Tag Archives: rugby league

What to do with players accused of criminal conduct: to play or not play … is that the question?

June 21, 2012 By in Shumpty Speaks Tags: , , , , , 3 Comments

Jesse Stringer’s assault charge and subsequent suspension from all Senior AFL activities for the remainder of the year has pushed the Australian Rugby Union’s decision to select Kurtley Beale for this weekend’s test match against Wales to the forefront of the minds of most sports followers this week.

The conundrum of allowing a player of any code accused, but not convicted, of a crime to play at the highest level of their code is not a new one albeit it is one that in the digital age in which we live more focus than ever before is placed on.

This is not a problem that is going to go away: simply put the sportstars of today are becoming younger and, whilst all conduct can not be talked away as juvenile hijinks or just “boys being boys”, young men (and women) are the demographic most likely to end up in some form of trouble with the law when alcohol is involved. 

In recent times we have seen a variety of approaches from clubs and the administrators of those clubs to allegations of inappropriate conduct.   Variously across the codes and in no particular order, some examples are:

  • Neville Costigan being dismissed by the Brisbane Broncos after he was charged with drink driving (but before he was convicted).
  • Todd Carney having his contract terminated and being deregistered from the NRL (by the Canberra Raiders) for urinating on a patron at a Canberra nightclub amidst allegations of drunk and reckless driving (among other things).
  • St Kilda player Andrew Lovett having his contract terminated after being charged with rape, a charge he was ultimately acquitted of.
  • Brett Stewart being removed as the “face of rugby league” and stood down for a period following allegations (ultimately found to be fabricated) of sexual assault.
  • Robert Lui being released from his contract with the West Tigers after being charged with various counts of assault against his partner.
  • Robert Lui, again, being suspended from playing rugby league for a year after being found guilty of assault against his partner.
  • Isaac Gordan being suspended by the NRL for 9 matches as a result of being charged over a domestic violence incident.
  • Nick D’arcy being removed from the 2008 Olympic team after being charged (and before his guilty plea) with assault having being involved a brawl with a former male team-mate.
  • Jake Friend having his contract terminated after falling asleep whilst drunk in the back of a cab and failing to pay the fare (for which he was charged).
  • Brett Seymour being sacked by two separate clubs over uncharged alcohol fuelled misconduct.

This is a small sampler of the punishment meted out by clubs and administrators across a number of sports in recent years for questionable player behaviour.  I make no comment on the strength or weakness of the punishments given out above.  They are what they are.

In addition to the examples above, and I note that I do not purport to know all of the facts of either case, now Messrs Stringer and Beale find themselves before the Courts on assault charges.  In both cases alcohol was involved.  Indeed in the case of Stringer the drinking before the incident has consistently been described as a “marathon”.

When one traverses all of the cases noted above, the common element appears to be the involvement of alcohol.  Equally, it also must be noted that some of the “offenders” noted above are repeat “offenders”.  The travails of the likes of Messrs Carney, Friend, Seymour and Lui are not isolated incidents or one offs: the matters noted above are portions of ongoing conduct which, again, has been consistently alcohol fuelled.

Whilst sports fans lament the lack of a “punishment” for Beale’s alleged conduct, there seems to me to be two far greater concerns arising out of the Beale and Stringer cases.  They are:

  1. Why are the punishments previously meted out to players who have been charged with assault NOT (in addition to the usual deterrents) having a deterring effect?
  2. Is there an alcohol problem in sport?

For the latter question, the usual glib responses are “they are just young men having fun” and “the problem is not alcohol, it is people pestering the stars when they are just trying to have a quiet drink”.  I can not accept either premise: if you are not a sportstar you are not absolved from punishment if you are an idiot or abusive when you are drunk.  The alternate glib response is “but that is the way it has always been” also does not fly with me because community standards have changed since the days of listening to your sport of choice on the transistor radio.

My personal view (and I admit I have had my own problems with alcohol in the past) is that there is a problem with alcohol in sport.  Part of the problem is obvious and is that, unlike most 18-25 year olds going out for a night on the town who have to pull up when their funds run out, sportstars have an unlimited available spend when they go out.  Of course they, the sportstars, are going to get drunk: presented with an bottomless wallet wouldn’t you? 

The former question is one to which there is no answer other than the punishments being meted out are not having a deterrent effect.  Equally, even if they were, I wonder if a player full of their chosen liquid refreshment would even think of the consequences before they step over the line like the players in the examples set out above.    

