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Chris Sandow’s reward for gross recalcitrance at Parramatta this year could be an appearance on the game’s most hallowed turf – Wembley Stadium on Challenge Cup final day.
Sandow was released to join Warrington last night. He has a two-match ban to serve for a shoulder charge, ruling him on of Sunday’s game against Castleford and the subsequent Cup semi-final against Hull KR.
That leaves him three appearances in the new Super Eights competition to get ready for an appearance at what used to be the Empire Stadium on an occasion no less auspicious than the 120th birthday of rugby league, against St Helens or Leeds
Which brings us to a much larger question: that of discipline and individuality in modern professional sports.
Generally speaking, we have this concept of players being punished for their indiscretions but what really happens is they just get moved on to another club, after a period in some sort of purgatory.
It’s one thing to give people second chances – most of our big time players get many more than that.
This, of course, is if they are any good at all. If they’re not, then the discipline meted out to them is closer to what we can expect in our workplaces.
Bad behaviour is one thing – self centred behaviour is another. You don’t like the position you are playing? Don’t like the game plan? Then get out!
Is this more common now than it used to be?
Do we have more players today thinking selfishly and acting in their own interests inside a team situation than we had before?
Remember when Mark ‘Jacko’ Jackson sang I’m An Individual? In 1985, it seemed quite novel – a footballer saying he was more than just the cog in a team wheel and putting himself out there as a target by recording a single and going on Countdown.
Thirty years later, the team is still king in Australian sport but it has become possible to rise above it. The select few need two major tools to do so – supreme talent, and cunning management capable of capitalising on external forces.
Step right up, Sonny Bill Willaims. Israel Folau could be another one. Jarryd Hayne seems capable staying ahead of the curve, even if his ambitions aren’t purely financial.
One of the biggest external forces at work in professional sports is the cult of personality. If you can turn the market you created via your team into your market, you can take it with you. There doesn’t need to be an ‘I’ every team, just the one you want to be in today.
You do this by making yourself valuable.
No doubt Wiiliams’ manager Khoder Nasser would have dealt differently with the situations facing Chris Sandow and Gold Coast’s Dave Taylor, who is unwanted for next season.
They both have talent but their brands have been tarnished.
As with any endeavour, you either perform or you disguise the fact you’re not performing.
Both players say little publicly, leaving it to the club to decide their fates and dictate the public perception of them. Perhaps with a skilled PR campaign, they could have made themselves look valuable to other clubs and codes even while on the outer with their current employers.
They could have jumped before they were pushed.
My point here is that lunch breaks are getting shorter, holiday pay is drying up, expenses are getting tighter – and footballers are getting more ruthless with the short time they in their jobs.
It makes sense that more would put themselves ahead of team harmony, as a general trend. Our world is getting more ruthless, less principled.
But when Sandow plays against Tood Carney in the Super Eights, it will be proof that the revolution Jacko sung about still hasn’t arrived.