http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sp...s/news-story/767711c0639a585c7eb6d41edbd374cb
Swans stand down Michael Talia, showing NRL and Eels how a code of conduct works
Paul Kent, The Daily Telegraph
an hour ago
WASTED opportunity is an eternal side story of the NRL.
It takes just a casual walk through team lists in the English Super League to identify it. Todd Carney, Tim Smith and a dozen others all play in a lesser competition because they ran out of last chances in the NRL.
Could they have been saved?
Not at the end, for sure. There will always be a question, though, that a little tough love earlier in their careers when they were young men making mistakes as we all do, but being so easily forgiven because nobody dared risk losing the faith of the player, could have made them realise the consequences if they continued.
It is always about consequences.
On Sunday night a very excellent 30 For 30 documentary,
Doc and Darryl, was repeated on ESPN, telling the story of Dwight “Doc” Gooden and Darryl Strawberry. They were going to be baseball stars for a decade in the 1980s, returning the New York Mets to glory.
When they won the World Series in 1986 Mayor Ed Koch announced 2.2 million turned up for their victory parade. It was big.
Yet Gooden missed it. He was somewhere else, stoned.
“That night should have been the greatest night of my career,” Gooden says. Instead, depression set in. “The sadness, the self-pity,” he says.
“Everybody got drunk,” Strawberry says of the time, when cocaine was saturating the States, “and some got lost.”
Different country, different game, different problem ... but the documentary is almost a blueprint of every modern scandal.
Excess and no accountability.
Origin was hijacked last week by another Parramatta scandal.
A capitalist with questionable qualities was trying to sell a sex tape involving Eels star Corey Norman.
Sunday, Roosters coach Trent Robinson called on the NRL to stop it.
“The NRL needs to step in and they need to make it public that you are not allowed to sell these on and we will go after the individuals that do this and that is protecting the players,”
Robinson said this week.
“They had an opportunity at the start of the year and they didn’t do this, so the Players’ Association didn’t do it either.
“It is important to get on this pretty quickly ... otherwise it is going to continue.”
What capacity the NRL has to stop this is up for query. Like all law, much depends on how the video was received.
If a player films himself and sends it to mates, it becomes murky. Some argue whoever had possession was free to do with it as they like, even sell it.
There is a simpler solution, of course. Don’t do it.
Too often the game regulates to the lowest common denominator, the people trying to sell a video but not the people who filmed it.
It is time to break the cycle.
On Monday the Sydney Swans stood down defender Michael Talia after police charged him with being in possession of a quantity of a prohibited substance.
While the AFL’s drug policy is far from perfect, the Swans guard their own culture and hold it to standards above their game. It breeds accountability, which breeds success.
Compare to Parramatta, who allowed Norman to continue playing after he faced the same charge.
Even after he pleaded guilty seven weeks later the Eels still wanted him to play.
The Integrity Unit wanted Norman to answer several questions in at headquarters before clearing him to play but the Eels claimed he was too busy to make the interview.
This, despite the fact Norman’s only employment is with the Eels. With his appearance dependant on it, where else did he have to be that was more important?
With the NRL refusing to budge, Parramatta stood him down rather than send him in to headquarters.
There is no better example of how the priorities are wrong in the game.
For many years the NRL has left discipline of players to the discretion of clubs with the right to come over the top if clubs sanctions are insufficient, as they did with the Eels.
Part of the reason is the Integrity Unit is the hardest working department in Australian sport and can’t keep pace with the paperwork coming across their desks.
The Eels are a fulltime job without the likes of Dylan Walker and the Brisbane extortion threat and Kirisome Auva’a and the never-ending rest of it.
But clubs have conflicts. Incidents are measured against such arbitrary factors as how valuable he is to making the finals, the depth in his position, how much of a fit he is at the club.
So there is injustice.
Maybe the NRL needs to expand funding and create a regulatory tribunal to sit across all incidents, an off-field version of the judiciary. It should introduce minimum penalties, like they do in the NFL, but not mandatory. The difference is key.
Years ago Jack Gibson was asked about player behaviour and, given his reputation for fairness, his questioner assumed Gibson treated all players equally.
“You don’t treat them equal,” he snorted. “You treat them consistently.”
