NRL: Fallout from Tyrone May sacking shows Panthers still have a lot to learn | Paul Kent

Is it time clubs take control of their players’ social media accounts so the message being delivered is one unlikely to offend or trigger costly ramifications, asks PAUL KENT.

They may have won the premiership, but the young Panthers still have a lot to learn. Picture: Getty Images.

Maybe the Panthers just need time, the kind that puts a little salt around the temples and throws a kind eye over history’s events.

So Thursday, in keeping with this, Penrith chief executive Brian Fletcher and football manager Matt Cameron called in a small posse of players for a talk.

Fletcher has been around long enough to provide perspective the young Panthers have yet to find, so the hope is they might listen, even if that is not the way the early money is going.

A couple players were the anti-vaxxer mob, intent on avoiding the needle while still trying to figure out a way to still get paid.

Soon, though, the office emptied and in walked Nathan Cleary and Stephen Crichton.

The pair were fined recently by the NRL for disrespecting the Provan-Summons Trophy, broken in their grand final celebrations, and the club has accepted their defence that they were merely photographed at the wrong moment, like an honest family man snapped exiting a hotel after a business lunch.

The meeting was less about a please explain, though, than it was an open chat about Cleary’s recent post in support of Tyrone May after he was sacked Wednesday for an Instagram post where he appeared to claim the grand final win vindicated him for his guilty plea in court for filming himself having sex with a woman without her consent, and then distributing it.

Penrith wanted Cleary to be aware of his responsibilities.

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Tyrone May was sacked by the Panthers over his conduct following the 2021 NRL Grand Final. Picture: Getty Images.

From afar, it appears the Panthers continue to act out in defiance of community expectations, continuing to somehow try to find ways to justify what happened, with a quiet undertone of anger.

Nobody can support that.

Cleary simply repeated that he was supporting a friend in a time of trouble, one he has known since he was a boy and who he continues to live with.

Everybody should support that.

As well intentioned as the Panthers’ players believe their messages to be, though, their aim is off.

Soon after Cleary’s post another Panther, Taylan May, Tyrone’s little brother, posted his own comment on social media that appeared confused in its messaging.

Was he attacking the club for sacking his brother? Or the critics?

Taylan May will be given a breach notice.

The Panthers have previously told him he has the chance to become another Brian To’o but, as it stands, he hasn’t got too many of those chances left.

Tyrone May posted a veiled reference on social media to the sex tape controversy for which he faced criminal charges.

As a side note, the danger for the Panthers is if some continue to remain indignant about the treatment of May, and the fallout of what happened that night three years ago, they might poke the wrong bear and motivate somebody to properly investigate what actually happened on the night.

What public interest it would serve is debatable, but it certainly would not be in the Panthers’ interests.

And, as Thursday’s meeting moved forward, in the back of Fletcher’s mind was an old line Phil Gould would often say — something about them all having a little wrong inside them somewhere.

Choirboys don’t win premierships, in other words.

Inside all the good ones is a killer instinct, one that invariably drives their need to dominate their opponent and, ultimately, win.

High achievers are invariably risk takers, often driving to push the limits of normalised behaviour, so you begin to see what clubs are up against.

It is also why few clubs want to douse the fire.

Nobody should be overly surprised at this internal ruthlessness, as it exists worldwide.

Nathan Cleary showed his support for Tyrone May on Instagram

Taylan May also posted in support of his brother.

Everyone got an electric shock some years back, for example, when Tiger Woods was revealed as something heavily different from his corporate image.

Mike Tyson was often as ferocious outside the ring as he was inside it and, through it, became a pop culture phenomenon.

Shane Warne, Jeff Fenech, Dennis Lillee, Dusty Martin, Ben Cousins, all the great ones have a ruthless streak that elevated them from the rest of us.

Their behaviour was blunted by time, though, and we came to love them all.

The NRL is filled with scallywags that fascinate the public to the same degree it freezes the hearts of their coaches, most recently from Tommy Trbojevic hitting the jets down the Manly Corso, through Andrew Johns, Brad Fittler … all the way back to Tommy Raudonikis and Johnny Raper and his bowler hat. There is a book in them all, even if not every page would make for light reading.

But social media has changed much of it, removing the filter from their most impulsive thoughts.

May gets sacked and Cleary, his housemate, aggressively defends him.

All the Panthers can hope is that there will come a time when the players might understand that before they hit send they will spare just a moment to consider whether their comments will have an impact on the club, their sponsors, fans and teammates.

If the answer is no, then press the button.

Too often, though, the answer is yes.

They may have won the premiership, but the young Panthers still have a lot to learn. Picture: Getty Images.

To warn them off social media is impossible. As anyone under 25 can tell you, it hasn’t happened nowadays unless it’s been posted.

The simple answer that no club has considered is for club’s to publish their social media posts on behalf of the players. Let everything be filtered through the club’s media department.

In American sports like the NFL the communications boss usually occupies a level within the organisation that is equivalent to vice-president. They hold power to dictate to even the coaches.

This is a nod to the importance of getting their public message right.

The media teams at NRL clubs are usually junior level office staff, with no say on club policy.

If they dared risk telling the coach what interviews he must do, for example, they would soon find themselves flipping burgers or, worse, sentenced to writing columns for a living.

Given the importance of messaging, and the cost of a sponsor walking away on the back of a post made in poor taste, this is a major failing within the NRL.

The good news for the Panthers is that history has a kind eye, and long-term the glow of their premiership will outlast the current discomfort around their celebrations.

The NRL’s current scallywags can attest to that, like Tommy.

Raudonikis was ambidextrous, blessed with the ability to cause as much trouble off the field as he could on it.

He was in a pub one night looking across the bar at his Jets’ teammate Geoff Bugden, the massive chest, the sheer size of him standing at the bar, and he got somewhat wistful.

“Imagine what I could do if I had his size,” he said to coach Warren Ryan, who knew him too well.

“Son,” Ryan said, “God doesn’t make those mistakes.”

The Melbourne Cup win by Verry Elleegant was a wake-up call for Racing Victoria. Picture: Getty Images.

SHORT SHOT

The popularity of Verry Elleegant’s win in Tuesday’s Melbourne Cup was the wake-up Racing Victoria needed.

The Cup suffered no downturn in turnover this year, but pre-Covid crowds had been suffering a gradual decline since Makybe Diva’s high in 2003.

The foreign raiders might have made it an international centrepiece but the essence of what made the Cup great in the first place was going missing.

The greatest quality any sporting event can have is to find a connection with its audience, be it racing, footy or cricket.

Too often of late some international marauder has lobbed, won the Cup, and jetted off back home.

Five minutes after the race nobody but those who backed it can even remember the horse’s name.

A story forming a connection with the winner is absent.

In the lead-up to the race form is impossible, as some horses don’t even race in Australia before settling into the gates for the Cup, so they can’t be compared. Given form is redundant few get to know the story of each horse is, and perhaps form an association of the heart which would endure.

Instead, the Cup has taken on a poker machine mentality. Back a horse and hope.

There should be a limit on internationals allowed into the race.

The Cup will be better for it.

Originally published as NRL: Fallout from Tyrone May sacking shows Panthers still have a lot to learn | Paul Kent