- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
It’s been an eventful couple of days in rugby league, despite the NRL being on hiatus for the first representative round. I’d love to be talking about the games played on the weekend, however the major talking points at present are racism and homophobia.
Nothing major, just two of the biggest social issues in the world.
Two incidents have raised the blood of many, however the mob should put their pitchforks away, and carefully consider the circumstances under which both incidents took place.
Last week, rugby league media personality Paul Kent caused an almighty uproar when he said he had little interest in the Fiji versus Samoa Test match. Manly winger Jorge Taufua then took to Instagram and posted the following message:
Never did like this guy. Another Donald Sterling. I guess you’ll never understand what these tests mean to the pacific people. If you get a chance, get out and support our island brothers. #Samoa #Fiji “IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT YOU THINK”
Never did like this guy. Another Donald Sterling. I guess you’ll never understand what these tests… http://t.co/l9AbN24jXG
— Jorgé Taufua (@yo_jorgetaufua) April 30, 2014
For the uninitiated, Donald Sterling is the owner of NBA franchise, the Los Angeles Clippers, who was caught on tape telling his girlfriend not to be seen publicly with black people or to bring them to ‘his’ games.
For his racist comments, Sterling last week received a life ban from the NBA and a fine of $2.5 million dollars, and is likely to be forced by the NBA Board of Governors to sell the Clippers.
Taufua calling Kent “another Donald Sterling” was labelling Kent a racist, and sadly many people jumped on this bandwagon, especially on social media. In no time, Kent had been declared a racist, and even had to write a column in Saturday’s Daily Telegraph defending himself.
While Kent perhaps should have shown more respect to the Fiji versus Samoa game, his comments didn’t originate from a racist intent. Kent’s point was that the NRL competition has built up tremendous momentum over the last couple of weeks, and he didn’t think the Test match between Fiji and Samoa was worthy of a stand-alone, main-event game.
With only 11 of the 34 Test players currently playing first-grade NRL football, Kent believed it was a sub-standard game of rugby league and he therefore had no desire to watch it.
How does that make him racist? The simple – and only logical – answer is that it doesn’t. If you think it does, you’re just plain wrong.
Sadly, Kent wasn’t the only individual tarred with an ugly label over the weekend.
In the Under-20s State of Origin match on Saturday night, the referee’s microphone picked up an unidentified Blues player calling Queensland lock Luke Bateman a “f**king gay c**t.”
Though Bateman told officials he did not want to make an official complaint, the NRL match review investigated the incident. Wests Tigers’ Mitchell Moses was identified as the culprit, and subsequently suspended for two matches.
Moses has quickly been labelled a ‘homophobe’ by some people.
NRL Head of Football, Todd Greenberg, said Moses will be required to undergo an anti-vilification education and awareness program, while NRL chief executive Dave Smith stated “there is no place for any form of discrimination in our game”.
Though I applaud the stance, and fully support it, there’s just one little problem: no one was discriminated against.
Bateman is not gay. So the slur was technically nothing more than foul language. Moses can be accused of being boorish and ignorant, but it’s not exactly accurate to call him a ‘homophobe’.
Don’t get me wrong, what he said was unacceptable and he should be punished for it. As the NRL had recently held a press conference with other major Australian sporting organisations to announce they were committed to ensuring homophobic slurs were not part of their sports, they most definitely needed to act upon the incident.
But the context in which the comment was made suggests Moses should really be punished under the category of being a neanderthal and using unacceptable language, rather than being anti-gay. If you want evidence of this, read the slur again and notice which words are censored. It will give you an indication of the truly offensive part of the comment.
I asked a gay friend if the sledge offended him, and though only a sample of one, his response was, “Not really. Not in that context. He’s basically just calling the other player a girl, isn’t he?”
That response should help add a little perspective to the incident. While there should be no room in the game for homophobic slurs, and the battle for equality starts by making such comments unacceptable, let’s not overreact either.
The NRL has done the right thing by suspending Moses and sending a message that those types of slurs will not be tolerated, but he shouldn’t be tagged a homophobe.
Moses accepted responsibility and apologised. He’s guilty of ineloquence a lot more than being anti-gay.
Update from Ryan: Please head over to Bec Shaw’s reply to my piece here, published on The Roar the day after this article.