That being the case, I do not think the question of whether a player charged with a crime should play for their team after being so charged is the right question.  As fans we need to be asking of the sportstars and the people who coach and administer the games we all love whether enough is being done at all levels to seek to stop the cycle of alcohol fuelled violence that continues to pervade our daily sports fixes.  I, for one, do not think enough is being done: the evidence that this is the case is available for all to see above and in the sports pages every day.

In the end of course, after all of the hypothesising above, we are still left with the scenario where two elite sportsmen have been charged with assault and one is playing for his country on the weekend while the other is sitting on the sidelines.  I am left to wonder: how many more assault charges there needs to be before the question I raise in the preceding paragraph is seriously considered?

For the love sport: State of Origin

June 14, 2012 By in Shumpty Speaks Tags: , , , 1 Comment

As many of you will have worked out by now, I am a sports fanatic: simply put, if it is sport I will watch it and I will follow a team.  Over the years I have fallen in and out of love with many sports.  Rugby League is a sport that I have loved and fallen out of love with over time and it would be fair to say that aside from my ongoing support of the Canberra Raiders, the NRL competition in Australia really does not interest me much.

That fact declared, it is that time of the year again that my fervour for the game of rugby league reaches its peak because it is State of Origin time.

For as long as I can remember as a young child there were only three nights in a year that I was allowed to stay up late and they were the Wednesday nights that State of Origin was on.  I would sit with my Dad, watch and listen to his oft frustrated rumblings about high tackles, repeat sets of six and head high tackles all the while not really knowing what was going on. It would be fair to say that during my formative years I was not so much a rabid supporter of State of Origin rugby league but more a passive observer.

That all changed when I went to my first game of State of Origin at Lang Park.  12 June 1991 was the date and it was the third game of a hard-fought series ultimately won by Queensland 2-1.  I have three vivid memories of this game: first that we were in the old outer of Lang Park sitting on concrete steps; second that Mal Meninga kicked a goal from the sideline and I had never heard a sound like it and third, it was Wally Lewis’ last game.  To that point in my life I had never experienced anything like it and was hooked.

Still though, even after my 1991 experience I did not possess that “hatred” of New South Wales that most of us from the Sunshine State possess around this time of year.  It was not until 1995 that I really understood what it meant to Queenslanders to beat New South Wales.

For those that can remember it, the 1995 series was held at the start of the “Super League War” and all of the expectations were of a New South Wales whitewash, the bulk of Queensland’s usual team sheet being aligned with the rebel faction.   New South Wales players, coaches and supporters were insufferable before the series started and I wanted nothing more for Queensland to prove them wrong.  Everything that those much more senior to me had been complaining about with respect to those who reside on the other side of the Tweed River finally was sheeted home to me. 

History shows that Paul Vautin’s team of “Nevilles” (as he described them) defeated their much more fancied opposition 3-0.  Sitting in the lounge room of the Humphreys’ Family homestead in Ipswich images of Billy Moore screaming “Queenslander”, Brett Dallas running away to score under the posts in Melbourne and Trevor Gillmeister leading Queensland into the last game when we all knew he was crook sent chills up the spine.  Even now as I sit here writing this I get the chills.

That was a series Queensland was given no chance to win by anyone and yet despite all of the disadvantages put in front them prevailed against all odds.  That win meant so much to me, my father, my mates and anyone else I spoke to and for the first time I really realized how much it means to Queenslanders to beat New South Wales.

I am not going to get into the usual banter about which state is better: the fact is that I am biased and it is impossible for me to answer impartially.  What I am going to say is that the “hatred” between the supporters of the two States is, to me, what continues to make these series of State of Origin games what they are.  For weeks before game one, the best of mates will be sniping at each other about their respective teams chances and, with the advent of mobile telephony, there seems to be not a moment in the game that goes past that does not lead to a text message or a tweet directed at the opposition teams supports being received or responded to.  Having attended two games in “enemy territory” in New South Wales proudly sporting my Queensland jersey I have felt (and heard) the disdain with which interloping supporters are considered with.  Without that byplay between the respective groups of fans, I do not think the series would be what it is today.

It is important to recognise here though what I also consider to be the essence of State of Origin.  It is the fact that for the period of the game and its preliminaries it truly is mate against mate from the players right through to the fans.  Which, by extension means, that the following day we are all still mates no matter what the result.  It is for this reason I have purposely put the word “hatred” in inverted commas during this post.  Hate is a word easily bandied around but the fact is that we do not hate each other (as that word is meant to be used), we just hate losing to each other.   It is just sport afterall.

