Rugby’s latest clown show is more tragedy than comedy

Carter Gordon isn’t a rugby league player.

Everything he’s done in his young career to date says that he’s a rugby player to his core, with long held dreams of taking on the British and Irish Lions next year in a series that many players hold in higher esteem than Rugby World Cups.

It really has taken an extraordinary coalition of the incompetents to deliver him to the Gold Coast Titans on a platter. Commentary this week about what damage his decision has caused to rugby are upside down: it’s the damage that rugby has done to Gordon that should be top of the agenda.

Consider what the code he clearly still loves has offered him in the past year or so.

The basket case Wallabies to the basket case Melbourne Rebels, and by the way how would you like to join the basket case Waratahs? Sure, they don’t have a coach and some of their best players are leaving – and you’ll also take all of the blame if things don’t work out – but just sign here.

Over the past year there are probably more striking images of Gordon in tears on a rugby field than looking happy.

Carter Gordon was thrown to the wolves at last year’s Rugby World Cup.Credit: Getty Images

And as if to underline rugby’s current mess, the Gordon story wasn’t even the most alarming of the day. No, that prize was collected by Rugby Victoria, who unsurprisingly stirred a mutiny among their own clubs by – and let this sink in – signing off on a $400,000 loan to the Rebels at the end of last year.

This masthead’s Carla Jaeger broke that story on Thursday, a mind-boggling example of the professional game taking money out of the community game, which included the killer line, “if Rugby Victoria is forced to hand back the repayment, it will be owed a total of $512,000, and will recover around $76,800 of that”.

The Titans management probably just had to walk and talk at the same time without falling over to convince Gordon he was signing up to a completely different level of competency in the NRL.

It’s incorrect to say he won’t be missed by the Wallabies, despite the natural inclination of frustrated rugby fans to mount that argument. It’s true that he has imperfections in his game, but we only see them with such clarity because he has been exposed under the harshest Test spotlight at such a young age.

Besides, the Rebels were a different team when he played this year, and at 23 he’s only starting to scratch the surface of his ability. The Wallabies will put a brave face on it and move on but Joe Schmidt must be intensely frustrated that a big frame like Gordon, with his potential to develop into a No.10-12 option, has slipped through his fingers before he could even get to work with him on the training paddock.

Rugby Australia chief executive Phil Waugh spoke some sense on Thursday by saying Gordon wouldn’t necessarily be jettisoned for the Wales series. Good. In fact, the opposite should be true. Gordon needs an arm around the shoulder, a mea culpa from rugby and a reminder not to forget about the game, because the two years on that NRL deal will go fast.

Gordon might not be the last to go. This masthead has repeatedly been told that some of the Rebels’ Pasifika players have had offers from other Australian sides sitting in front of them but asked their representatives to ask if Moana Pasifika had any interest.

Moana Pasifika have their own issues, although the word is that their own finances are heading in the right direction.

But the message coming through loud and clear is that the current playing base in Australia do not trust those running the game.

Waugh and Dan Herbert inherited a lot of this mess – in one sense Gordon’s exit is simply the natural unwinding of years of bad decisions – but they now have to own it.

As for Gordon? Good luck to him. These should be the best years of life. Rugby has let him down, not the other way around.

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