Of Eels and slippery business
Date May 6, 2016 - 4:25PM
Greg Baum
Chief sports columnist and associate editor with The Age
This week in scandal, it is rugby league's turn, again. The salary cap drama engulfing the Parramatta Eels coincides with a conference in Melbourne on Monday addressing what its organisers from Victorian University are calling the "global crisis in integrity in sport".
One of heavyweight panel is Professor Hans Westerbeek, dean of VU's college of sport. In a recent article, he drew a parallel between sport now and the infamous Medellin cartel in Colombia that exported cocaine around the world in the mid-80s and at its peak was reported to be making $420 million a week. Distilled, Westerbeek says sport is too big, too readily accessible, too far-reaching, too lucrative and too glamorous not to be corrupt. Like the cocaine trade, it rolls over the laws and norms that constrain most other human endeavours.
Another speaker on the bill is Jaimie​ Fuller, chief executive of SKINS, the sports apparel maker, but also a promoter of sport as an agent for inclusion. He tells of a visit to the head of a prominent Melbourne sporting organisation last year to try to impress on him the worth of the "rainbow laces" campaign supporting LGBT people in sport. The man laughed Fuller out of his office, saying no one in sport was interested in "Mother Teresa moments". In other words, sport scorns doing the right thing for its own sake.
Westerbeek sees this spirit at work in the frequently heard commitment to better governance. The Parramatta case says to him that it is a smokescreen. "It's been reported that Parramatta has had 25 directors, six chief executives and four head coaches in the past seven years and they've breached the salary cap in five of the past six years," he says. "Given the latest allegations, it's fair to ask why they are still in the competition at all?"
Some history. In 2001, the Canterbury Bulldogs were sanctioned for salary cap breaches, then in 2006 the New Zealand Warriors, followed in 2010 by Melbourne Storm, who were stripped of all their gains for the preceding three years and prospects for the next. Now Parramatta has been exposed.
Some in rugby league circles think it probable that at least one club has been flouting the rules (as distinct from breaking them marginally and negligently, a frequent occurrence) in every year since the turn of the century. Now, as ever, the silence of the other clubs is deafening. So, for that matter, was the hush around the AFL when the Essendon supplements scandal came to light.
Perversely, Parramatta's penalty is lighter than Storm's. They will lose points for their six wins this season, but as long as they can off-load around $600,000 worth of salary by Friday - which they will achieve by the retirement of one player, injured veteran Anthony Watmough - they will be back in the race.
For this evident disparity, various lame alibis are offered. Storm suffered: wasn't that the idea? The scale was smaller at Parramatta: yes, but only because it was caught sooner. Essentially, this is sport making up its own rules as it goes along, beyond the reach of police or any statutory authority. Medellin, anyone? The only difference is that Medellin systematically broke the law, while sport never has been materially subject to it.
Parramatta has been fined $1 million, which will be quickly recovered from poker machines. Five officials, three board members and two executives are facing the music (paused for now by a court injunction). The 12-point penalty makes finals improbable, but not impossible.
But for the players (other than Watmough), nothing changes. This exercised the mind this week of Dr Matthew Beard, a moral philosopher attached to The Ethics Centre, who asked what was the difference between the players' roles in the Essendon and Parramatta cases. After all, doping and salary cap rorting have the same ultimate purpose, improvement in the stock of players.
The Parramatta players would say, as the Bombers did, that they did not know; it was in the hands of their several managers. They will say, as did the Bombers, that they trusted the club. But what they did not know they at least should have suspected, in both instances. The Essendon players were held responsible for the questions they did not ask. What questions did the Parra players ask, at tax time for instance, about income streams from up to five different sources?
It led Beard to an uncomfortable reflection. In doping law, he notes, ignorance is no excuse. "You're responsible for what goes into your body," he said. "Why not your bank account? Is there a double standard here?" Further, if the Eels players knew they were benefiting from salary cap rorting, ought not they be hit with similar punishments to Essendon? "If not, we need to make a case as to why we're justified in trusting agents, managers and accountants, but not doctors," he said.
Then, twisting it further still, "and if we can't, perhaps we need to rethink our black and white thinking about the responsibility of players who have taken a banned substance".
Obviously, players must have carefully calculated immunity because without them, there is no club, and a lesser competition, and ultimately fewer dollars, and so the modern Medellins make up their rules accordingly. This was the AFL's almost-perfect trick with Essendon until it was blindsided by WADA.
