HAHA THEY CLEARLY KNOW WHO IT IS
The Kangaroos player at the centre of $6500 theft allegations has previously been accused of stealing by an NRL club.
However, the Australian Rugby League has failed to find any evidence the player was involved in the series of thefts from Kangaroos players during the Leeds leg of their recent tour and, despite a "sophisticated investigation", has closed the case.
The player cannot be identified for legal reasons and neither can the club because that may identify the player. But officials at the club said the player "has a problem everywhere he goes, he grabs stuff, he can't help himself".
It is understood the club declined to call police and charges weren't laid against the player.
"At the end of the day, it wasn't to our benefit to involve the police," a club official said.
But the Australian selectors were unaware of the player's problem, and ARL chairman of selectors Colin Love said players were selected purely on their playing ability.
"We didn't know about this [the thieving allegations] and even if we had, we would have been careful about the rumour. If the player had not been convicted by a court, it could be a case of him being unjustly accused," Love said.
The Australian Rugby League yesterday released its report into the scandal.
Team manager Gerard Raper and the team security officer, Yorkshire police inspector Gary Haigh, failed to find evidence of who was involved.
ARL chief executive Geoff Carr said there wasn't a scrap of evidence and was bitterly disappointed by the innuendo surrounding one of the players.
"It is embarrassing for the players who competed on such a successful tour that, while the ARL was obliged to look at all possibilities, others have seized only on the notion that a person or persons from the touring party may have been involved," Carr said.
The ARL said it will refund the money to the players but "has been able to establish no evidence linking any person to the disappearance of the funds".
The player who is the No.1 suspect in the eyes of both the ARL and the majority of players on the tour is, therefore, officially eligible to be chosen in another representative team and, assuming he is guilty, actually profits from his crime because he will be refunded money he himself reported stolen.
The player's manager, acknowledging the vast traffic in email correspondence naming his client, said: "He is suspect No.1 without any evidence against him. That's the way the matter will remain."
The manager ruled out any possibility of the player coming forward and making a public statement about the damage done to his reputation via gossip.
"He will be saying nothing to anyone," the manager said, adding the player was hurt by the implications of newspaper reports and disposed to comment but was concerned at the consequences because it would open a Pandora's box of accusations. He also said the player had reaffirmed to the ARL the theft of his own money on the tour.
By declining to make public comment and lamenting the loss of his reputation, the player will find the scrutiny of players more intense than the wind whipped up by the media sandstorm and the scorch of email.
Despite the ARL's two-page press release attempting to divert the possibility of blame to guests and staff at the Marriott Hotel in Leeds, the majority of Kangaroos were hopping mad and keen to nail the player.
He will be sorted out, despite the remote possibility in the minds of some he may be innocent. The dressing room universe of verbal darts, heavy sarcasm and ridicule is quadrupled on the playing field, where the men across the line are not teammates but enemies.
The player will be sledged unmercifully. "Here comes the tea leaf" will greet him on many a carry of the ball.
Radio will be almost as unsubtle. He will be riddled with holes from talkback radio pot shots and commentators won't be able to resist the temptation to say: "Kangaroo X is having a set-to with Kangaroo Y. Wonder what that is all about?"
Media reports over the past week have said the player also stole a watch from a woman's purse at a nightclub and had a Walkman belonging to another player found in his bag. Another Kangaroos player reported having his jumper stolen.
An NRL first-grade coach claims senior players at the suspect's club had been forced to confront him about his stealing.
Maybe the player, if he does have a problem, should have confessed his disposition to steal was an illness. Players would probably have treated him sympathetically. League has long shown tolerance towards those with mental difficulties, including those charged by the courts with sexual perversions or other crimes.
The ARL report said: "We owed it to the players and the fans to try and establish all we could on the issue and that's why we have sought a full report from the team management."
However, the fact remains all players on the tour have been impugned by the report's inability to name anyone.
Raper's report lists a member of the public stealing a projector from the Leeds hotel as evidence someone outside the tour party could be guilty, and points out all the thefts took place in England.
But the world's vast "truth" engine, email, has already decided the identity of the guilty party.
Half bricks, like half-truths, travel further. They move even faster and over a greater distance now via the speed of the vast, whirring electronic chat rooms.
The ARL, like all national sporting organisations, has a new beast to handle, one largely immune from defamation.
They would have preferred this story never to have surfaced in The Sun-Herald. But the days of "in house" handling of embarrassments are long gone.
Sport's best hope is a story stays on the back pages and not the police blotter. But players will always have their own cultural rules on how to handle those who steal their wives, their money or their honours.
At this year's Kangaroos reunion, held the day before the NRL grand final, a hall-of-fame plaque acknowledging the feats of the fabled 1963 team went missing.
The '63 Kangaroos, the first team to win the Ashes in Great Britain, are very proud of their status in the hall, along with the 1948 cricket "Invincibles".
A celebrated member of the '63 team took the plaque and was later seen to put it in the boot of his car.
A Test teammate observed this and, after some agonising deliberation, reported the theft to ARL chief executive, Geoff Carr.
Carr contacted a former clubmate of the light-pawed Kangaroo and the plaque was returned within 24 hours.
