If the NRL are serious about protecting refs, they should have thrown the book at Reece Walsh

“If you’ve got any bottle, NRL judiciary, he should walk. It was diabolical! Get him off the field!”

OK, maybe the world’s most famous piece of rugby league commentary might be a little over the top for a Tuesday night down Driver Avenue, but it’s not a million miles away either. 

Reece Walsh was in the dock for foul and abusive language, having been referred straight through after a stream of effs and cees were overheard on the commentary of the Broncos’ defeat to the Titans on Sunday afternoon.

His contention was that he was aiming it at a fellow player, the NRL’s was that the ‘f–king c–t’ in question was directed solely at the referee, Chris Butler. 

The judiciary, after hours of argument, agreed with the prosecution and set down a punishment of three games on the Broncos fullback, ruling him out of Game 3 of State of Origin in the process. 

It’s nowhere near enough. If there was ever a time to show some bottle, judiciary-wise, this was it.

As PR wins go, this could have been one of the easier ones: the footage, no matter what Walsh said, was pretty unequivocal and had been widely seen.

The derision on social media when the defence’s argument came in showed that nobody in the real world was in any doubt about who he was shouting at. Walsh had also been warned multiple times in the same game, with the incident in question happening with minutes to go.

It was consistent, patterned behaviour of disrespect, with one big, sellable moment of disrespect delivered with a bow on it at the end. They couldn’t have asked for a better case to make an example of.

The higher-ups at the NRL should have used this opportunity to make a strong case in the court of public opinion that Walsh’s conduct was absolutely unacceptable.

The league’s counsel made the case for four games, insisting that deterrent was a major motive for taking such a stringent ban. Normally, that approach is ineffective, but in these cases, it’s not at all. Remember, the messaging matters here.

Without making too wide a point on legal issues, punishment beatings, as a rule, don’t work, but the Broncos fullback might have found the exception to the rule.

From the days of Draco – the Greek lawmaker, not the wizarding antagonist – it’s been fairly obvious that increasing harshness of punishment is rarely relevant in stopping crimes at source, because law is all about nuance and proportion. 

Post-colonisation Australia itself is quite the example of this: as Robert Hughes details extensively in The Fatal Shore, a decent portion of the first convicts sent here were transported because English judges had realised that hanging them both failed to stop crime and made the people making the judgements widely unpopular. 

But (and this is a Sir Mixalot level of but) Reece Walsh isn’t up for stealing a handkerchief – he’s up for abusing a referee, and that brings a whole different aspect into play.

The NRL judiciary, like ‘em or lump ‘em, isn’t a proper judiciary. It’s a piffling sports body, and, in the grand scheme of things, doesn’t really matter at all. But what they say in these cases, in these specific circumstances, does matter. It matters a lot.

Reece Walsh of the Maroons is tackled during game two of the State of Origin series between the Queensland Maroons and the New South Wales Blues at Suncorp Stadium on June 21, 2023 in Brisbane, Australia. (Photo by Chris Hyde/Getty Images)

The actual ban isn’t important, but the perception of action is – and that’s where a sports body can be different to a proper legal system. This judgement tells players that, really, it’s not that bad to abuse referees.

Many moons ago, your columnist was part of this system. Back in the days when judiciaries required big paper files of records, it was someone’s job to collate them every week ahead of the Match Review Panel. 

Yours truly would get a list of suspects (players), dig their histories out of the attic and get them in front of the hanging judges (OK, ex-players earning a few extra quid) at the UK’s equivalent of Driver Avenue, a former stately home turned office block on the outskirts of Leeds called Red Hall. Think of it as a legal clerk, Super League-style.

Observing these proceedings, there were two major things that stuck out. Though there were men in suits from the clubs, and their well-paid lawyers making the arguments, the people involved were, fundamentally, rugby league people. Players in the dock, ex-players and referees on the panel, coaches and executives in the seats.

They knew that what happened on the field largely stayed on it, and that punishments were meant to punish, but could not deter foul play, because foul play had been around since 1895 and wasn’t ever going to go anywhere. Nuance and proportion ruled the day.

The grey line came when something was egregious – i.e. beyond the point of ‘stays on the field’ behaviour, like cheap shots – or strayed into wider whole-of-game issues, such as doping, and, crucially for this argument, foul and abusive language.

This is where the punishment beating idea comes in. In that final category, it needs to come out, because the court itself is not punishing the player per se, but rather sending a message to the wider public about standards.

It’s cliche to bring up the “think of the children” idea, but in this case, it’s more “think of the parents”. 

Kids don’t go out on the playing field and hip-drop each other because they’ve seen it on TV, and they don’t know who Les Boyd is, but the effects of allowing players to abuse referees do filter well out in the world, largely through grown people who know what they’re doing.

Your columnist was also rugby league referee – from under-12s to open age – and can confirm that this is the case. 

Kids, who just want to play, say stupid things all the time and respond to being binned or sent off, for the same reason they largely respond to ‘time out’ and being put in detention. Often, they and their parents would apologise after the game. 

Adults, however, rarely did the same thing. Sending off a junior player for abusive could result in an even bigger spray from their coach, who should be the one instilling these values into their own team.

In this instance, banning Walsh for a long time, and publicly being seen to do so, creates a strong message: if you do this, you’ll cop it, from Suncorp Stadium to the local park.

Super League, to its credit, has long been a benchmark for this. Hull FC centre Josh Griffin was sent off, then banned for seven games for calling a referee a “f–king cheat” and describing him as “f–king shit”. 

They did that without footage or a viral moment either, as it happened at half time. It was simply the ref’s word against the player’s, and they backed the ref to the hilt.

Legally, they were able to do this, because within their contrary conduct rules are extra charges for ‘breaching the game’s RESPECT policy’ – the guidelines posted at every ground, from juniors up, about conduct towards other players, coaches and officials – as well as ‘bringing the game into disrepute’ and ‘potential to affect recruitment and retention of referees in the sport’.

The potential for negative PR from the incident is something that they are able to factor into on-field charges, if the incident is seen to merit it.

The NRL’s version is a lot more vague, with ‘the true spirit of the game’ taken as the standard that the behaviour has to be contrary to. They can and should be more specific.

Some fans were angry about the Griffin decision, particularly in relation to another incident before the same panel in which a spear tackle by Leigh’s Kai O’Donnell was given six games. Essentially, the panel said that words were worse than on-field actions, even of the most dangerous kind.

They were right to do so. This year, the UK disciplinary has also banned former Queensland forward Josh McGuire, twice, for unacceptable language, and both times for longer than O’Donnell.

Almost every public comment on the Griffin incident came with something that mentioned football as the direction in which game did not want to go, where referees are routinely abused, both in the Premier League and the grassroots.

The NRL would do well to take note. In April, a Brisbane referee was attacked and hospitalised, and the same thing happened on the Gold Coast after a juniors Grand Final in 2021.

Further afield, a football referee was recently hospitalised in Sydney after an attack by a player, and similar incidents have been cited in rugby union in both NSW and WA already this year.

While the NRL be blamed for what happens in other sports, it has to be aware of the milieu in which it operates.

They have previous for being a light touch in this. Brandon Smith was given three games for calling referee Adam Gee a ’cheating b–tard’ last year and a Warriors sponsor was forced to apologise for comments made against match officials.

Walsh has not impugned the integrity of the referee, as those two – and Griffin – did, but he’s right up against the line. It’s hard to think of anything much worse that he could have said. 

The NRL has the opportunity to turn a suspension into a public warning to everyone else, available for everyone in the game, and beyond it, to hear.

For a sport that often struggles reputationally, this was a chance to send a powerful message to wider society. They missed it.