AUSTRALIAN rugby has been rocked by the news that a second young Wallaby will face a criminal charge in the space of a week after NSW utility back Kurtley Beale was charged with assault.
AUSTRALIAN rugby has been rocked by the news that a second young Wallaby will face a criminal charge in the space of a week after NSW utility back Kurtley Beale was charged with assault.

Wallabies playmaker Quade Cooper appeared in Southport Magistrates Court on a burglary charge last Friday and the case has been adjourned until July 2.

And now Beale will appear in Mount Druitt Local Court in western Sydney on January 13 on a charge of common assault.

However, burglary is a particularly serious offence in QLD under the QLD Criminal Code there could also be many different aggravating factors that the DPP could pursue, however that again is another issue. How hard will the DPP push their case against him? and what actual evidence can be produced? Can’t wait till Friday!

Barking Glider – how the hell you can draw a line between Tiger and Johns is amazing and a little sad to me.

I am reminded of Wycliff palu getting busted earlier this year for a DUI and losing his licence. it barely got a mention. When I saw it, I thought if that wss a league player … Mind you,. at the time RL had a story like that every week, so the media were in hype mode.

The media cares about one thing – sales. At the end of the day they’d report on scrabble if it was popular.

A typical smugby analysis. The NRL has over 400 first grade players. That’s not counting another 400 potential news stories via the NYC players. The media also go after NSW and Queensland Cup players, and retired players, and even the relative of club owners. So what’s that? 1000 potential players for Gallop to be worried about?

As we’ve seen with Cooper, one of the lesser known Wallabies is reported upon with less attention and hysteria than a NSW Cup player. The ARU also have only about 30 to 40 contracted players.

There are far less RU players, so there damn well should be less incidents. Doesn’t prove that on a pro rata basis that RU players are better behaved than league players.

A fairer comparison would be to compare Wallabies to Aussie cricketers or the Socceroos.

I was thinking its sad that several weeks ago this young man was having a fun dare with his equally young friends and teammates for thrills in a Dublin restaurant, a Wallaby, on tour in Europe, and living an adventure most only dream of, and now is up on burglary charges back home on the Gold Coast. I was not at all intending to imply that he may have committed a burglary just for thrills, and its certainly not moral high grounding. I had loved that story about the hot sauce and it now seems a world away.

I actually think its a great shame being an admirer of Cooper the rugby player for some time now and was dismayed like many others to hear the news, especially as he had a great tour and was providing the Wallaby backline with much of the unpredictability and creative spark that they were lacking. If he is found guilty, it will be a loss to Australian rugby and a big blow to Cooper, his family, friends and his supporters.

It’s interesting to consider the case of Greg Bird. After his NRL contract was torn up he sought contracts overseas. At that stage he hadn’t been tried for any crime let alone convicted of one. He had merely been charged with a crime to be tried at a future date and in the eyes of the law was innocent until proven guilty. But the mere fact that he had been charged was still enough for him to be denied a visa for the UK. Despite being rejected a visa for the UK Bird managed to get one to play in France. But like I said at the time that was just unproven charges and not an actual conviction. Who knows what the French (or other countries) would do if a player had actually been *convicted* at the time of applying for a visa.

Technically it’s going to come down to the question that foreign authorities ask. If they asked something like “do you have any convictions recorded against your name?” then of course you could truthfully answer “no”. But they don’t actually ask questions like that because in considering whether to grant you a visa foreign governments are not interested in the technicalities of Australian sentencing law. Rather, they are interested in whether you’ve actually committed a crime. So they would ask something like “have you ever been convicted of any crime?” in which case the truthful answer would be “yes”. Of course in the “give details” section you could and would then explain the fact that the sentencing judge decided that “no conviction recorded” was an appropriate sentence.

Foreign governments may go even further than asking about whether you’ve been *convicted* and actually ask whether you’ve been *charged* with any crimes. If this is the question then even people who have been tried and acquitted would still have to answer the question in the affirmative and then mention the fact and circumstances of the acquittal in the “give details” section.