It was a letter to Melbourne’s ‘The Age’ that provided the spark for this week’s column.

“Common sense has arrived at the Essendon Football Club with the resignation of Andrew Thorburn. In his very brief tenure, he showed it was obvious this was a disastrous choice due to his admission of belonging to a religious group that holds views that are not aligned with the values of the football club,” wrote Angela from Mordialloc.

“In light of the divisions it is obvious that unity, tolerance and inclusiveness should be of the highest priority going forward,” she concluded.

Let’s unpack one thing before we start. Unless you’re Mal Meninga trying out politics, nobody resigns from a role like this on day one. When people are offered the choice to resign or be sacked, they’re not being offered a choice; they’re being sacked.

For readers unfamiliar with events, Andrew Thorburn lasted just 24 hours in the role of CEO of Essendon Football Club (AFL), after it was revealed he was chairman of City on a Hill, an authorised affiliate of the Anglican Church, whose website happened to contain a transcript of a 2013 sermon in which a pastor claimed homosexuality was a sin, before adding some confronting and distasteful comments on abortion.

Thorburn’s precise personal views on homosexuality, abortion or other social issues aren’t known. What is known, is that Thorburn was for five years CEO of the National Australia Bank, during which time the NAB teamed with the AFL to host the inaugural Challenge Pride match, to promote LGTBI inclusion in sport.

If Thorburn does hold conservative views on these and other social issues, he has demonstrably been able to do so while heading up a progressive workplace of 35,000 employees, none of whom it seems had any difficulty with his faith or role in the church.

Nevertheless, this wasn’t enough to prevent Essendon from caving to a wave of protest, chairman David Barham citing, “a clear conflict of interest with an organisation whose views do not align at all with our values as a safe, inclusive, diverse and welcoming club for our staff, our players, our members, our fans, our partners and the wider community.”

Hold that thought, we’ll come back to it shortly; “the values of the football club”.

Predictably, Thorburn’s sacking was latched onto by fanatic proponents of free speech and religious expression on one side, and social progressives on the other.

The ghost of Israel Folau once again loomed across the front pages, albeit disingenuously. After all, Folau didn’t have his Rugby Australia contract torn up because of his religious beliefs, but for his actions in continuing to promote those beliefs, in contravention of his employment agreement and his own undertaking not to repeat such actions.

(Photo by Matt King/Getty Images)

Meanwhile, those who support Essendon’s move insisted that Thorburn’s position as an office bearer of the church subjected him to a higher level of culpability and accountability than that of a run-of-the-mill member of the congregation, club member or player.

Setting aside any sense that there are different tolerance standards being applied for a wealthy, 61-year-old, white, male and a young Muslim woman, it is this distinction that allowed Greater Western Sydney’s Haneen Zreika to again sit out AFLW’s Pride round, due to it conflicting with her Muslim beliefs, without her suffering any backlash from people within the game.

There was also an eye-popping intervention from Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, denouncing Thorburn’s bigotry and intolerance.

In doing so, Andrews linked his concern to the potential risk for harm and suicide of young people; this from a man no less who, despite continual lobbying from child health experts and concerned parent groups, refused to give weight or even discuss the mental health impacts of extended COVID lock-downs upon children, and refused to publicly release any health advice provided with respect to school and playground closures.

Notably, Andrews is entering an election campaign, with a number of his party’s inner-Melbourne seats being hotly contested by the Greens on the very social issues at play at Essendon.

See what is happening here? A veritable shitstorm involving religious zealots, free speech advocates, social justice warriors and a state premier with a re-election agenda, has thundered through the guts of a football club, and led to die-hard fans of many years standing tearing up their memberships.

All because of a conflict over values.

It’s a similar story at Brookvale Oval where in July, the Manly rugby league club tied itself in knots over an initiative to have their players wear a gay pride jersey for the Round 19 match against the Sydney Roosters.

Only nobody sought the advice or authorisation beforehand of coach Des Hasler, or the playing group, of whom seven refused to wear the jersey, and were stood down.

Well placed to make the finals, Manly not only went on to lose the match, but fell into disarray and never won another game for the whole season.

Hasler now looks set to be sacked by the club he played 256 and coached 303 games for, and is reported to be preparing to sue the club over the pride jersey debacle “compromising his ability to fulfil his contractual obligations”.

Imagine that; 559 matches for a club, but instead of Hasler never having to pay for a beer in the joint for the rest of his life, it all comes down to him being sent packing and a firing a lawsuit back in return. All over values.

The implication cannot be clearer. No matter what is right or wrong, no matter how easy it would have been for many of us to slip the pride jersey on and get on with the game, no matter how well intentioned… when sports clubs wade too deeply into social justice waters; when they stray too far from their reason for being, ie sport, then bad things happen.

