The real story behind Matt Lodge and how Brisbane dropped the ball

THERE’S more to the Matt Lodge story than you might think, but due in part to the arrogance of the Broncos it has yet to see the light of day writes PAUL KENT.

Matt Lodge.

KARYN Murphy is the tough ex-copper running the NRL’s Integrity Unit. She began in late 2015 and the first job to hit her desk landed with a loud thud.

Murphy picked up the file and looked at the name on the top.

Matthew Lodge.

His reputation around the game was of a troubled young player that had already been through three clubs and just found a whole heap of trouble in New York.

Murphy began going through the list of offences and the court-ordered punishments, such as community service and a 28-day stint as an outpatient, an order to undertake ongoing drug and alcohol tests, and she rolled up her sleeves.

Soon after, February 2016, she sat down with Lodge and his father and began by telling him to forget about any return to the NRL.

Lodge made his controversial NRL return on Friday night.

“Let’s not even talk about that,” she said.

A whole lot of things had to be done before then, she said.

Murphy is nobody’s fool. She is still respected within the police community even though she has been out of the job for some years now, which is not common.

Murphy began talking to Lodge about what he was going to do if he wanted to find his way back to the NRL and she began with the questions we are all asking now. What has he done? How much of it?

What can he show to give the game confidence he will not reoffend?

When Lodge ran out for Brisbane on Thursday night nobody, still, had satisfactorily answered that in the public domain. Odd, because it is perhaps the biggest question of all.

Murphy understood that, big picture, more important than Lodge’s return personally, the NRL and Brisbane had an obligation to protect the game.

Its reputation has copped a battering in recent seasons. Too many embarrassing incidents to list, too many disenchanted fans.

Those who deny that people are not walking away from the game are too close to it.

Bringing back Lodge reinforced all those fears that the NRL is a thug’s game.

Many fans have rallied against Lodge’s return.

All this got lost as the NRL soap opera overcooked itself this week as Lodge’s return grew closer.

Instead of providing answers, reassuring everybody that this will work out, the Broncos went to the 1985 playbook and gave everybody the Nothing To See Here policy.

It stunk of arrogance.

Nobody else’s opinion in the game mattered, apparently, because the Broncos knew better.

Even after privately acknowledging their mistake and allowing Lodge to be interviewed on League Life on Wednesday, the Broncos coach Wayne Bennett was irritated enough to muddy the playbook by claiming a media agenda and asking where the media was 15 months ago and why they had waited until this week.

Bennett’s argument sounded reasonable only to those of a dull mind. In reality it is an old political strategy. Muddy the information with slanted, hand-picked information so nobody knows quite what to believe, anymore.

Bennett failed to disclose how many interview requests he got, as far back as 15 months ago, or why he denied them all and did not allow Lodge to speak. He portrayed it as the media driving some agenda against Lodge or the Broncos.

Karyn Murphy knew all the answers and, as much of the game continues to protest Lodge’s return along the grounds of equality and respect for women, it is worth noting the first person to okay Lodge’s return was a woman who knows his history better than anyone.

Murphy saw that Lodge submitted to meetings at Alcoholics Anonymous. That he underwent psychological counselling and, with Lodge’s permission, she was able to read his reports and assessments.

She saw him working six nights a week in a soup kitchen in Sydney and spoke to those in charge, as she did at his old junior footy club where he volunteered.

She made him, quietly, enter a secondary prevention program the NRL insists upon.

“That’s for players who have a history of any domestic violence or inappropriate behaviour towards women,” she says.

Lodge spent two years out of the game.

“It’s mandatory.”

All the while Lodge had no guarantee any of it would open the door to an NRL return. All this was simply for the chance.

He got registered at Redcliffe and she spoke often to chief executive Grant Cleal. All the temptations of the club environment, the alcohol and indulgence, were suddenly before him again but Lodge, she got told, stayed on course.

He failed to retaliate to the sledging, showed no anger towards referees.

When Murphy heard Lodge had enrolled for a Bachelor of Business degree at university she was gladdened. She stayed in touch with the university and heard Lodge earned three distinctions his first year.

When his baby was born last year Lodge fell behind as he invested himself in his new family. Murphy stayed in touch with the university and was told that Lodge used the summer break to catch up in his studies.

Matthew Lodge has done all this for a chance to play NRL again.

Very few people know any of it.

NRL boss Todd Greenberg sat in the green room last Wednesday watching Lodge’s interview on League Life on Fox League for the first time before he walked on for the last segment.

He admitted live on air, given his time again, the NRL would do a better job of educating its public, the fans, on why they believe a player deserves another chance.

Brisbane dropped the ball on Matt Lodge.

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Greenberg’s problem was the NRL trusted the Broncos to handle Lodge’s re-entry and the Broncos blew it. To some, it turned Lodge into a sympathetic figure.

The NRL has long championed the idea of being the Second Chance Saloon. Somewhere along the line it has become part of the game’s narrative, so much that some insist it is a right for those who have fallen.

They confuse the opportunity to work again with the privilege of playing NRL. They aren’t the same.

But league fans are a hardy bunch. The key to their goodwill is transparency.

“Sitting where I sit, having all the reports in front of me, I could have said ‘you sit out another two years’ or ‘you’re never coming back’,” Murphy says.

But she looks at the different life now being lived.

“Coming back, there’s still a condition that he continues on with that,” she says.

Murphy began working with Lodge more than two years ago now.

Early on he turned 21. He went out to celebrate with his family, heading to a burger joint.

****

IAN Botham walks to the crease and Rod Marsh, at wicketkeeper, asks, “So how’s your wife and my kids?”

Botham doesn’t miss a beat: “The wife’s good, the kids are retarded.”

Not anymore.

If any future Botham is to escape sanctions, they must say: “The wife’s well, the children have cognitive disability.”

Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, does it.

All these people whingeing about sledging have deadset lost the plot.

Sledging is designed to upset you. That is why teams do it.

If a sledger upset his opponent enough he has him thinking about what was said rather than playing the game.

It is the entire point of it.

For the Australian cricketers — who perfected sledging, if not invented it, and who go in to every Test with the understanding sledging is a valid weapon — to whinge because someone essentially got the better of them in the sledging stakes is the height of hypocrisy.

Yet the nanny brigade have come out in support of David Warner because he didn’t appreciate Quinton de Kock said about his wife in reply to sledges Warner made towards de Kock.

Take or leave sledging, according to your beliefs. But, to put politically correct rules around it, you might as well forget it.

Originally published as The real story behind Matt Lodge and how Brisbane dropped the ball