Nothing jolly sporting about violent NRL
Joe Aston
I am loath to exult in your cold misfortune, dear readers, but where else on earth would you prefer to spend the northern hemisphere's summer months than in London?
The days are 19 hours long. The European wine is cheap, and stocked on every corner. Alexander McQueen has stormed the V&A and Bradley Cooper is The Elephant Man. The Tories just got five more years and Her Majesty is in residence at Balmoral. General gaiety is abundant! And if convalescence becomes imperative, Rome and Paris are but a flit away.
Savage hangovers notwithstanding, the commencement of each London day enjoys a distinct advantage over other geographies: an abundance of brilliant writing. On Saturdays, Sir David Tang and Lucy Kellaway in FT Weekend and Hugo Rifkind and Caitlin Moran in The Times, then AA Gill and Giles Coren in The Sunday Times, Peter Hitchens in The Mail on Sunday, Boris Johnson in The Sunday Telegraph, Charles Moore in The Daily Telegraph, Taki and Jeremy Clarke in The Speccie and Matthew d'Ancona and Katharine Whitehorn who in the '60's famously counselled us youngsters to "find out what you like doing best and get someone to pay you for doing it" (advice dutifully followed, as I sit here on Rue Saint-Honoré with my MacBook Air and a cucumber martini, one table away from Milla Jovovich) in The Guardian. Heaven.
But London's words have no regard for its calendar. Its sport does: the races at Ascot, the tennis at Wimbledon, the F1 at Silverstone, the golf at St Andrews, and of course the cycling just across the Channel. And this year's season is a bumper special, book-ended as it is by the Ashes cricket and the Rugby World Cup.
OH FOR SOME CHARM AND ÉLAN!
How well the English do sporting events. They dress properly, and behave courteously. It's all conducted with remarkable civility. Nobody is falling over drunk at Lord's, or bellowing obscenities, sunburned in their singlets. And thus venues do not condemn their patrons to weak beer or plastic cups. They just don't need to. Whether the filter is class or capital, somehow, they keep the riff-raff out. Egalitarianism, I'm beginning to believe, is a grossly overrated organising principle.
If only Australian sporting spectatorship was conducted with such charm and élan! Instead, we get Canterbury Bulldogs' bogans throwing bottles at the referees (and yes, I know, Europe has its football hooligans). But who could expect upstanding behaviour from fans of a game whose players have barely evolved from their primate origins?
Yet another rugby league player stands accused of domestic violence this time the Sydney Roosters' Shaun Kenny-Dowall, who isn't playing apparently because he isn't feeling up to it, not because he has been stood down by his club or the NRL.
The NRL is "a proud supporter" of the White Ribbon foundation, Australia's "only male-led campaign to end men's violence against women". But on this scourge, this "national emergency", what has rugby league really done?
Last year, Rabbitohs player Kirisome Auva'a pleaded guilty to assaulting his girlfriend. He's already back playing in the seconds, and he'll be allowed to return to first grade next month.
Gold Coast Titan Greg Bird was convicted of glassing his partner (the conviction was overturned on appeal) in 2009, while another Rabbitoh, Greg Inglis, accepted a magistrate's diversion order for assaulting his. In 2013, it was the Bulldogs' Ben Barba. Every one of them is back playing.
We're told by researchers that domestic violence is blind to demographics, but I don't see any other sporting code so openly rife with it. Take in contrast cricket or tennis or golf or any other professional sport, and it's just not endemic. Or are they just better at keeping it quiet?
And not just violence against women. When they're not busy beating the missus, they're belting each other, or complete strangers. It's a violent game played principally by cretins.
SHIPPED OFF TO ENGLAND
No matter their misdemeanours, the sport's ecosystem simply ships its disgraced halfwits off to England to rehabilitate in obscurity.
After the glassing trial, Bird signed on to play for the Catalan Dragons, before returning to the NRL the next year.
After allegedly setting fire to a man's pants in 2009, urinating on another in a nightclub in 2008, and in his own mouth in 2014, Todd Carney is now here in France playing for Catalan.
After Canberra Raider Joel Monaghan was photographed being fellated by a dog, he moved to England to play for the Warrington Wolves. I'm getting on famously with my new canine housemate Milton Friedman the mini goldendoodle, but if things get too intimate then I may yet score a contract with the Leeds Rhinos.
Blokes who throw punches at other blokes are losers. A bloke who beats a woman belongs in the same category as a rapist or a paedophile. Yes, people are entitled to natural justice, which includes the presumption of innocence. But nobody found guilty of bashing a woman or in Russell Packer's case, stomping on another man's head and fracturing his eye sockets should ever play again. Period.
The relative diminution of rugby league in recent years is a good thing for Australian culture. Sydney is a far better city since AFL and soccer grew in popularity. Increasingly, it can boast the sensibility of Melbourne but with the weather of Queensland. That doesn't make it London in July, but it's a damn good start.
