Footballers: Not everyone wants to see your privates

A RUN of scandals have exposed star footballers’ lewd behaviour, overshadowing the game and making it unappealing for families. So what is the NRL going to do about it, asks Jessica Halloran.

BREAKING news for some footballers: not everyone wants to see your penis.

Put it away.

You almost haven’t lived, as a female sports writer, if you haven’t had at least one towel dropped and a penis flashed your way in a rugby league change room. It is a gross work hazard.

And now there is this: the social media accounts of a South Sydney player being used to FaceTime a player’s penis to a woman, leaving her feeling “violated and ­uncomfortable”.

South Sydney Rabbitohs’ slow and then silent response to this woman’s initial complaint last May is deeply ­concerning.

The National Rugby League’s image has taken ­another punishing hit just as the nude-dancing, spewing Bulldogs Mad Monday scandal had been dying down.

This week NRL commissioner Peter Beattie sat at the NRL 360 desk on FoxSports and passionately spoke of ­attracting more women to the game and winning over the hearts of mums to get their children to play and support the game.

A Bulldogs player worse for wear after his team’s Mad Monday celebrations, which are only one scandal to hit NRL recently. (Pic: Christian Gilles)

But as we wade through another exposure scandal, you have to ask why would you want your kid to support a sport where the star dickheads of the game are lewdly getting out their willies?

It’s this crass, and in the Souths case “violating”, ­behaviour which is now overshadowing the many, many good men who play the game.

The Rabbitohs footy player’s unsolicited exposure of his penis over a video chat reeks of an underlying disrespect for women.

You may as well set fire to the player code of conduct because if, allegedly, one of the biggest stars in the NRL isn’t listening, who is?

It’s not uncommon ­behaviour.

A woman I know well worked at a high-profile footy club for many years and describes how she saw footballers often “share” nudes and sex videos of women they’d hooked up with. She tells how most hook-ups occurred over ­Instagram.

The Mad Monday antics of the Bulldogs saw players strip off while dancing to Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline. (Pic: Justin Lloyd)

In the Souths case, it was captain Sam Burgess’ Facebook Messenger acc­ount that is being investigated.

The texts progressed to a video chat with his teammates — and later when “Burgess’s acc­ount” was back in its hotel room by ­itself, the man using it pulled down his pants and showed off his penis.

Shocked, the woman ended the chat there.

The former club official said nothing would surprise her.

“As far as d**k flashing, in the club, it happened and it didn’t offend me a few players would do a bit of a d**k flash as a joke,” she said.

“I would liken it to what high school mates would do, it was just them being idiots.”

The “d**k flashes” she could endure but what wasn’t so funny were the regular ­unsolicited sexual text messages. Messages at all hours asking for sex.

“Meet me here for sex” was often the blunt tone. The texts were relentless and rarely was the player single.

“The player always had a wife or a missus,” she said.

“I would say, ‘no’ and point out their relationship status.

“There’s definitely a power imbalance, because you know if you tell somebody at the club (of the player’s bad behaviour), it’s going to come back on you.”

A woman who worked at a high profile footy club has told of regularly receiving unsolicited sexual text messages from players. (Pic: iStock)

There are stories from women in clubland, too afraid to put their name on the record, who tell of raising behavioural issues of star players to the football hierarchy and finding themselves soon without a job.

The guts of the issue is that footballers are surrounded by a team of apologists and enablers.

Men who are there to clean up and cover up a mess. Some footballers who live in this privileged bubble arrive with, and leave with, few life skills.

One former staffer tells of the footy player who came to their office after his uncle died and said, “My mum says I need a letter of condolence … yeah, can you write it for me? I don’t know how to do it.” The staffer in turn wrote a letter for the footballer’s dead relative they’d never met.

There are players who turn up to the airport with expired passports and no idea how to renew them.

There’s the English player who lobbed here and while trying to get a driver’s licence at the RTA couldn’t work out if he was from England or Australia. He called the club official and was confused ­because he now lived in Australia: “I am not from Eng­land now, am I?”

Questions will now turn to punishment.

Mitchell Pearce copped a $125,000 fine and an eight-week suspension for his lewd video scandal (thankfully, this time the Rabbitohs player went without a canine ­co-star).

But most importantly, what of the woman left saddened by her interaction with the Souths players. What does she want? Not much.

“An apology would be nice.” As she wrote in an email to Souths: “Rather than making this a huge deal, I would like this sort of behaviour to stop!!!”

Me too.

Jessica Halloran is a sports journalist for The Sunday Telegraph.

@jessihalloran

Originally published as Footballers: Not everyone wants to see your privates