This week, Sam Tomkins hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons. The Englishman is the latest rugby league star to be involved in an off-field scandal.
But is Tomkins a role model? And what kind of role models do we want our kids to have?
I come from a rugby league family. My own children have been raised on rugby league, and my teenage son lives and breathes the game.
But I have never pointed at a rugby league player and said “son, you should base your life on that man”. My question is – are there actually parents out there that do?
Sure, my son plays centre. My wife and I will sit down with him and point out characteristics of Greg Inglis, Josh Morris, or past greats like Andrew Ettingshausen, Steve Renouf and Paul McGregor.
We show him their positive attributes and encourage him to base his game on those traits. But we have never told him to base his personal life on anyone. We never will.
Don’t get me wrong. It warms the heart to see Johnathan Thurston giving his headgear to a fan in the crowd, and it’s wonderful to see the players at signing sessions that will hang around long past when they should have called it a day, just to make sure every kid has a chance to meet their hero.
These are great traits that should be encouraged, and these players should be commended. But they aren’t perfect either. There are many stories of players doing the wrong thing. Often the public, usually through the media, blow it all out of proportion and are just as culpable.
These players are human beings and they will make mistakes. We have all made them, and I would challenge anyone if they said they hadn’t.
This isn’t confined to rugby league either. Shane Warne was one of the greatest cricketers of all time. His record speaks for itself. I will sit my kids down and have them watch replays of his bowling all day if I could.
But the bloke is not a role model. There is nothing about his personal life that I would want my children to replicate in their lives.
However, his approach to cricket and his professional attitude toward the game in general is second to none. These are the attributes we want our kids to learn from.
In professional rugby league, each club has a top squad of approximately 25 players. That means that across the code in the NRL we have about 400 odd young men in their 20s that are in the spotlight 24 hours per day.
If we took 400 young men at random from other professions across Australia and followed them around with a news crew, I wonder what they would get up to. I can guarantee it would be very similar to what we have just seen with Sam Tomkins, and probably a lot worse.
There are two sides to every story, and in most cases the side that gets reported is the one that is going to make the best headlines, or sell the most papers.
If it was your brother or sister that hit the headlines just because he had a moment of bad judgement, how would you feel? These players are human, like the rest of us. If they break club rules, let the club handle it, just like any other workplace would.
But unless we are going to start condemning every young police officer, tradesman, soldier or miner for their indiscretions, then let’s leave these young men alone to learn their own lessons like we did.
Hayley Maher
Roar Pro
If a professional sports star does something wrong, parents should be telling their kids why it was wrong. Accountability needs to be on the parents to teach their kids right and wrong, not NRL players.
Matthew Buxton
Roar Pro
They're human, okay maybe we shouldn't advice kids to follow in Ferguson or Bird's footsteps, but seriously its not their job to be a role model, and lots of so called huge issues seem to be very minor. Like Tomkins? Seriously how did that make the news? Most guys would say they've done that, he even said he thought the spot was secluded...he was just unlucky. Nobody is perfect, and sometimes NRL players make mistakes, sometimes big ones, yes if they do something vicious then perhaps they should get done for it, but they're not out there to be role models for anybody regardless of what people think. In fact, after Monday night, on a Facebook page there was a review of the Sharks v Souths match, and it was Cronullas members night. One sharks fan actually said "so Paul Gallen and Luke Lewis can play in origin but not members round? Time to get your priorities right boys some of us members had our kids at the ground." Seriously? He wanted them to give up origin for members around, they arn't out there playing for anybodys children..
Wedge
Guest
Shane Warne - 'his approach to cricket and his professional attitude toward the game in general is second to none. These are the attributes we want our kids to learn from.' What!?!? I love Shane, but he was a pig. He was too lazy to train with the team, took diuretics, sledged and abused everyone very personal at times and didn't like it back, inner team arguments, would drink crownies and Vb's before the days play was called, etc.. He had an awesome talent and worked hard at it and I loved aggressive attitude, but 'professional attitude was second to none' come on. But I do agree with the rest of the article, growing up the media didn't put as much 'off field incidents in the paper as they do now, part of this problem is them scrambling to make th headline first, not caring for the truth or the effect it will have.
Vivalasvegan
Guest
Holy cow... He had a wee outside. We have all done that. As a species we have only just stopped weeing outside, in the posh parts of the world... It's not like he glassed his girlfriend.
Andy
Guest
The problem is a huge number of people don't parent their children, they're expecting others to do it for them. On the other hand sponsors don't want to associate with douchebag behaviour and players need to remember that. That's why they're paid so much, because it's all about image in this day and age. I think just about every bloke has done what Tomkins did on the weekend, but with the money comes all the other garbage associated with the job.