THE DEPRESSING STATE OF AUSTRALIAN RL CULTURE!

It's been quite some time since I've posted anything on this blog, mainly because I've been too busy with other stuff and also because I spent the best part of last month down under in Australia and New Zealand on my jollies! I'm back now though :-) I make the long trip down under at least once a year (but usually twice) for my annual (or bi-annual) fix of some combo of NRL, State of Origin, Anzac Test and Qld Cup fixtures. Last year I attended the RLWC instead of the NRL Finals.

I travelled down under last month and the idea of attending as many Rugby League games as I could conceivably fit in was no longer to be regarded as an essential and integral part of my holiday itinerary. I decided to spend time in Melbourne followed by Auckland rather than attend the Anzac Test in Brisbane. I didn't even bother arranging the timing of my stays in Melbourne and Auckland to coincide with a Storm or Warriors home fixture. I did make a little effort to book a two night stay in Sydney in the hope that I might cop an opportunity to attend a Monday night NRL game there but it didn't work out because the Storm V Raiders fixture got the Monday night schedule nod in that particular round of fixtures instead. Did I care? Was I bovvered? In short... no. I attended just one fixture over the best part of a whole month down under, an NRL local derby clash between the Brisbane Broncos and Gold Coast Titans, and that was only because a bunch of my Aussie mates wanted to go.

Rugby League was never out of the news whilst I was there. It occupied more than the usual reams of column inches in all the newspapers and it was invariably the top news item on every TV or radio channel news bulletin or notable current affairs programme. Unfortunately, not much of it was about the game itself but depressingly more about the seedier and sleazy underbelly of the sport and what high-profile people in the game get up to in their spare time, which quite frankly is nothing to be proud of at all.

The news was full of allegations of sexual assault on a 17 year old young female by the NRL's current marketing pin-up boy Brett Stewart. The NRL had to suspend their main season 2009 advertising campaign because Stewart featured prominently in it! Then there was the complete and utter implosion of the Cronulla Sharks club where it emerged that a number of their players had indulged in group sex with a young 19 year old female in a Christchurch motel back in 2002. This included one of the most high-profile and highly paid of RL media personalities who played for the Sharks back then. One of their current players then tested positive for a banned substance (I'm surprised he had the time to imbibe or inject anything given he was busy attempting to sue the pants off his former club for wrongful dismissal unless he was paid compensation of $100k), their halfback had been suspended for alcohol-fuelled, off-field indiscretions, their skipper was sacked from the captaincy role due to racist remarks made to an opposition player during a game, their sponsors were pulling the plug on their financial support in droves, and just to cap it all off, their CEO had punched a female employee of the club and urged another female employee of the club to give him a good spanking! If ever a club epitomised the brainless, boozy, macho, misogynistic, racist, rotten-to-the-core culture of the game in Australia, it was Cronulla. Given the current climate, Willie Mason being caught on camera (above) having a leak outside a nightclub ought to be regarded as nothing more than light relief.

With all this crap unfolding whilst I was over there, alongside the memory of other sleazy incidents that had taken place at Coffs Harbour and Fortitude Valley, I'd simply had a gutful and lost my appetite for turning up to any game down under.

I very much doubt the culture of RL is much different among clubs and players in England. The only difference is that incidents don't get reported or scrutinised like they do in Australia due to the much lower profile the game receives from the media in the UK. After all, it didn't take long for a well-known and highly-capped GB and England international to go looking for sleazy, extra-curricular activities whilst on tour with the RLWC squad last year. He even had the testicular fortitude (one wonders if he needed the boost of any help there?) to organise it all on Facebook prior to his arrival in Australia. He may have been judged a 10 out of 10 between the sheets, but his on-field performances in the RLWC most definitely rated no more than a 3 or a 4, which pretty much correspond to his ordinary match ratings throughout the rest of his highly overrated international career.