Instead of saying it's not their job to police their idiot mates (which it's not), they're so accustomed to lying they come out with "I didn't know there were restrictions". Which makes them and the integrity unit look like bigger dopes than usual.
They never said they didn't know about border restrictions. They said they were unaware the people they gave tickets to cross the border illegally. Which is entirely possible.
How many friends of players would ask for tickets? I'm guessing hundreds. Possibly thousands considering how many friends even reserve grade footy players seem to have. I doubt the players do anything more than try to acquire as many tickets as they can and pass them along. But even if they did decide to try and police their friends, it's entirely possible the friends could have lied and said they were eligible to cross the border. But more probably the players didn't give a shit either way and never bothered to ask.
Either way it's none of the NRL's concern and the players aren't responsible for what their friends did. It's f**king ridiculous the NRL even bothered to question the players about an issue that concerns QLD police and border patrol... and then investigated whether they could punish players for the actions of their friends.
The only way it would concern the NRL is if it was players illegally crossing the border. Even then they question the players friends or teammates, they can't then punish the teammates for any knowledge they had of the incident. Only use their knowledge to punish the guilty party. Which in this case the fans had already been punished by the authorities.
