The National Rugby League is in what may well be the most tumultuous week in its history. Amid a vast ocean of rumour and speculation, tiny bubbles of detail are slowly surfacing.
Six NRL teams have been implicated in the findings of the Australian Crime Commission’s (ACC) report into Organised Crime and Drugs in Sport. It may be weeks or even months before we understand how far reaching the impacts of the report will be.
Once all of the ACC’s findings are handed down, the big consideration facing the NRL will be how to go about penalising those found guilty of the felonies.
No doubt the NRL will want to take a hard line to prevent such matters happening again. Whilst purely hypothetical at this particular juncture, the consideration of said bans is paramount.
The drugs issue is not new to the NRL.
In 1998, Melbourne prop Rodney Howe copped a 22 match ban for his use of the banned steroid stanozolol. Bans should be equal or more than that at the very minimum. A multi season ban would certainly send a clear message.
In the case of match fixing, life bans would befit the crime.
It is deception of the highest order and a complete blight on the game. Put simply, there is no place for those who have participated in such a devious activity if the game is to maintain any modicum of integrity.
Rest assured, the NRL will be confronted with many interesting defences. A common theme already emerging is that players were not aware of what they were taking. Such an excuse is tantamount to blaming your mates for you being drunk or blaming your car for speeding. Ultimately you are responsible for every single thing that enters your body and to blame anyone else is a cop out.
Unless there is a zero tolerance approach with no flimsy excuses gaining excessive leniency, then we can expect such problems to keep emerging and the belief in the integrity of the sport to plummet.
Let’s hope for the sake of our game that the findings are far from a “worst case scenario” and that the aforementioned predicaments are not something the NRL has to consider.
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All the team list information for Round 9.