With that, I look forward to 4 July when the third game of the present series reaches its crescendo at Lang Park and hope the best side wins: of course we all know that that team is Queensland.  Let the banter begin!

What ever happened to “the umpire’s always right”? A sports fan’s lament

June 4, 2012 By in Shumpty Speaks Tags: , , , , , , 5 Comments

The question of the treatment of match officials is one that has been firmly on the lips of many in recent weeks given the seemingly many and regular displays of petulance we have seen from the stars of many sports. It seems, based on the evidence before me, that respect for match officials in sport in general is at an all time low.

Pondering this issue over the last couple of days the thought that kept coming back to me was the question “what happened to the umpire is always right?”. As I recall childhood spent trundling medium pacers and standing at fine leg / second base in summer and kicking balls of various shapes in winter, the only rule that as young participants in sport that was drummed into us other than “have fun”: was that the umpire / referee was always right.

Indeed, as I, and a sampler of friends from those many moons ago, recall it the rule went something like “even when the umpire is wrong he is always right” and it had a punishment for breaking it that involved a clip over the ear from a parent and a sit on the sidelines the next game.

On the premise of what sports fans have all witnessed over the last couple of weeks across many codes either the rule that we all played by as kids in my generation was not pressed on professional sportsmen when they were kids OR something has happened that has changed the kids running around the local sports grounds into the petulant performers that grace our screens on a regular basis.

It is important to stop at this juncture and briefly examine what I am complaining about here. Obviously I watch a lot of sport and these are the things that I have seen that have concerned me in just the last month:

1. The regular habit of dummy halfs in rugby league throwing their hands up in disgust at seemingly every play of the ball that takes one second longer than they think is appropriate.

2. The regular habit of rugby league and rugby union teams who are waiting for a decision by the television match official to walk back to their own half in anticipation of a try being awarded.

3. The claiming of catches by fielders in the slips in test matches were the fielder could not possibly think they have caught the catch.

4. The captains of teams in both rugby codes regularly and vociferously questioning any call that they consider to have gone against their team. Such questioning now seems to, as par for the course, include swearing.

5. Tennis players questioning every call in an attempt to keep themselves in the game during an obvious losing cause.

Such behaviour appeared to reach its epoch in the first State of Origin game where the captain of the New South Wales team had a running battle with referees and was heard to quip “this is your first State of Origin isn’t it? You can tell” among other choice lines.

Put simply: there is not a game of sport that one watches these days in which such questioning of the match officials is not seen.

Now I acknowledge that the business of sport is big business these days and I also acknowledge that never have players whilst they are on the field been under more scrutiny with the advent of microphones on referees lapels and cameras focused on every facial expression of the players. These competing interests mean that on the one hand it might be said that a wrong decision can have a bigger effect on the team that the decision goes against and on the other hand we as fans get to hear and see more of the interactions between players and officials.

That said, I actually do not care what excuses players and codes might roll out to defend player behaviour in this regard because it is clear to me that changes need to be made. This was really sheeted home to me when my father told me anecdotally about running the line in my nephews under 7 rugby league recently. He (my dad) was shocked when one of the combatants quipped to him after one call “you aren’t doing us any favours are you”. The kid was seven.

If this is what our future stars think is appropriate conduct (and I know my sample size is small) then now is the time to do something about it.

Trying to get back to the rule that the match official is always right seems to me to be an appropriate starting point for the codes that are presently in the news on this issue and the only way that it seems to me that that “golden” rule is going to return to the games we love is for there to be strict punishments for breaching the rule.

Some sports deal with this well. In baseball, if you show dissent you are thrown out of the game; regardless of the state of the game and the position the player / coach holds. In cricket, players who dissent (and this includes the simple act of lingering after a decision is made and looking at the umpire) are punished on a sliding scale that runs from fines through to bans.

Conversely, other sports such as rugby league seem to treat the problem by resting the blame with the match officials themselves. This is simply not good enough.

Whilst I do not advocate a baseball style removal from the game for dissenters in all sport, it seems to me that that is nearly the point we have reached in order to bring the players back into line.

Sport is already playing a losing battle with video games, tablets and junk food and does not need the future generations (and their parents) to be put off by the poor conduct of the stars of the game. Sport also does not sports fans to turn off their TVs and stop watching because they simply can not stomach the whinging any more. Perhaps now is the time for serious action to be taken.

Until such action is taken (and I doubt it ever will), sports fans such as I are left with the continuing lament about the decline of the rule “the umpire is alway right” and our fingers lingering over the off buttons of our remote controls.