This article sums it up perfectly!
Why NRL integrity unit will be overstepping mark if it bans Walker
Andrew Webster
At some stage on Friday, Souths five-eighth Cody Walker will find out if he will be playing in the opening rounds of the rebooted NRL competition.
If recent punishments are anything to go by, and the NRL’s integrity unit wants to claim consistency and fairness, he’s looking at a month-long suspension, perhaps longer.
Storm prop Nelson Asofa-Solomona missed three Test matches for New Zealand for his rampage outside a Bali nightclub in October last year.
According to an independent witness, Asofa-Solomona was defending teammate Suli Vunivalu, who was about to be “bottled” by a drunken patron outside popular Seminyak nightclub Favela.
Instead of watching his mate get whacked with a Bintang, Asofa-Solomona whacked with his fists first. Didn’t matter, said the NRL, and the enormous Storm forward was rubbed out for three internationals.
If that’s any sort of precedent, Walker faces a four-match ban given Tests hold more weight than home-and-away games.
The 30-year-old was in his hometown of Casino in December last year, attending the funeral of a relative, when a street fight broke out.
Footage emerged this week of Walker flying through the air like Neo from The Matrix, kicking one of the main protagonists in the chest.
Given Walker should’ve had his arm in a sling because of a shoulder reconstruction, the flying kick was probably the better option in the eyes of the Rabbitohs medical staff.
Like Asofa-Solomona, Walker was also defending his friend — in this case, his cousin — but in anyone’s language it was a king hit.
The problem with all this is that neither Walker nor Asofa-Solomona should be punished at all. A fine at worst.
Neither player was charged by police. Neither player was the subject of a complaint from the general public. But Asofa-Solomona was sanctioned because a bystander filmed the incident on his phone. As for Walker, we’re only talking about any of this because someone tried to blackmail him for $20,000 in exchange for the footage.
Yes, we understand the importance of protecting “the image of the great game of rugby league” and so on. Don’t bring the game into "disrepute" and all that jazz. Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt, got the snow dome.
But the integrity unit is overstepping its mark with increasing regularity, and Walker looms as another example.
The NRL will forever be haunted by the eight-game ban and $125,000 fine it handed down to then Roosters halfback Mitchell Pearce for his drunken dalliance with a dog.
Again, we only learned about that because an even bigger dog wanted to cash-in by selling the video footage to TV networks.
The Bulldogs’ Mad Monday celebrations two years ago also spring to mind. Canterbury were slapped with a $250,000 fine — the largest for behavioural issues in NRL history — and players Adam Elliott, Asipeli Fine and Marcelo Montoya hung out to dry like criminals.
The only reason we heard about it was because News Corp shadowed the group around during their end-of-season celebrations and had strategically placed photographers with telephoto lenses peering into a private function at the Harbour View Hotel.
Once again, there were no police charges, no complaint from the public. I phoned the bar at the height of that non-incident. Couldn’t care less, they said. It was a private function.
While Walker faces a suspension, his coach, Wayne Bennett, — or the club itself — faces a potential fine for not reporting the incident to the integrity unit in the first place.
Oh, to have been a fly on the wall on Tuesday afternoon as chief investigator Karyn Murphy grilled Bennett, asking him to explain himself. Bennett is a former Queensland copper, while Murphy is a former Gold Coast detective.
Bennett knew of the incident but didn’t tell Souths chief executive Blake Solly or then head of football Shane Richardson.
There wasn’t much Bennett could’ve told Murphy that he hadn’t earlier told the Herald’s Christian Nicolussi the day before, when Bennett said it was “immaterial” if he knew about the Walker incident because “nobody had made a complaint”.
Most NRL clubs will notify the integrity unit these days if a player so much as farts in the wrong direction, fearing they’ll be accused of the dreaded “cover-up”.
Bennett’s loyalty to his players, as much as his ego, precludes him from doing so, especially when there’s been no police action or complaint made.
At the very least, he should’ve told Solly and or Shane Richardson. But he's got a point.
Rugby league only views matters in black and white, instead of shades of grey. But it's dangerous ground if it continues to suspend players for minor indiscretions not worthy of police action, let alone as much as a whimper from the public.
