Listen up, Freddy Fittler: Broncos shouldn’t need babysitters

Things keep going from bad to worse for Brisbane’s hapless Broncos, but comments from league legend Brad “Freddy” Fittler are ludicrous, writes Kylie Lang.

Freddy Fittler’s kidding, right?

The NSW Blues coach seems to think besieged Broncos have been let down by club officials whose key role is to keep players in line off the field.

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Brad “Freddy” Fittler says club officials should be spelling out the NRL COVID-19 bubble rules every day to Broncos players.

Weighing in on the latest debacle, in which COVID-19 protocols were allegedly breached by up to 10 Brisbane players who burst their pandemic “bubble” in a pub restaurant, Fittler bleats that the men should have been reminded every single day of the rules.

What are they? Toddlers?

“You’d have to be there every day, just saying ‘these are the rules, this is what you can and can’t do’ … so I take a lot of blame back to the club,” he said on Thursday.

Well, tell me this, are club officials paid to be babysitters?

Shouldn’t the onus be on grown men, and particularly men who are in the public eye and to whom children might look up to as role models, to be responsible?

Kotoni Staggs and David Fifita in a training session at Broncos’ Red Hill headquarters this week. Picture: Annette Dew

Rules don’t exist for fun, yet they appear to be routinely flouted by people who should know better and who, frankly, have already been cut a sweet deal by the Queensland Government and the NRL to exempt them from the quarantine restrictions applied to the rest of us.

The only thing that makes any sense in Fittler’s rant is that “these blokes sometimes don’t care about the rules” and “other times they’re just naive and don’t want to know”.

As for his third suggestion they simply don’t know, that’s garbage.

How much of “jamming it down their throats” does Fittler want to see?

I have it on good authority that on the very night before the alleged breach of COVID restrictions at the Everton Park Hotel on August 1, as players nursed yet another loss, to the Cronulla Sharks, they were sternly reminded of the rules and their obligations to stick to them.

Were only a handful of players paying attention?

Or did they listen and then ignore because footballers are entitled to do as they please?

The Broncos were explicitly told by the NRL in a letter dated June 23 that they could not visit pubs, RSLs, leagues clubs, bowls clubs or surf clubs.

On July 16, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk agreed that Queensland clubs would not be forced into hotel isolation in the state in a trade-off that meant all three teams, including the North Queensland Cowboys and Gold Coast Titans, entered a community isolation “bubble”.

So much for that.

Bronco Tevita Pangai was this week fined $30,000 and stood down indefinitely after several breaches of league COVID protocols, including appearing at the opening of a barber shop on August 8.

Last week assistant coach Allan Langer, strength and conditioning coach Ryan Whitley, and head of rehab Blake Duncan were each fined $5000 and placed in a seven-day COVID-19 “hold” after attending a birthday party for Langer at the Caxton Hotel on July 31.

The NRL has also come down on former Broncos and current South Sydney coach Wayne Bennett and St George Illawarra prop Paul Vaughan for flouting restrictions.

Come Wednesday, if the Everton Park Hotel revellers, including David Fifita, Kotoni Staggs, Jake Turpin, Corey Oates and Brodie Croft, are found to have committed a breach by the NRL’s integrity unit, they should be dealt with accordingly.

And it’s not too late for the Premier to follow through on her threat to shut down the competition (and put Broncos’ fans out of their misery after a diabolical season).

Accountability must not only happen, but also must be seen to happen, and any blame for bad behaviour rests with the players themselves.

As Broncos’ board member and playing legend Darren Lockyer put it, when asked his thoughts on the boozy pub lunch: “At the end of the day the players know the rules, the staff know the rules, so to break those rules, it’s disappointing.”

Back in your box, Freddy.

Kylie Lang is an associate editor of The Courier-Mail

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