(Photo by Matt King/Getty Images)

Many years ago, I was invited to join the Dunedin Rugby Club, an affiliate of the Marist Brothers rugby clubs that are dotted around New Zealand. Almost immediately I was drafted into the senior side, packed onto a plane and sent off to play in the annual Marist Easter tournament, against all of New Zealand’s other Catholic clubs.

A green-gilled, 19-year-old, raised in a non-church going family, I was genuinely apprehensive about what lay ahead, being on tour with a bunch of seasoned Catholics. As illogical as it sounds, images of goats, soggy biscuits and being forced to pledge allegiance to a god I knew nothing about, flashed across my mind.

What I discovered was that anyone who wanted to attend Sunday mass did so, and those who didn’t just got on with their day. We were there to play rugby, and to enjoy each other’s company, not to delve into and pass judgment on each other’s moral compass.

Over time, I’ve played or been associated in sport with cattle rustlers, mayors, a convicted murderer, a murder victim, drunkards (including the head of a successful rugby franchise), teetotallers (a well-known All Blacks coach), wife-beaters, surgeons, Rastafarians, adulterers, Belgians, idolators, women, people transitioning to become women, opera singers, drug users and dealers, heterosexuals and homosexuals, cravat wearers and even people who feed at the bottom of society’s vocational barrel; members of parliament, car salesmen and rugby media.

Anyone and everyone. Good, bad and indifferent. Lord knows what crazy stuff went on inside some of those minds, but for as long as nobody sought to unreasonably impose their views on me or others, or overtly act out offensive or unlawful behaviour, it was always ‘play on’.

Values can be notoriously tricky to define. Actions and behaviours are far more easily spelled out. For example, it is reasonable and sensible that there is a line drawn that prohibits Jeffrey Dahmer and Ivan Milat from holding office at a rugby club.

But, Anglicans? Really? Or men damned not by their own words or actions, but by association?

Sports clubs exist to bring people together, to share a common love for the game and for the club, province or country. They are places where people stand shoulder to shoulder to share a beer and stories because of what binds them together, not what divides them.

In these highly publicised cases, the traditional values of the Essendon and Manly football clubs – what has brought people together over a combined 227 years – have taken a back seat to a new set of values; the kind that people like Angela from Mordialloc, and David Barham, insist that clubs must now abide by. Where inclusivity really means, for some people, exclusion.

The resultant conflict is a result of these new values – imposed almost by stealth – becoming part of clubs that have, until now, existed harmoniously without them. Clubs which, in their haste to signal virtue and inclusiveness, are not equipped to deal with the nuances and self-inflicted contradictions that inevitably arise.

(Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

What then, of rugby’s core values? The weekend’s action provided a warm illustration.

In Auckland, the Women’s World Cup kicked off, and while the results were predictable, with England and France flexing their considerable muscle, the Wallaroos shocked everyone by racing to a 17-0 lead, before eventually being overwhelmed by the hosts, 41-17.

It was no coincidence that Rugby Australia CEO Andy Marinos chose the lead up to outline a vision for women’s rugby in Australia going professional from 2025; to lower expectations and get ahead of the wider public’s realisation that the Wallaroos are not a serious contender for the title.

Women’s rugby in Australia faces a triple threat from the cashed-up professional programs of their competitors, and the AFL and NRL, who are voraciously sweeping up the best of the teenage female athletic talent for their professional competitions. One can only hope that 2025 won’t be a case of ‘too little, too late’.

This tournament is serious business, but compared to the men’s World Cup there is an overarching sense of camaraderie and mutual respect across borders, greater engagement between players and fans, and a shared understanding amongst players that they are pioneers blazing a path for a following generation of women to make a proper living from rugby.

Charlotte Caslick of Team Australia. (Photo by Dan Mullan/Getty Images)

It was a similar story from Fukuoka; a highly competitive but good-spirited match won at the death by Australia A, with ticks for all three starting Rebels forwards, a busy Ned Hanigan and the returning Tom Banks.

As is customary, the end of the match was followed by the two sides bowing in a show of respect to the crowd who they had just entertained.

As anyone who has travelled the world and visited rugby clubs in new locations knows, this is rugby’s USP. Shared values of camaraderie and kinship, and a love and understanding of the game.

This weekend demonstrated how rugby can and does cross cultural and gender barriers in a way that is healthy and wholly inclusive, and which doesn’t invite the embarrassment, scorn and ridicule that Essendon and Manly have heaped upon themselves.

Rugby will do well to embrace the values it already has and not allow itself to get sucked into fighting culture wars it has no business fighting.