When George Piggins led the march of 50,000 supporters to Sydney Town Hall in 2000, protesting the axing of his club from the NRL, News Corporation, then half owners of the league, were perceived to be the devil.

On September 8 this year, Piggins met 2GB broadcaster Alan Jones, South Sydney's former media manager Norm Lipson and others at the Surry Hills Lebanese restaurant, setting off on a plan which would allow him to watch the Rabbitohs in the grand final, should they make it, without losing face.

Only three days earlier, George had done a partial backflip on his vow to have nothing to do with Souths while Russell Crowe owned the club, having attended, at South Sydney Juniors, a reunion of the 1989 minor premiership-winning team he coached.

Maybe he warmed to the adulation, although he did not speak to Rabbitohs officials and there was the problem of that vow he would never attend a Souths game while Crowe was boss.

But there were some clever fixers at "The Prophet" dinner, including player managers Sam Ayoub and Wayne Beavis and former player, John Elias, out on bail on cocaine possession charges and whose racing tips are valued.

If The Daily Telegraph could ask what it would take to win him back and the answer was do-able, such as $100,000 for charity then....

So last week The Daily Telegraph asked and the answer was $100,000 and then followed up with a request to 2GB owner John Singleton for $50,000. The TAB put in $50,000 and another Sydney businessman added $20,000.

And the Telegraph had a front page story which says, "How the Tele helped heal sport's most bitter feud."

No mention of the fact the Tele helped create the feud by kicking the Rabbitohs from the competition; forcing Piggins to mortgage his properties to raise money to mount a successful Federal Court campaign for reinstatement; rendering the club uncompetitive when it did return to the NRL and making it vulnerable to a takeover by Crowe and partner, Peter Holmes a Court.

In any case, the feud is not over until Piggins settles his differences with Crowe, although he told a Sydney radio station he would shake the hand of the Hollywood star at the grand final.

Crowe is too media savvy to be churlish about the camera clicking "moment" but he has some entitlement, considering the Rabbitohs' player of the year award is named after Piggins who has also been invited to every major function the club has held but declined. The plan during the grand final is for Piggins to sit with wife Nolene and the loyal Lipson in a private box at the stadium, arranged by News Corporation, and distant from South Sydney officials.

A car will collect the trio from Coogee on Sunday afternoon and drive them to Homebush. It's all very compromised, the very antithesis of Piggins' honest campaign for his club's reinstatement and Tina Turner's "what you see is what you get," the anthem which made us so proud in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Piggins is a premiership-winning player and a former coach of the Rabbitohs. He should know, therefore, that grand final week belongs to the players.

Yet he has allowed himself to be presented like a trophy by News Corporation in a manner which is supposedly a redemption of its past sins against the Rabbitohs, while also drawing the publicity away from a new generation of South Sydney players.

Their grand final opponents, Canterbury, will  be loving this. The Bulldogs always prefer the spotlight to shine on the opposition and the Souths "feelgood" storyline has been soured.

How much better would it have been if George and Nolene arrived unannounced a minute before kick-off and taken their seats in the stand?

Instead, News Corporation will be laughing all the way to the circulation section. Yet there is a rarely recognised irony in all this.

When Souths won the full Federal Court judgment against their expulsion from the NRL, News appealed to the High Court, not out of vengeance but simply to have one less loss on their corporate legal record.

The High Court reversed the full Federal Court decision but News boss John Hartigan, sensing the public pulse, opted not to exercise their newly granted power.

It was quietly and classily done, the reverse of what we read on Wednesday.