Nice timing guys :roll:
From smh site
Rugby league's plan to attract more young women has been badly damaged. Candace Sutton and Eamonn Duff report.
Just before dusk on Wednesday in the Cargo Hall of Sydney's Overseas Passenger terminal, National Rugby League chief executive David Gallop will usher in the new season at a glitzy cocktail party.
In the audience will be several hundred of Sydney's best-known somebodies.
A week ago, the looming official 2004 premiership launch by the harbour of the best and toughest rugby league competition in the world seemed appropriately exciting.
Flashing up on the television screen, in an advertising campaign designed to attract female spectators, will be "rugby league's hottest new male pin-ups".
They bound bare-chested from the surf, lope along the beach and mingle with devoted fans, all to the pulsing background music of the Hoodoo Gurus.
The $3 million commercial was engineered to boost crowds and revenue by a code anxious to shed its bloke-heavy image.
The success of the 2003 Rugby World Cup, particularly among women fans, gave its brother code the confidence that this year it could further flex its marketing muscle.
But at Coffs Harbour's Pacific Bay resort in the early hours of last Sunday morning, the ground was laid for a series of claims and counterclaims which now make the launch seem strangely out of kilter.
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Exactly what occurred when a young woman met members of the Canterbury Bulldogs is now the subject of at least two inquiries, one by the police and one by the NRL.
But whatever the findings, Gallop, as much as any guest at his glittering party, knows things have got off to a shocking start for "the greatest game of all". In a business sense and every other sense.
NRL marketing director Paul Kind says that last year "everything was up - crowds, TV ratings, merchandise, website traffic, sponsorship and corporate hospitality sales".
What seemed eminently possible at the end of 2003 now seems faintly out of grasp.
In 2004, before the first kick-off of the competition proper, the stories leaking out of Coffs Harbour sound like a bad old movie.
Ugly stories of sexual assault - and even a tale of one player spitting on the 20-year-old victim when she refused him.
What's true? Gallop can only wait for the result of the police inquiry.
More sure is that the code must be suffering from the impact, especially on that desirable new market: as yet unconverted women.
If female rugby union followers were looking for a quick footy fix, post World Cup, with the more loutish league, the websites of Canterbury Bulldogs fans are a poor place to start.
Within 24 hours of the alleged assault numerous fans, of both sexes, had deemed the woman "a s**t" who had maligned their beloved Doggies.
"Christabella", for instance, posted on the
http://www.nospam25.com.au this sentiment: "There's no other club out there who I believe could fight back as well as the Doggies do and a good part of this is due to the huge amount of passion that us supporters have for the club . . .
"I heard that she slept with three players in one night. There's only one word you can use to dicribe [sic] someone like that."
In a reference to the Bulldogs' 2002 salary cap scandal and sexual assault allegations made about the team a year ago at the same Coffs Harbour hotel, she was nevertheless confident that "like all other scandals that have plagued this club, this one will be sorted out in time".
But it's not a Bulldog-exclusive problem Gallop and the NRL have to wrestle with.
In the 2003 Canterbury incident, a 42-year-old married woman complained that, after consensual sex with one player, she became distressed when another player became involved and a third watched.
The Sydney Morning Herald sports reporter Jacqueline Magnay said group sex had almost become a rite of passage in rugby league.
"So condoned has the act been in the past," she said, "one league coach encouraged his representative team to indulge in the practice in a bid to enhance the male-bonding process."
The NRL has made desperate efforts to clean up the act of clubs that have gained a reputation for bad behaviour.
Players are put through a number of progams that are centrally run by the NRL and many of the clubs' individual progams are run in conjunction with those guidelines.
There are, for instance, courses on cultural awareness, which includes racial vilification and sexual, racial or religious discrimination.
On players and the law, this relates most closely to the current Bulldogs investigation.
It deals with players' rights under the law, alcohol-fuelled incidents, assault and sexual assault and how players can expect to be treated differently from other members of the public because of their high profile.
A lecture is given by a former professional athlete.
As part of the program, free counselling is available to players and their families. All players also receive media training, financial planning advice and help with career transition once their football careers are finished.
After breaching the salary cap in 2002, the Bulldogs shed officials and 37 competition points and paid a $500,000 fine.
Gallop said then that the game of league "has had its heart broken in an unexpected and tragic way".
Sports marketer Leo Karis -who manages cricketer Mark Waugh and soccer player Paul Okon - does not believe the Coffs Harbour rape allegations, whatever the outcome, will break league's heart or any other part of its frame.
"It's the best rugby league competition in the world," he said. "The NRL will continue to focus on what it's best at, the football.
"Each season the players get stronger, the game gets faster and constantly improves. Rugby league is underpinned by lucrative television contracts. It has enormous marketing muscle and I don't see that in the long run this issue will affect the marketing of the code."
But women can be fickle customers, and sponsors sensitive to their own need to appeal to a blended audience.
Car and electronics companies believe women make major purchasing decisions.
And, in the case of Canterbury, last week retailer Bing Lee suspended negotiations to become a sleeve sponsor until the latest inquiry is completed.
No company wants its products associated with the lurid allegations that have been made.
That includes die-hard Doggies fans.
Among the vile messages posted on the web last week was: "Maybe she got all psycho on them and they told her to piss off. Maybe that's why she started this. As some sick form of payback. Who knows? All I know is they are innocent."
But there was also "Lauren", who said that if the worst of the allegations were true, she was walking.
"I've supported the blue and white since I could walk, but if it's true . . . I couldn't stand by the club," she said.
As he raises his glass to toast in the new season on Wednesday, David Gallop may be nervous.
Girls flock to AFL games. They loved the Rugby World Cup. All his dreams of luring them into league may come to nothing.
