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You make your bed, you lie in it. If the cocaine drama that has enveloped the Gold Coast Titans costs Greg Bird, Dave Taylor or any of the other charged players their NRL careers, so be it.
I’m not going to waste mine or anyone else’s time moralising about it. What’s the point? We’re all big boys and girls. Everyone knows that if you get involved in drugs there is going to be an element of risk involved.
The risk may be greater for some than others in terms of the threat to your livelihood, but I imagine that would be fairly obvious in most cases. It certainly is in the case of rugby league.
NRL boss Dave Smith said on the weekend there would be “consequences” for any players who “wreck our image and brand”.
Recent history includes several examples of the league whacking players who have seriously transgressed in other areas, not related to drugs.
If a player was to be found guilty of a drug supply charge, then apart from whatever happened to him in court he would certainly face a huge penalty from the league.
There would also appear to be the possibility of further penalty under the WADA anti-doping code.
It will all work itself out, but in the meantime the Gold Coast club must be heaving like the S.S. Minnow in heavy seas on the way to being dumped on Gilligan’s Island.
The Titans finished 14th last season. The club is desperately trying to pull itself out of the competitive mire by signing one of the game’s biggest stars in Manly halfback Daly Cherry-Evans. This latest drama could obviously prove fatal to that.
The club is hoping Cherry-Evans will see past the current events to the promise of a brighter future there. It’s a lot to hope for – after all, it’s not as if he doesn’t have other options.
Gold Coast still hasn’t acquired a major sponsor. It had big trouble drawing crowds last season. The club replaced John Cartwright with Neil Henry as coach, but now we wait to find out just how weak a squad he may be left to work with this season.
Titans players Beau Falloon and Jamie Dowling, along with Queensland Reds rugby union player and former AFL and league player Karmichael Hunt, are scheduled to face court on March 5.
Bird, Taylor, fellow Gold Coast player Kalifa Faifai Loa and ex-Titan Joe Vickery are due in court on March 9.
The premiership kicks off on March 5, with the Titans playing their first match at home against Wests Tigers on March 7.
The NRL will no doubt be thrilled with the timing.
The Gold Coast management intends having the charged players front the club’s board to show why they shouldn’t have action taken against them under the terms of their playing contracts for bringing the club into disrepute.
But it may have to wait until after those initial court appearances so it can learn more specifics about what the players are alleged to have done.
In the meantime, the players have been stood down by the club.
The NRL has made it clear that it backs the Titans remaining in the competition and on the Gold Coast. Titans chief executive Graham Annesley won’t walk away from the mess.
Annesley is a good man. He was calm and sure in a crisis as second in command to David Gallop at the NRL, but it’s going to be the challenge of a lifetime for him to sort this mess out and find a real way forward for the club.
It is one of the great debates, whether the Gold Coast is the right place for a club – in any professional sport.
If the latest version of a league club on the Gold Coast, now in its ninth year, was to eventually fold for whatever reason, surely no-one in that sport would bother trying again.
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