It was looking good there for a while when it came to the image of rugby league and the men who play it.
There was the Johnathon Thurston-led Cowboys’ cinematic grand final win on Sunday, and the stories that came out of it: that moment after the final whistle with Thurston and his daughter Frankie, the hug between the two Indigenous captains before the game, the sportsmanship, the skill, the spectacle. It was fabulous.
And then? Well, then Andrew Johns tried to defend himself over the Toowoomba incident. He wasn’t passed out drunk on the floor; he was “tired” and he took himself “away into a quiet corner and lay down and had a sleep”.
.
That’s what Johns and his management said yesterday. I do the same. Whenever I’m tired, I curl up on the nearest bit of carpet in a transit lounge, right on top of 13-month-old spilled coca cola and Smith’s crisp crumbs, and have a kip. It’s very refreshing.
My concern is not so much with John’s state. A picture may paint a thousand words, but one sentence can say everything. My issue is with what he said to Helen Wright, a mother of three league-loving sons, when he propositioned her. As Wright wrote on her Facebook page:
“He was severely intoxicated. I am a 42 year old woman that he asked to kiss him. When I refused to kiss him and replied I was happily married and had three sons, his question to me was ‘did you have a cesarean {sic} birth?”
To think that? To say that? I can’t even. In short, this is what men usually mean who ask a woman that after they proposition them; they reduce women to holes for sex. Intact holes.
NRL CEO Dave Smith and Channel Nine, can you really think of anything more lacking in evolution? More disrespectful to women and hence your female supporters, and also the men who love those female supporters? Are you serious about your drive to attract more families to the game? Newsflash: families, by their very nature, have women in them. Women who have given birth both vaginally and via caesarean. And have skin. And might eat peas. They are simply women. Who do a million things other than have sex.
And before anyone cries I’m “making a big deal out of nothing” or am just one of those sport-hating, French-film-loving feminists here are the facts: I love sport and have never watched a French movie they couldn’t shave a good 20 minutes off.
I watch league (mainly the finals rounds) and I can tell you rules and plays. I’ve sat in the grandstand at State of Origin games and looked away because sometimes it’s just too brutal. I come from a sport-loving family and I’ve listened to Ray Warren’s league calls since I can remember. Over the years I have absorbed the game. I love the stories behind some of the players. I hate the stories behind some of the players.
A lot of things have been said to, and done, to women in the league arena. There have been instances of domestic violence, group sex scandals, public drunkenness resulting in verbal abuse of women. I have defended the game by saying not all men in league are like that. I can’t keep defending. I’m getting tired. It’s time to have a zero tolerance policy of the mistreatment – verbally, physically and sexually – of women. Zero.
When I watch league I spend a good deal of time trying to work out what the players say to each other out there. How they get over setbacks, how they deal with adrenaline. What the coaches say. I like the stories behind the boy, now a man, who came from the country and had his mum drive him hundreds of kilometres a week to practice and games.
On Sunday, we saw another great tale as well as a showcase of skill, hard work and belief: the Cowboys’ extraordinary, made-for-the-movies win. A game like league can divide and it can unite. It can give me surprisingly warm moments, and it can give moments that make me swear I will never watch another game again.
But here is the thing NRL Chief Dave Smith, Channel Nine (who only stood Johns down for the grand final) and Foxtel (who Johns is said to be negotiating with over joining his brother Matty’s show) need to know: Johns, one of eight Rugby League Immortals, crossed a line. Again. Andrew Johns’ “incidents” are monotonously regular.
Johns doesn’t seem to have the ability to learn from the consequences of his actions. He is a repeat offender. Words are more powerful than a tackle between James Tamou and Sam Thaiday and Andrew Johns’ words to a stranger in an airport were offensive and unacceptable. Zero tolerance is the only way.
I want to gather with my family and other families and watch another final like last Sundays. I can’t if the powers that be at Channel Nine and the NRL pretend that Andrew Johns’ words in Toowoomba meant nothing.
DEBRIEF DAILY