This site is great.
I mean, everyone has their biases, but watching people around here flail about and try to rationalise every new bit of media coverage in a way that gives the NRL and its players the benefit of the doubt... well, its amazing.
4 Corners report: hatchet job. A Current Affair/Today Tonight hearsay interviews: compelling evidence.
Clare's distress: bung on and motivated by an agenda. Matty Johns' distress: oh so moving.
If players engage in consensual group sex then it's their prerogative and no one else's place to judge them. Charmayne Palavai is a dirty s**t, though, and her claim that she was raped by an NRL star is either bullsh*t or doesn't matter because she's loose/ugly.
Woman at Sharks club gets punched in the face and paid $20k hush money: "Can't you guys read, it was a mistake! The guy who did it and paid for it to be covered up says so!"
I mean, seriously, rugby league is a great game and I hope to christ it doesn't die, but its cause is not helped at all by its fans sticking their heads in the sand. Between the 2002 incident, Coffs Harbour, the Gasnier/Mason (I think) abusive text messages from a State of Origin bonding session a few years ago, Dane Tilse, Greg Bird, Anthony Watmough, Brett Stewart, Balmain-Ryde reserves team, and the culture at the Sharks written about in this story (and I'm sure others incidents that I can't remember off the top of my head right now)... maybe, just maybe, it's worth considering that the NRL has a problem with its players getting sh*tfaced and treating women like property rather than people.
Is that a problem confined to the NRL? Of course not. But that doesn't make it any less of a problem.
As long as the fans of the game continue to rationalise away every bad news story because they're so petrified about rugby league taking a public relations hit then things will never improve, and the perception of rugby league fans as simple minded troglodytes will continue as well.
