Questions are being asked about the future of previously influential sports administrator Peter V’landys after news broke that his appearance on US television to spruik next month’s rugby league festival in Las Vegas has backfired badly.

V’Landys, chair of the Australian Rugby League Commission (ARLC) and CEO and director of Racing NSW, has been the driving force behind the 2024 and 2025 demonstration games in Las Vegas aimed at developing a beachhead for professional rugby league in the American sports market.

This week he used an appearance on the far right-wing Fox and Friends program on the far right-wing Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch’s far right-wing Fox Network to issue an invitation to far right-wing US President Donald Trump to attend this year’s event that will feature four NRL teams, the Aussie and English sheilas going the biff and an English Super League clash.

But the White House has today put the project in doubt by announcing that the Trump administration would be imposing heavy tariffs on the ARLC for importing an exotic sport into the USA.

“I can confirm that the 25% tariffs will be applied to all four games and any associated events being planned for Las Vegas by the ARLC,” a White House spokesperson said.

While the mechanism for imposing and collecting the tariffs remains unclear the spokesperson said the President himself had directed that they be imposed “to protect American football from cheap imports”.

The President apparently added: “We can’t have a football code with a simple and understandable five-tackles then kick format that even a young child can understand being compared with the unfathomable mess that is the American football we created just to be different.”

The news prompted senior officials within both rugby league and racing to question the tactics used by V’Landys and his ongoing tenure in his current jobs.

“For starters, Peter made a blue by kicking off his interview by citing the Fox News slogan, claiming that the Fox and Friends show was ‘fair and balanced’ when everyone knows it’s an extension of Donald Trump’s ceaseless propaganda machine,” an NRL source said.

“Then he issued an invitation to Trump to attend especially the NRL games in Vegas, ignoring the fact that this is the same President who just a few days ago made a point of turning up in person to the Super Bowl so that he could bask in the applause of American fans at an American game cheering him and their teams with chants of ‘USA! USA! USA!’.

“The chances of Trump or any Yank giving anything but a cursory shit about a football code from Down Under are pretty damn remote, so many of us are questioning whether Peter has simply lost the plot by persisting with this campaign.

“But what Peter did achieve was to draw Trump’s attention to the March festival, hence the tariffs,” the NRL source said.

Those views were backed by an anonymous source within the higher ranks of NSW Racing.

“Yeah, Peter has lost it,” the source said. “There are a lot of us here who reckon it’s time some of our stewards took Peter out to the track, put the screens up around him, put their earmuffs on, and .. well, you know the rest.”

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