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If it is true that there is a division between “rugby types” and “leaguies” then the news of the last few days will have the so-called leather-patch brigade calling for more Bombay Sapphire.
I think, though, that the truth to the assertion that people will be happy about this news lies somewhere towards a more moderate conclusion.
True sports fans will be aghast at reports that Brett Stewart was arrested by police and is alleged to have sexually assaulted a teenage girl. Certainly a proportion of people will be delighted that rugby league has taken another crushing body blow, but my sense is these are in the minority.
Most will be sad. Sad for Stewart, who – if the reports are true – is a deluded thug close to beyond repair, horrified for the victim, and more broadly terrified for the game. If the Bulldogs’ Coffs Harbour episode was a thundering right, then the allegations against Stewart could prove to be the killer blow to the temple of the game as it falls to its knees.
Innocent until proven guilty is the mantra, but knowing more than a small amount of the working end of such matters, the better approach is more often that where there is smoke there is fire. And even more tellingly, if the police can strap the investigation together and if the victim holds her nerve, Stewart is on thin ice.
The news could not come at a worse time for the game. News Limited hacks (of which Iain Payten is not one) and Channel Nine and Foxtel buffoons, together with the army of media vested with a financial interest can pretend that the Greatest Game of All will rise above this latest horror.
A game, however, that chose to align itself to the corporate dollar so heavily some twenty years ago, and which indelibly cast its lot in with the big end of town during the Super League war. Now, it is bleeding financially having been first weaned and now cut from the poker machine teat, and will be quickly running out of corporate friends with the necessary muscle to take the ball up during the looming financial hard times.
It is churlish to observe that there is a delicious irony for opponents of the game that such an insidious industry as gaming – that for years supported the game – is now being taxed to maintain the dwindling coffers of the government of the geographical power base of the game.
Northern Hemisphere Rugby football codes of both variety do pose a threat to the adult talent, but the more clean-cut and infinitely better administered local non-rugby football codes pose a far heftier threat at the doorstep. Mums and dads will hesitate before handing their youngsters over to a game that at the top level has criminal associations.
But the greatest threat is to the loss of support of decent, hard-working fans who must surely be tiring of the obscenity of mid-twenty-year-old males acting as though they are Gods.
As a wide-eyed boy playing for the De La Salle Orange under-eights I never would have known that the game I love would come to this.
As an aside, I have posted regularly on this site under the name of a flightless bird but I have chosen to submit this article in the raw given that its contents may well anger some and concern others and those people might be entitled to know the author of such apparently controversial thoughts.
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