Miranda Devine: Folau has the last laugh over rugby’s haters
You would think Rugby Australia would invest in some soul searching and a little humility. But no. They’re digging a deeper hole, while Israel Folau’s career is far from over, writes Miranda Devine.
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Rugby Australia just lurches from humiliation to humiliation. It’s bad enough that Raelene Castle and her board decided to go to war with star player Israel Folau over a religious Instagram message. But they just keep digging a hole.
They have had to apologise to Folau and hand over a settlement figure believed to be around $3 million, as well as pay for an estimated $1.5 million in legal fees.
Meanwhile, morale in Australian rugby has hit rock bottom with a World Cup performance best not mentioned.
You would think that would be grounds for soul searching and a little humility.
You would have expected that the architect of the Folau disaster, tin-eared CEO Raelene Castle, would have resigned, followed by Rugby Australia chairman Cameron Clyne.
You would have thought that contemplating a deal with Optus for rugby’s television rights would be the final kiss of death.
But no. For some inexplicable reason RA’s wagons are circled around Castle, whose political capital is well in negative territory, and Clyne had to be convinced by the member states that he couldn’t stay on.
RELATED: Rugby Australia’s not-so-secret agenda has been revealed
To make matters worse, in a car crash interview with 2GB’s Ben Fordham, Clyne last week said that the reason RA settled with Folau was because he had more money.
“He (Folau) had an opportunity to have his case funded by external parties. We did not. The only reason there was unanimous support … to settle the case was because it was cheaper for us to settle than to continue to run the case.”
Seriously? They should have thought of that before they decided to sack him.
Clyne acts as if RA is David to Folau’s Goliath when the reverse was the case.
RA was happy to delay and play legal games when they thought they could crush their sacked player under the weight of escalating legal costs. But when Folau’s GoFundMe page raised $750,000 for legal costs in a few days, they should have understood they had lost the public.
Then. when his GoFundMe page was de-platformed by the usual haters, RA was cockahoop, only to be outfoxed again, when the Australian Christian Lobby set up a new fundraising campaign which raised more than $2 million from small donors.
People power came to Folau’s rescue because Australians don’t like a corporate bully and we believe in free speech.
RELATED: If this is Rugby boss’ view of the Bible, Folau had no chance
All Folau ever wanted was an apology and to keep playing rugby.
Now the 30-year-old has offers to play coming in from both union and league, in Australia and overseas, say his friends. One guarantees he will be playing in fine form by the next rugby world cup.
RA was certain Folau would never play rugby again. But they could not have been more wrong.
Originally published as Miranda Devine: Folau has the last laugh over rugby’s haters
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