the big picture initiatives – expansion into Perth and Port Moresby, the Las Vegas adventure, the ceaseless manufacture of hyperbole – to the small-town brawls like the Parramatta-Zac Lomax affair gone bad.

If rugby league doesn’t grow, it faces extinction. But what if that shibboleth of capitalism is just wrong? What if everything that sustains the National Rugby League’s success is local, tribal, even individual? What if its prosperity depends, ultimately, on satisfying a very particular niche? What if its very localism is what fires the imagination of followers and the young elite players who choose it above other sports? What if the endless-growth narrative is an empty ego trip? If we recognised this radical alternative as the truth, would rugby league be any worse off?

New ground, same rivalry: Canterbury sink the Dragons in Las Vegas.Credit: Getty Images

The growth imperative is the subtext for the Lomax saga. The player’s story – Lomax wanted out of St George Illawarra because they were no good, he went to Parramatta until he figured they were no good, he was conned by a fake rugby competition that was definitely no good, and then he tried to get into the Melbourne Storm because they are proven good – is a fable straight out of Aesop.

But the real undertow beneath the Lomax toing and froing is that the NRL will need 60 new potential first-grade players in the next two years as the Perth Bears and PNG Chiefs enter the competition, and it doesn’t want to lose one of Lomax’s quality. It is anxious that it is spreading the talent pool too thinly. From the league’s point of view, a fair outcome would have been for Lomax to strengthen a weaker team for 2026 and then sign with the Bears for 2027.

But here came the collision between the NRL’s grand strategic aims and the blood feuds and individual desires that make the game so compelling. Parramatta, who still feel dudded about losing the 2009 grand final to a Storm club that was cheating the salary cap, didn’t want Lomax to join Melbourne. Friday night’s match shows how right they are.

With Lomax on the wing, the Storm might have won by 70 points and thrown even more salt onto the Eels’ wounds. The weaker clubs who might benefit from having Lomax don’t want him because, with the evidence before them, they doubt his commitment. If his club isn’t doing well, he hasn’t been the type to hang around. Lomax has flirted with switching to rugby union, but would be paid about one-third of what he was getting at Parramatta. The kid’s become a poster boy for bad choices.

Zac Lomax leaves the Supreme Court.Credit: AAP

The result – Lomax goes off and plays rugby somewhere – is exactly what the NRL doesn’t want. It can’t afford to lose talented players at this expansionary moment. Or can it? Maybe it can. Maybe Lomax won’t be missed one iota. Maybe the growth strategy isn’t a tail that can never wag the rugby league dog. Maybe rugby league prospers because there is something structural in the game and the passions it arouses that can survive the loss of individual stars.

Still, the grow-or-die story persists. But it’s not as if the NRL hasn’t expanded before. It’s not as if there aren’t lessons to be flamboyantly ignored.

© The Sydney Morning Herald