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Last week I was at a Parramatta media opportunity, as they call them in the game these days, when Eels captain Tim Mannah copped a grilling over the Corey Norman sex-tape drama.
It was unfortunate for him that he had to face the music, but it was a scheduled media call and the club was hardly going to throw Norman up among their nominated interviewees.
Because of the latest drama surrounding Parramatta, there were some media representatives present who you wouldn’t normally see at your everyday interview opportunity, and they were keen to stir the pot.
Mannah was asked if players and officials at the club had told Norman, who has now been the subject of repeated dramas, if it was time for him to “pull his head in”.
He replied: “I’m sure he has obviously learnt his lessons and we don’t know when the video was taken, but our job as his teammates and his mates is also to support him, and not… He’s got enough people getting into him, he doesn’t need any more of it.
“He’s definitely got people here that are obviously trying to help him as a player and a person, but at the same time it’s our job is to support him as well.”
More specifically, Mannah was asked if Norman was in need of a “kick up the arse” from senior players, to which he answered: “Oh, I think how we handle it should remain behind closed doors. It doesn’t really need to be public, how we handle it as a club.”
I respect Mannah enormously, I’ve always had good dealings with him, and I realise he’s between a rock and a hard place when he fronts the media in a situation like that. But I sincerely hope rugby league hasn’t reached the stage where the senior players wouldn’t be giving Norman a kick up the arse.
If Norman isn’t a player who deserves a kick up the arse, then who is?
We don’t know what goes on behind closed doors at training, when players and coaches get together. Maybe they still talk a lot tougher and make individuals much more accountable there than they will let on to the media.
But I can’t help but think it isn’t the case right across the board and that this is an unfortunate by-product of changing times.
Players are still part of a team, but since they began earning big money – and I wouldn’t ever begrudge them of that – it has increasingly seemed like the individual is more important than the side.
Not in every case, but in many.
As rugged as it might have seemed at the time, it was good that the media threw those questions at Mannah, and it would have been good had he made Norman a bit more accountable, publicly, with his answers.
I realise it’s difficult when we’re talking about alleged sex tapes, and drug charges. It’s all very grubby. But there are ways of making a statement without getting too personal.
Hopefully, harsher truths are being told in private at the Eels.
Parramatta are effectively gone now in terms of making the finals this season, after their loss to Penrith on Sunday. They lost without Norman, who had been stood down by the club after pleading guilty to the drug charges in court. But that may not be such a bad thing.
The equation was so difficult they were probably going to fail it at some stage. It is better that it has happened sooner rather than later, so that the accent can be put totally on future planning rather than some slim hope of still getting something out of this season.
The Eels, as a club, are currently the basket case to end all basket cases, but with the right management in charge the future can still turn bright again relatively quickly, once they get through this awful period.
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