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Former Rugby Australia CEO Raelene Castle has spoken about death threats and abuse she received during her time in the job, and has acknowledged she would make some changes in the way she dealt with the Israel Folau situation.
Castle, now CEO of Sport New Zealand, appeared on NZ Herald podcast Straight Up this week but couldn’t go into details over what she would change due to a confidentiality agreement with Folau.
Castle’s toughest assignment in several sports administration roles was handling the fallout over Folau’s sacking from his RA contract for his social media posts that said homosexuals would go to hell.
That started a series of legal proceedings that resulted in a settlement later that year and divided Australia’s rugby and sports community.
(Photo by Craig Mercer/MB Media/Getty Images)
Castle told Straight Up that while she could not go into details on some aspects of the case, she believes the right decision was made.
“We could say Rugby Australia had values and we stood up to them and they meant something and we were prepared to act on it,” said Castle.
“It’s not always easy because sometimes it does come with significant consequence. In this case it was a really difficult situation and created a media storm like you could probably never imagined.
“I believe to this day it was the right thing to do as a leader and it was the right thing to to do for the organisation.”
Castle said that while people often refer to the concepts of diversity and inclusivity in the same sentence, the two are actually “like oil and water”.
“To allow people to be individuals and be diverse and be really comfortable in who they are and what they do and their views… and then create an inclusive environment where everybody can feel that they are included and be prepared to express their view, is not an easy thing to do.
“How far is okay. Is 80 percent of your opinion ok? Am I allowed to be anti-vax or vax, religious or not religious, gay straight, any of those things?
“If you can express your opinion in a respectful way so you can not hurt people or not have people feel bullied or disaffected, that is the most inclusive environment you can create.”
Castle gave an insight into the stress of dealing with such a divisive issue, with keyboard warriors fuelled by her opponents, including the obsessed Sydney shock jock Alan Jones, who savaged her regularly in a Murdoch paper.
“The general column inches, the crazy social media stuff, if I carried it with me every day and took it to bed I’d never sleep, never get out of bed, wouldn’t walk down the street.
“The things people say to you on social media is truly outrageous but you can’t take it to heart because they’re keyboard warriors that don’t know the details.”
Former Rugby Australia CEO Raelene Castle. (Saeed Khan/AFP via Getty Images)
Castle was asked if she would do anything differently.
“Yeah I would,” she replied. “Of course you couldn’t possibly go through things like that and not think there are things you wouldn’t do differently,” said Castle.
“Some of those things I can talk about, some I can’t because they’re bound up in a confidentiality agreement around the settlement.
“If I had my time again there would be a couple of things I’d do differently. They would have had different consequences but you can’t go through a process like that without understanding there were some big learning from it.”
She spoke about death threats she received from Folau supporters.
“I probably was quite nonchalant about the death threat because my view was it was just some crazy keyboard warrior person who writes stuff without really comprehending what they said,” said Castle.
“When I told some people about it they got more anxious and we had security reviews and a lock on the front door on the offices of Rugby Australia – they came and did a security check on my house to make sure no one could get in.
“It all seems very dramatic but I’m not really a dramatic person , I’m very pragmatic about the realities of it.
“Certainly the abuse was .. A lot of it was so illogical that it was hard to be offended by it. But also you don’t read a lot of it.
“I was lucky to have someone who read it and filtered it and gave me the top line so I understood.
“A friend gave me a good piece of advice which is when you’re in the media don’t read the media.
“I had a journalist, Alan Jones that for 100 weeks wrote very, very disparaging articles every Friday in the paper. It was the same on repeat so you don’t read it. That’s his view, it’s fine but I didn’t share his view obviously. You do need to be resilient and pragmatic around whose opinions you care about.”