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Opinion
All you haters out there, can’t you see that the Manly Seven are the victims in the pride jersey saga.
Those players who stood up for their religious beliefs are the ones who need our sympathy.
Not the minority groups that make up the LGBTQIA* rainbow who suffer persecution.
Josh Aloiai would have you believe this.
In an interview aired on Channel 9 on Tuesday night, he showed exactly why Manly had gagged the seven players from speaking in the wake of the Round 20 debacle.
While he tried to justify the decision he made along with six teammates to not wear the club’s inclusivity jersey, he evoked Ricky Bobby level ignorance from Talledega Nights as he tried to sound sincere while he again sunk the slipper into the gay community.
Josh Aloiai walks from the field after a game in Mudgee with a rainbow in the background. (Photo by Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images)
“We still have nothing but respect for people that choose to live that way of life. We don’t personally want to live that way or endorse it, but at the same time, we quietly took our stance, we didn’t say anything hateful or hurtful.”
Let’s unpack this load of misguided crap for what it truly is.
“Nothing but respect”. The phrase “nothing but contempt” would be more fitting for their refusal to wear a Sea Eagles jersey which had a dash of rainbow colours on it.
Ricky Bobby, the lovable buffoon Will Ferrell character, thought he “sure as heck” could say whatever he wanted about someone as long as he prefaced it with all due respect. “It’s in the Geneva Convention, look it up.”
It was funny because of its absurdity.
Aloiai’s similar viewpoint is so absurd it’s laughable.
“People who choose to live that way.” He really thinks a person’s sexuality is an option they’ve chosen. Would he be offended if someone suggested to him that he chose to be heterosexual?
The only people who have made a choice in this jersey standoff are those who have decided to follow a belief system.
Aloiai and his six cohorts – Jason Saab, Christian Tuipulotu, Toff Sipley, Tolatau Koula, Haumole Olakau’atu and Josh Schuster – are perfectly entitled to choose any religion they want or no religion at all for that matter.
It’s more a case of the choice being made by his ancestors when missionaries in the 19th century preached their beliefs in the South Pacific in areas like Aloiai’s homeland of Samoa and that faith has then been passed down through the generations to the current one.
“We don’t personally want to live that way or endorse it.” Again, a slap in the face to the LGBTQIA+ brigade. He’s saying you do your thing but you won’t get my endorsement. The old “not in my neighbourhood, as long as it’s behind closed doors” argument.
Ian Roberts (Anton Want/Getty Images)
He clearly didn’t listen to Manly legend Ian Roberts, the first openly gay Australian professional sportsman, who was vocal about the significantly higher rates of suicide in the queer community due to the stigma imposed upon them by narrow-minded bigots.
“We quietly took our stance, we didn’t say anything hateful or hurtful.” Oh, bravo. You simply refused to wear the jersey because of your homophobic beliefs, you didn’t add fuel to the firestorm by shouting it from the rooftops or your preferred social media account.
Aloiai wasn’t even fit to play the match in question. He had injured his knee the previous week and didn’t return until Round 22 anyway. He clearly wanted it to be known that he was boycotting a match he was not fit to play in anyway.
And then he had the temerity to call Fox League analyst Corey Parker an idiot for criticising the Manly Seven for their hypocrisy in not having no problem with gambling and alcohol sponsors.
“I would love for him to show me in the Bible where it mentions gambling. It doesn’t. Nor does it forbid alcohol within itself. But he’s an idiot.”
Looks to me like he’s again picking and choosing what he wants to believe.
While remaining tightlipped for months about the pride jersey affair, Aloiai – as he’s entitled to do – was happy to publicise his support for teammate Manase Fainu on social media and by accompanying him to his trial where he was convicted and jailed for stabbing, of all people, a Mormon youth leader in a Sydney church car park in 2019.
Fainu was lucky the victim survived otherwise his actions would definitely be against one of those Commandments that Aloiai has presumably read about in the Bible.
In the Nine interview, Aloiai tossed out the fanciful hypothetical that if the club wearing a Christian-themed jersey in Easter Round and atheists in the team refused to play in it, he’d support them.
Speaking from the UK where he is in camp (not a pun) with the Samoan team, he revealed that his sister was gay and that she “totally understood where I was coming from”.
He said he and his family received death threats in the wake of his boycott, which is never acceptable and hopefully the perpetrators of this cowardly behaviour are ultimately identified.
And when asked if he would boycott due to his beliefs in the future, Aloiai said he wouldn’t be compromising again next year when Sea Eagles management are going against recent policy and showing some backbone by saying they intend to wear an “inclusivity jersey” in 2023 despite all the dramas from this year’s version.
“We didn’t compromise this year and we won’t compromise next year or the year after. A difference of opinion is not a difference of respect.”
Make of that what you will. He’s again claiming respect is not part of the issue while showing nothing but disrespect.
(Photo by Albert Perez/Getty Images)
This is not the first time Aloiai has said he’d never wear a jersey again. He texted that to Wests Tigers CEO Justin Pascoe a few years ago when he was agitating for an early release from his contract.
Religion aside, there was little ethical about his refusal to turn up to pre-season training at the Tigers even when they offered to upgrade his deal by $100,000 because he knew he could finagle another six-figure pay rise on top of that if he could worm his way out of his contract.
He even mocked the club on social media with a meme of himself mowing lawns when Wests Tigers chair Lee Hagipantelis he could “mow the lawns at Leichhardt and Campbelltown and paint the sheds at Concord” if he wasn’t going to honour his contract by playing.
Josh Aloiai’s Instagram snub to the Tigers.
After the seven-game losing streak on the back of the player boycott, the team missing the finals, the sacking of coach Des Hasler and several off-field staffers, Manly have enough problems without having to worry about Aloiai further damaging the fabric of the club.
These Sea Eagles are falling apart at the seams.
New coach Anthony Seibold thought he was walking into a daunting task when he tried to follow in Wayne Bennett’s footsteps at the Broncos with the club’s old boys sniping at him behind the scenes because their mate Kevin Walters didn’t get the gig.
By signing on for the mission to rebuild Manly, he is taking an almighty leap of faith.