Rugby League is back! OK, so to many of us it never went away, but the events of the past week augur well for a full resurgence of the greatest game of all.

Over the past 5 years, League has been battered from pillar to post, bounced between every court in the land by every media and sporting organisation on the eastern seaboard and verbally harassed in the media to boot. The bitter Super League-ARL war ripped the game's heart out, and turned it inside out to the point that it was eating itself from the inside out.

The peace agreement of 1997 was the first step to our own form of reconciliation, and like on the grander scale, it was tentative and not all embracing. The notion that we had to reduce clubs from 22 to 14 in less than three years frightened a lot of people and caused great heartache. The demise of regional clubs Perth, Hunter, Adelaide and Gold Coast did little more than lift an eyebrow of the Sydney-centric league community, but as soon as the legendary St George Dragons merged with relative anklebiters Illawarra Steelers, the alarm bells became ringing. Those alarm bells were what we in Queensland, where this sort of shake up went on 13 years earlier with the inclusion of the Broncos, referred to as reality.

Two of the grand old stagers, Balmain and Wests merged, and then a bankrupt Norths joined an equally dire Manly to form what many felt a marriage of convenience. But that left 15 teams. South Sydney were the scapegoats, deemed by the ruling body not to have done enough to satisfy their criteria. The uproar was immense.

Two rallies and two court appearances later, nothing has changed. Souths are still out of the competition, and the NRL are still adamant that 14 teams is a necessity.

But until last week, the tension that brought had nothing to alleviate it. Three years on the NRL still had no major sponsor, its pay-TV broadcast rights were as yet untaken and the grand strategic plan chief executive David Moffett worked so hard to organise was nowhere to be seen. It seemed Rugby League was drifting down a slow river that was gradually stepping up its pace towards the Niagra Falls.

Enter C7 Sport. Whatever you hear in the papers over the next few months, ignore it. They, along with Moffett and the NRL board, are the game's true saviours. As Phil Gould pointed out in the Sun Herald on Sunday, it's not about what you're worth, it's about how well you negotiate.

C7 put in a brave bid for the NRL broadcast rights to the rumoured tune of $50 million per season. $2 million per season for each of the clubs, $20 million for the NRL itself and $2 million for development. Suddenly the $30 million or so Optus and Foxtel were offering for the same right between 1998-2000 was little more than pocket money. Fox Sports had to pull out the big money or face losing its most valuable product.

They delivered. The PBL (Kerry Packer) and News Limited (Rupert Murdoch) owned sports conglomerate came to the table late with a $400 million six year deal to cover the NRL on Pay TV. That's almost a whopping $67 million per season. The make up of that money and how it would be spent was not disclosed by Moffett and nor should it be. Contracts should be kept quiet. What is known is that the deal is the biggest in Australian sporting history.

Suddenly the NRL, three weeks ago struggling to find the money to fund next year's competition, let alone fix the troublesome areas, were swimming in $100 bills thinking sweet dreams about the long term future of this most resilient code.

And as if that wasn't enough, a day later Moffett sealed the NRL competition a naming rights sponsor. Telstra, who Souths fans and officials were quick to point out sponsored the lone Super League season, came to the party. Although unconfirmed, the exact figure of the six year deal is believed to be around $60 million, with estimates ranging from $42 million to $72 million.

With a guaranteed $10 million per year soully for the used of the NRL competition, the money gained from the Pay TV deal suddenly saw Joe Average, club treasurer of Back of Bourke RLFC feeling much more buoyant about next season. Could it be they might actually get some funding from the governing body who has spent more time arguing than governing the past three seasons?

Moffett suddenly had a buzz about his demeanour again. He was again talking of the strategic plan and being "allowed to do things we weren't able to do" until now.

The best news is that the NRL already has a model for a single governing organisation, assimilating the ridiculous acronyms of the ARL, NSWRL, QRL, CRL, VRL, WARL, SARL et al under the one banner. Finally it would enable the NRL to deposit the most valuable funding we've received into the areas that matter: kids, country and development. Perhaps some can even be poured into our nearest developing neighbour, Papua New Guinea, who are the only country in the world where Rugby League is the national sport. And to think that they have the most number of players per capita than any other country in the world? The potential is mindboggling.

But, amidst all the Christmas cheer that two of Australia's biggest corporations have dished out to our favourite sport, there is, of course, some gloom. Rugby League has more Scrooges than any other sport in this country, and they have been quick to try and dampen the enthusiasm of the game's supporters.

"It's all just News Limited blood money," "where's it all going to end up? Back in Murdoch's pockets," "This is just glorified Super League," "Super League have won." Forget the financial security of the sport you supposedly love, let's bite the hand that feeds us and say "yeah, nice money, but you touched it...and you've got cooties". That seems to be the general immature demeanour of the paranoid and misinformed.

News Limited do have a vested interest in Rugby League, nobody would ever deny that. If you count the number of Rugby League stories in the press, the TV ratings for Rugby League every year - clearly beating its nearest sporting rival, AFL - the sheer volume of merchandise sales, of course News want a part of it. why else did the Super League debate happen in the first place?

But would a company that a journalist - or rather, Roy Masters - claimed was ready to sell out and jump ship a month ago suddenly invest another $200 million into the code? Would a company as selfish and bottomline oriented as Telstra pour up to $12 million per year into that sport? No.

The only way News Limited can even partially recoup the millions upon millions of dollars it lost over the course of the war is to turn Rugby League into what it envisaged in the first place: the greatest sport on earth. That starts with getting the game 100% right in Australia. $500 million will go a long way to doing that.

And ultimately you and me are going to be the winners out of all of this. We will see just how great our game can be. And with this money secured, it's only a matter of time.