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The Phil Gould, Ricky Stuart feud gets nasty

2nd December, 2008
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2nd December, 2008
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Australian rugby league team coach Ricky Stuart during the team's final training session at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane, Thursday, April 19, 2007. The Kangaroos were today training ahead of their Anzac test against New Zealand tomorrow night. AAP Image/Dave Hunt

On Sunday, in his column in the Sun-Herald, Phil Gould lined up Ricky Stuart and fired a series of deadly accurate and devastating broadsides that should, if Stuart or the ARL have any consideration for the good of the rugby league code, lead to the Kangaroos coach resigning or being sacked.

Read the story behind the fallout

The back story to the Gould-Stuart feud is a narrative about a mutual friendship that has soured, the split in the Rugby League code following the Super League disaster, and a battle of the Sunday newspapers in Sydney, with Gould being a star and highly-paid writer for the Fairfax Sun-Herald and Stuart ‘The Game’s Best Thinker’ playing a similar role for the News Ltd, The Sunday Telegraph.

Adding gun-powder to the explosive feud has been unrelenting and unfair attacks on Gould by the executive sports editor of The Sunday Telegraph, Phil Rothfield.

The guts of Gould’s attack on Stuart, following the Kangaroos coach disgraceful broadsides on the referee of the League World Cup final and other World Cup officials, is summed up in the headline to his article: I’m sorry, Mr Stuart, it’s time for you to go.

“He would admit he’s brought great discredit upon himself and the prestigious position of Australian coach,” Gould writes. “It’s an international embarrassment. He can’t honestly expect to survive.”

Gould’s reference to “Mr Stuart” after calling the incident “the Ricky Stuart affair” is curious. It may well be a sarcastic attempt to insinuate that Stuart gives himself airs and graces that do not equate with his behaviour.

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The Sunday Telegraph is called “The Daily Astonisher” by Gould. Again, the sarcasm here is obvious with the point made that “countless times over the years they’ve blazoned headlines demanding the sacking of individuals from various sports for myriad minor offences … when compared with Stuart’s behaviour, the majority of these offences pale into insignificance.”

Gould also makes the point that Wayne Bennett resigned as Australian coach “because he dodged journalists at Brisbane airport when he returned home from a losing tour in England … Maybe he would’ve been better served if he abused the media, branded officials cheats and given the match referee a shoulder charge on his way out of the country.”

The Sunday Telegraph ran Stuart’s column in which he said that he knew he was in big trouble when his father rang him to tell him he’d made a big mistake. He also argued that he’d worked hard over the past eighteen months to restore pride and passion back into the Australian jumper.

This last comment is clearly yet another shot at Bennett, with the implication that the pride and passion in the Australian jumper had somehow been lost during the coaching tenure of Rugby League’s most successful coach in the modern era.

And the comment that it took his father’s call to make him realise the “magnitude” of what he’d done is equally hard to believe. Surely it was self-evident to Stuart, either at the time or shortly afterwards, that he had behaved in a totally unacceptable manner and that the only redress was to apologise and resign.

Enter Phil Rothfield with a self-serving and gratuitous article in defence of his star columnist: “The column Ricky Stuart has written today should go a long way towards saving his job as Australia’s Test coach.”

Rothfield assured his readers that Stuart’s apology was not a cynical public relations exercise. The real problem was not Stuart but the campaign waged against him by the Fairfax newspapers “because he works for this newspaper and not theirs.”

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After conceding that Stuart’s behaviour after the game was “disgraceful,” Rothfield finds some solace in the “guarantee” that it will not happen again: “He deserves a second chance.”

Sorry Phil, there can be no second chance for someone who has behaved in such a totally unacceptable way as Stuart. And to be realistic, if Gould had behaved in such a way, there is no way someone like Rothfield would be arguing that he deserved a second chance.

There may be personality clashes and media interests adding fuel to the Stuart controversy.

But the reality is clear enough: if Stuart does not resign, then the ARL has to sack him.

Every day the controversy rages is another day when the game is dragged down further and further into the mud.

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