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I feel some sympathy for the plight that Richie Mathers finds himself in.
The six-month ban Mathers recently received from the RFL for a perceived breach of the game’s betting rules has led to him to announce his retirement from the game with immediate effect.
I can’t say that I have ever been a big Mathers fan as he always seemed prone to make too many errors, but you cannot argue with the career that he has had.
He has won a grand final and World Club Championship with Leeds Rhinos and two Challenge Cups with Warrington Wolves.
In addition to that he had a stint in the NRL with Gold Coast Titans and with Super League clubs Wigan Warriors, Castleford Tigers and Wakefield Trinity Wildcats.
Just as importantly, Mathers seems to be well respected and liked by fellow players as you can see from his Twitter timeline which features tributes from many former teammates.
Mathers has always seemed like a stand up guy with thoughts on how to improve the game and his current predicament seems way out of character to me.
The official RFL statement at the time his punishment was decided stated:
London Broncos player Richard Mathers has been suspended from all rugby league activity for six months after being found guilty of breaching the sport’s rules relating to betting.
An independent tribunal found Mr Mathers guilty of providing inside information on his club’s playing strengths and pre-match preparations, and of encouraging other people to bet on the outcome of a match using the social media messaging application Whatsapp.
In response, on his own website, Mathers states “I strenuously maintain my innocence of all the issues, no evidence was found against me and I was convicted on the grounds of ‘comfortable satisfaction’.”
Now, I am no legal expert and had to look up what ‘comfortable satisfaction’ actually means and the internet gave me this:
“The common law has developed many principles in relation to evidence, including two standards of proof, one for criminal cases and one for civil matters. Many sporting disputes are now settled by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and it utilises a third standard of proof, namely ‘comfortable satisfaction’, which is defined as lying in between the criminal ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ and the civil ‘balance of probabilities’.”
“Despite stating that it is not bound by the rules of evidence, an examination of CAS drug cases indicates that it operates in a similar way to common law courts in regards to how it uses the evidence presented to it.”
After all that, I’m not much clearer on what it means!
On his website Mathers seems to indicate that identity theft may have played a part in his downfall. He also says that he has been warned against an appeal as the consequences may have been even more dire.
There is no doubt that this is not the way to an end a successful career in any sport and that Mathers and his family will have been under considerable stress in the six months between the alleged offence and the final outcome of the investigation.
The fact that the supposed inside information was for a London Broncos match away against the, at the time, rampant Leigh Centurions makes it seem even more unlikely that anyone would need to consider supposed insider information to help them decide on which way to bet on this match. Leigh ended up winning 64-12.
My main query on this subject is if Mathers is insisting he is innocent, why does he not release the Whatsapp messages for everyone to see?
I hope this stain on his career and reputation can be washed away eventually and that the rest of Mathers’ life is a success for him and his family. I’m not sure that he has deserved to have his career end like this.
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